Safeway

Safeway was one of the biggest supermarket chains, not just in the United States, but the world. In 1979-82, when I was stationed in Berlin, Germany, when the Army band was on a trip to Hamburg, I can remember visiting a Safeway supermarket there that even had Cragmont soda pop!

On trips to Ecuador and Indonesia, I saw Safeway brand names at grocery stores there. More Cragmont soda pop!

I don't know what happened but the whole chain went crazy a couple of years after I got out of the Army in 1986. All the old Safeways became Vons. For a few years it was as if there were no Safeways in Southern California (they linger on in NorCal). And then, in the mid 1990s, they dropped most of the Vons brands and replace them with Safeway house brands. Some of the old names were gone. There was something quaint about Mrs. Wright's Bread. But they still had Lucerne milk. Which meant that Jerseymaid milk was gone. They kept that name for the ice cream.

By the way... I don't know if the building is still there, but there used to be a Safeway at the corner of F and Ninth Streets in Colton. While they were building the new library on Ninth Street, it served as a holding area for the books...

Safeway is gone in Germany. It was taken over by Morrison's in the United Kingdom and by Woolworth's (no immediate relation to the former F.W. Woolworth chain in America...)

The old library on La Cadena Drive (Eighth Street) is now the Colton Museum... More about that in a future posting...