Last, Yet Not.

This morning I made my last visit to the Safeway in the Centre at Circle and 8th shopping mall.  Yet it won't be my last visit to a grocery store in that retail space.  Co Op takes control of the store tomorrow.  They acquired it after Sobeys, which bought out the Safeway stores in Canada, had to sell that store to meet government restrictions on the purchase.  With the closure earlier this year of Safeway's 8th Street and Cumberland store the changeover will see the end of a decades long presence of Safeway stores on 8th Street.

The future of the brand itself is unclear.  Sobeys continues to operate its Safeway stores under the Safeway brand name, and has apparently not decided yet whether it will rebrand those stores as Sobeys stores or not.  So, for the immediate future, I'll still be shopping at Safeway, just not one that's as convenient for me to get to as the Centre Mall store, which I'm relatively close to.  But if they do decide to drop the name we may soon see the brand disappear entirely from North America, as their former US parent has been acquired by Cerberus Capital Management.  It's possible Cerberus will rebrand Safeway stores into Albertsons stores, and if so it will be the end of a name that has been active since 1925.