Safeway Closing Another California Store

Supermarket chain Safeway announced another store closure in the Bay Area, sparked by issues that have disrupted other businesses across Northern California.

Safeway will be shuttering its Vallejo location on Admiral Callaghan Lane in April, a spokesperson for Safeway told the KRON4 news station, which first reported the news. The grocer said that the closure was prompted by the store’s “financial performance,” as well as “ongoing safety concerns.”

Newsweek has contacted Albertsons, the parent company of Safeway, to inquire whether it expects to announced further closures in California and nationwide in 2025.

Why It Matters

The store closure highlights the financial and operational challenges faced by Safeway, as well as brick-and-mortar shops more generally, as they struggle to adapt to changing consumer preferences and rebound from the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Issues of safety and financial struggles have also been behind the closure of other Safeway locations in recent days, and have rattled other businesses across the Bay Area and California.

What to Know

Safeway recently closed its Webster Street supermarket in the Fillmore District, San Francisco. As with the Vallejo closure, the company said that the decision to shutter the store after 40 years in the area was due to “ongoing concerns about associate and customer safety, as well as persistent issues with theft,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. All employees would be assigned to other locations, while pharmacy customers were able to transfer their records to other stores, Safeway said at the time.

The Safeway at 4950 Mission on September 13, 2018, in San Francisco, California.

Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

Concerns about theft had previously forced Safeway to remove self-checkouts at stores throughout California and the Bay Area.

The Fillmore closure was originally announced in January, 2024 and scheduled for March of last year. This was postponed until 2025 after San Francisco officials reached an agreement with the supermarket chain to keep the location open. The land is set to be sold to Align Real Estate, with Safeway’s departure making way for around 1,000 housing units, though city officials told CBS News Bay Area that they were hoping to “find a new grocery store to replace [Safeway] in the interim.”

Days earlier, Safeway told The Richmond Standard that it would be closing its location at Appian 80 in Pinole, after over 50 years serving the community. Officials later confirmed that this would take place in April, and said that the property’s owner “has indicated that the site is not on the market and that they continue to actively plan for a grocery store at this location.”

A Safeway spokesperson told SFGATE that the decision was “not made lightly,” but aligned with the company’s need to “shift our strategy.”

What People Are Saying

“This decision was made after careful consideration and evaluation of the store’s financial performance and ongoing safety concerns,” Safeway told SFGATE, regarding the Vallejo closure.

Following the original announcement that the Fillmore location would be closing, a petition was launched by residents, urging city officials to save the store. “The services at this location were a purposeful post-redevelopment response to previous redlining and redevelopment policies that not only displaced residents and small businesses but prevented financing for grocery stores and banking services,” the petition read. “Safeway has not held a single community meeting with Fillmore area residents regarding closure plans, mitigations, or planning for alternative grocery services in the event of closure.”

In 2023, a spokesperson for the Westfield Mall in San Francisco told CNN affiliate KGO-TV: “A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers and employees, coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area.”

Lu Chen, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, previously told Newsweek: “The pandemic really changed the pace of the city and, to a certain extent, the lifeline of the city.”

Pinole officials, in a press release following the announced closure of its Safeway store in early February, said: “We recognize that this announcement presents challenges for both Safeway employees and the many residents who rely on this store, and we are committed to supporting our community during this transition.”