THanks for the insights on SFWY Ice cream products. I never would have thought that grocery stores on the east coast would use house brand dairy products produced ont he west coast. I have noticed that few if any grocery stores in CA have ice cream "boxes." I wonder if the move to round containers a nationwide trend or is it more a regional preference... Haven't checked back east in a while, I know Breyers still used boxes a while ago, thought Edy's (Dreyers) has always been tubs. Perhaps due to their west-coast origins... Your reminiscing about people getting their groceries loaded reminded me of another bygone supermarket feature particular to the DC area. Growing up in the 70's-80's, it was universal practice for supermarkets to line their front curbs with railings with only small openings to walk through, to prevent shopping carts from "escaping" (and usually ending up a half mile away in another parking lot or a creek/woods.) Since people were not allowed or even able to wheel their carts to their cars, they would pull up ther cars to the curb and baggers would load them in, or people would do it themselves. This required a certain level of faith that no one would snatch any of your goods while you walked to your car and pulled it over to the front of the store. When I would travel to other areas, such as New England or California, I was amazed that you could take your cart out into the lot. It seemed so verboten to me that you were even allowed to do this.
In the 80's disabled-access laws forced the stores to add a wheelchair "exit" gate at the ends of their loading areas, which made the whole idea pointless because the carts could now easily be wheeled away. In the mid to late 90's the chains finally gave up on this and removed most of their railings.
Were there any other areas of the country that tried to manage cart loss this way? It seems this format has never existed anywhere else in the US. Does anyone know if this was something pioneered by a DC chain and then adopted by other local stores?
--Previous Message--
: I used to frequent some of these Safeway
: stores while I was a student at George
: Washington University in the early
: 1990s. There used to be a Townhouse
: Safeway somewhere near L and 21st
: Streets, N.W. It had interior signage
: that appeared to have dated from the
: 1960s. In 1994, one of the employees
: told me that Senator John Kerry
: sometimes shopped there. If I recall
: correctly, he did this during his
: morning runs.
:
: I did a voter registration drive at the
: "Social Safeway" on Wisconsin
: Avenue in 1992. I recall the parade of
: cars that pulled up to the entrance --
: people tended to load their vehicles
: directly in front of the store. Some
: shoppers departed in taxi cabs. I
: recall a vehicle or two with dipomatic
: license plates.
:
: The Watergate Safeway was the main
: place that I shopped, perhaps the
: smallest Safeway store that I've been
: in. I recall that the Safeway Savings
: Club card was inaugurated in the
: Eastern Division (Washington, D.C.
: area) before it was used in the San
: Francisco area, where the chain's
: headquarters are located.
:
: I toured the Safeway private label ice
: cream plant in Capitol Heights, Md. in
: November 1994 for a school project. If
: I recall correctly, all of the Safeway
: yogurt in the Washington, D.C. area
: originated in Clackamas, Oregon. The
: pint-sized Safeway Select ice cream was
: produced in Denver. At the time, the
: Maryland Safeway ice cream plant
: produced ice cream mostly in boxes;
: California, in contrast, was a
: "round" container market.
: The Safeway Maryland plant produced
: Stop n' Shop (New England chain)
: private label ice cream. I also
: believe that Safeway also produced
: Nestle Crunch ice cream bars and Eskimo
: Pies under license agreements.
:
: --Previous Message--
: I found this interesting link online
: and
: am sharing it with the group. Click on
: the Safeway logos on the map to see
: photos. These aren't all the Safeway
: stores in DC though. I'm not sure who
: the author of the site is.
:
:
:
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