I’d been wondering how they were going to swap the very-high-up Safeway sign for a Woolworths sign. With a very big crane, that’s how. They did it yesterday.
Many of the other Safeway signs have already disappeared.
I’m not sure how long it’ll take me to get used to calling it Woolworths.
17 replies on “Bye bye Safeway”
Safeway went the way of Ruby Tuesday. I guess we found out who could hang a name on it. *badaboom*
I moved to Sydney months ago, and I still call it Safeway here… confuses the hell out of my coworkers.
We don’t call it Woolworths over here in the west any more. It’s Woollies.
Woolworths and woolies sound stupid unless you run around wearing flannalette shirts and moccasins.
Who’s with me for a protest run down at Spencer street station?
Just had a new supermarket open in Sutherland (NSW) called Supabarn, it’s a growing chain from Canberra, family owned business with half a doz outlets so far.
Lets see if competition can survive in our duopoly?
Has the whole supermarket been redeveloped?
Spencer Street Station anyone? i hate when stores/train stations/certain celebrities change their names – especially if it is more than once per decade – it just gives me more crap to remember that has nothing to do with anything quality, just marketing and re-branding. thumbs down!
Not just yet! It seems HQ hasn’t changed yet! My work is one factory down from the main distribution centre on Wellington Rd, Mulgrave, and I drove past today specifically to see any changes in signage- none, whatsoever! It’s still Safeway all the way there! Wonder if they have any plans to change?
The irony is that Woolworths bought out Australian Safeway in 1985 (Mulgrave was the Safeway HQ at the time and then became the Woolworths Victorian HQ) and decided to rename all Victorian supermarkets ‘Safeway’ as it was the premium brand in at the time in terms of having bigger newer supermarkets and Victorian based. Safeway/Big S in NSW and Qld were renamed Woolworths due to the NSW base of the company.
There aren’t too many original Victorian Woolworths still going, the one near Warrigal and North Road Oakleigh is one example though – complete with 1960s flooring last time I was there!! The Glen Waverly and Mount Waverlay former Woolworths are now both large liquor shops, and the Dandenong Woolworths was demolished around 1990 and remains to this day a triangular carpark opposite the market.
Sorry Andrew but even the one on the corner of Warrigal and North Rds is gone (well Safeway have moved out and the building is up for sale)
well I stand corrected … one less original Woolies supermarket!! It was VERY dated inside when I stopped in there a few years back!!
I must have made my first visit to the Oakleigh store only weeks before it shut down and I remember giggling at their intercoms – wood veneer jobbies that looked like they belonged in a Get Smart episode!
Yeah that old Safeway in Oakleigh South only closed a couple of months ago. When they announced on Monday that there would be a Safeway Hardware store in South Oakleigh, I assumed it would be on that site, but it turns out it’s going to be on Centre Road near Warrigal Road (next to the bus depot, it looks like).
http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/component/content/article/12466.html
Safeway disappeared in Britain in 2005 (although it had ceased to be related to its American parent in the 1980s).
Ironically, another brand to have disappeared from here is Woolworths, which went a couple of years ago in the highest-profile High Street casualty of the recession. (Although the UK Woolworths has never been a grocery store as it is in Australia.)
Some High Streets still have large closed Woolworth’s sitting in the middle!
It’ll take you as long to get your head around the name change as it did for us (in NSW) to convert our Grace Bros into Myer stores.
I think the name here in the States went from Woolworths to Safeway! Very confusing! Woolworth’s is an old, old name in the United States.
Ironic: I’ve always called them Woolworths, or the nickname Woolies (never quite getting my head around the Safeway name). This is because I have previously lived in Wellington, Christchurch, Brisbane, and Sydney, where they’re all called Woolworths.
It was clear that they were Woolworths supermarkets in disguise, and some of the milk/cakes etc in the Safeway stores had Woolworths branding as far back as 5 years ago.
It’s a bit like us (more my wife) referring to freecall numbers as 0800 (oheight hundred), even in Australia (we moved just at the tail end of the 008 -> 1800 conversion).