I’m beginning to wonder whether Safeway is now officially engaging on “bait and switch” tactics – advertising products at bargain prices but then having so limited a selection of them available that they run out before most costumers even make it to the store. Once at the store, customers have little choice but to buy something more expensive – thus increasing Safeway’s profits, at least in the short run. In the long run, customers hopefully will wise up and go shopping elsewhere.
My suspicions are founded on the fact that the last two times I went shopping at the Washington Street Safeway in San Leandro, they were out of the advertised specials. Tuesday night they were out of both top sirloin and whole chickens, and Wednesday they didn’t have any more large packages of London broil. I can understand Tuesday – it was the last day of the sale and I went late – but yesterday was the first day of the new sale and I went shopping shortly after 5, before the after-work shopping “rush hour”. A grocery store like Safeway, that has operated for decades, has an idea as to how much an item will sell at a given price, and there is no excuse for them to run out of that item by 5 PM.
Safeway is much closer to my house than Lucky’s, and I will give it a chance or to more, but if I find that this trend of not having enough products continues, I’ll definitely start patronizing Lucky’s instead.
Tag: safeway (Page 4 of 4)
Safeway is a super market chain operating in Northern California under that name and in Southern California under the name Vons. From time to time it buys other chains or is itself acquired by others. It’s hard to keep up. It’s the closest full size supermarket to my house, and the only one that does pick-up/delivery without a third party, so it’s where I do most of my shopping.
Just got them today because they were on sale for $3 for 12. They were in the bakery section in a plastic box. They are *delicious*.
Last night I forgot to cook. Really. Earlier in the day I baked a cake to eat after dinner – but the thought of actually cooking dinner did not occur to me until it was too late. I had bought the ingredients to make lime and coriander chicken, but I had to marinate it for 3 hours and had not done so.
Safeway had advertised meatloaf for $5 for Friday only, so I thought I’d give it a try. Lord, was that the wrong decision – the meatloaf was horrible. It has no flavor of meat, actually, it had no flavor a all, and it had an unpleasant, gritty texture. The sauce on top was disgustingly sweet – but you had to mix it in with the meatloaf, to make it edible at all. In other words, don’t buy it.
I hate, hate, hate, the Safeway on Bancroft Ave. in San Leandro. Everyday I walk by it when I go pick up my daughter in daycare – so it’s very convenient to stop there and buy the ingredients for dinner. But they NEVER have everything I need – and sometimes *anything* I need.
Today, for example, I was shopping for a leek tart I’m making tonight – but they had no chives. I was also shopping for a chicken dish I’m making on Wednesday – but they had no cut-up chicken (they had whole chickens, but the cut-up chickens were supposedly on sale). I don’t get it – why do they advertise products at a sale price, if they don’t carry them? And it’s not just that – try getting boneless chicken thighs, or lemongrass or even a cognac at an affordable price (all things I recently needed for cooking).
Part of me wishes the store would go out of business so I’d be forced to go to the other one, rather than be permanently frustrated by their lack of products.
I was just in the Alameda Safeway doing some shopping, and decided to see if there were any wine bargains to be had. Last year I got a wine for over 50% off which ended up being pretty good – so I thought I’d try my luck again. I found a deal almost as good – the 2005 Hawk Crest Cabernet Sauvignon was on sale for $10, $15 off the regular price of $25. So I bought it.
I come home to find out that all retailers sell this wine for about $10 – so either Safeway sells all its wines at 2 1/2 times regular retail prices, or just ups the prices of those it wants to put in sale, to make them look like a better bargain. Yes, I feel foolish – but I learned my lesson. I will never buy wine from Safeway again. I hope the wine is at least good.
Yesterday was my birthday and my mom got me (by proxy) an ice cream cake from Safeway. It was a simple affair, a matter of vanilla ice cream sandwiched by white cake, and it wasn’t the most delicious thing ever, but pretty satisfying. I do think that I like their regular cakes better. They cost about the same, I think.
As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday was Mika’s 6th birthday party and as usual I got her a Safeway cake. I’d been going with Safeway cakes for several years – ever since I got a horrible cake from Just Desserts for her welcoming ceremony. Why pay $60+ dollars for something that in the end doesn’t taste good?
Part of the reason I go with Safeway is that there aren’t many choices for cakes in San Leandro. Costco has cheap cakes, but I dislike the frostings (which you know most likely have hydrogenated oils in them) and they only have basic designs, OK when your kid is very young but a problem by the time they are into cartoon characters. (Yes, I’m one of those parents that gives into commercialism and let’s her kids have character parties – I also buy Bratz for Mika! shoot me).
The chinese bakery
has nicely decorated cakes, with cartoon characters and all, but I find their cakes not to be sweet enough. This is a plus for some people, but I’m just not into them.
There is, of course, Marita’s, whom I like to support as they are locally and minority owned -, but while I like their cakes (in particualr their frostings), they don’t offer decorations. Plus I’m not sure you can get a rectangular cake that is less than a 1/2 or full sheet.
Then there is Baskin Robbins. We’ve gotten cakes from there before, and they are usually pretty good – if extremely expensive. Indeed, we were planning to get Mika one of them – but they didn’t have the Bratz decorations she wanted.
So we went for our tried and true Safeway cake. They didn’t have Bratz decorations but they did have Bratz pets decorations (I didn’t even know they existed!) and that was OK with Mika – who by then realized there weren’t many other choices. Plus the good thing about Safeway is that if you don’t want such a junky cake you can order it with whipped cream and strawberries (or another fruit). I usually get the white cake, which is very light, and the results are very good. For Camila’s birthday I actually got the whipped cream and banana cake, and I may have liked it even more. Best of all, the kids love it and I don’t feel they are eating too much sugar.
The one minus about Safeway cakes is that they aren’t cheap. A small, 1/4 sheet cake is about $21! You can get a half-sheet cake for about $16 at Costco. But hey, I’m willing to pay for whipped cream and fresh strawberries (and nice decorations). You can order the cakes just one day in advance, good for us procrastinators.
One thing to keep in mind is that the cake book that they have outside does not include all the decoration options. I was bummed when we didn’t find the Bratz there, but Mika insisted that we ask if they had Bratz anyway. I thought it was futile, but once again my 6-yo proved to be smarter than her mother. They indeed have other cake books under the counter – and usually they carry a Bratz cake. Unfortunately, there is a backorder on Bratz decorations and that’s why we had to go for the Bratz pets, but the point is that even if you don’t see what you want in the book, you should ask.
Anyway, this is a long posting to say that I like Safeway cake.
Last night, and agains today for lunch, we had “Rancher’s Reserve” tri-tip, grilled on the BBQ. Rancher’s Reserve is select grade meat (i.e. fit for human consumption) that for whatever reason is supposed to be more tender than it should. And indeed it is. Flavor wise it’s clearly inferior to Costco’s choice meat, but it is probably just as tender. I’d probably buy it again if I couldn’t get Costco beef.
Our Safeway (the one on Washington Ave. in downtown San Leandro) got yuppisized last summer, and the process seems to continue. Today I found that they’re selling Bhutanese Red Rice, forbidden rice and another gourmet rice which until recently I had to go to Berkeley to find. They had some cool multi-colored couscous, though no Israeli couscous yet. And they are expanding their line of organic products, they have organic ice cream now (haven’t tried it yet). Stil, I couldn’t find any Jerusalem artichokes there either.
Safeway refrigerated cakes are often very good, the best cakes I can get in my little city (but if you know of a good source for cakes & desserts in San Leandro, please let me know). Unfortunatelly, their non-refrigerated cakes are not as successful.
Yesterday we were going to Charlotte’s for dinner and, as usual, I figured I’d take dessert. The dessert had to stay in the car for several hours so I didn’t want something that would have to be refrigerated, thus I decided to get the non-refrigerated coconut cake. It was OK but not great. The cake itself was a little bit dry and the frosting too-sweet and artificial tasting. I wouldn’t get it again.
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