Groceteria.com

(For those who are wondering who I am, I posted on the old board under my first name Chris for quite some time tere, I'm a long-time Bay Area resident who's posted about several SSF/Daly City sites, particularly the Purity on Hillside/Spruce, a former Marina Safeway on Washington Street near Junipero Serra, and several Brentwood properties from back in the day. My new username here is generally the name I use at other forums, particularly auto racing-related ones.)

Looking up the list of SF locations of Safeway in 1975, I noticed one at I think it was 2630 Bayshore, right at the Daly City/San Francisco line...on Saturday afternoon I did a drive over there and found a Marina-shaped former store that now served as a showroom and store for a monument manufacturer across the street. (It is near the even older Safeway at 45 Leland, which I also photographed).

Here are three photos of it; the parking lot does now have an ornamental fence around it and is filled with several fountains and statues for sale so only part of it is usable as a place to park a vehicle.





Anyone know when and why this store closed? There doesn't seem to be much of a supermarket presence in the area (the Geneva Lucky having closed years earlier, the El Rancho Supermarket on Geneva closing down about 5 years ago and being finally demolished a few months back, and the nearest other ex-Safeway being up at Williams Avenue a few miles north), though the ex-Cala on Leland is nearby and right next to this site is a small corner market.

TheStranger wrote:Anyone know when and why this store closed? There doesn't seem to be much of a supermarket presence in the area (the Geneva Lucky having closed years earlier, the El Rancho Supermarket on Geneva closing down about 5 years ago and being finally demolished a few months back, and the nearest other ex-Safeway being up at Williams Avenue a few miles north), though the ex-Cala on Leland is nearby and right next to this site is a small corner market.

The "when" was between 1980 and 1985, and the "why", I imagine, was the changing neighborhood demographics. The area went from being fairly solid middle-class to being much less affluent in a relatively short period of time. I'd be willing to bet the store closed about the same time Safeway's Outer Mission store was replaced with a "marketplace" store. That would have allowed them to call it a "consolidation" of two outdated locations.

Groceteria wrote: The "when" was between 1980 and 1985, and the "why", I imagine, was the changing neighborhood demographics. The area went from being fairly solid middle-class to being much less affluent in a relatively short period of time. I'd be willing to bet the store closed about the same time Safeway's Outer Mission store was replaced with a "marketplace" store. That would have allowed them to call it a "consolidation" of two outdated locations.

The Outer Mission store...Mission near Alemany, right? That's actually Excelsior-area isn't it? (Geneva of course being the longest street to start in the Excelsior district.)

It's not particularly close to this location, though the demographic change is pretty obvious (especially with the things I've heard about Geneva near Cow Palace at night). I also wonder if the fact Geneva has never been connected to 101 had something to do with the current seeming lack of traffic in the area.

(On the other hand, Leland Avenue, where the original Safeway was located, was pretty full of pedestrian shoppers that same day.)

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As for the Visitacion Valley Lucky (the old one on Geneva), do you have any photos of it? I'm trying to figure out where on the street it was, the only supermarket I can remember is the demolished Rancho (which did get in the news several months ago due to pieces of its falling facade landing on a car, killing its driver).

Actually, the 4950 Mission Safeway is close enough that Safeway probably would've considered it a "consolidation" or at least have publicized it that way at the time.

The Lucky store you mention was at the southwest corner of Geneva and Alemany, not really in Vis Valley. An apartment complex was recently built there, but I think there's still a patch of vacant lot at the corner. It was originally a Purity, and I have no idea what it looked like.

Groceteria wrote:Actually, the 4950 Mission Safeway is close enough that Safeway probably would've considered it a "consolidation" or at least have publicized it that way at the time.

The Lucky store you mention was at the southwest corner of Geneva and Alemany. An apartment complex was recently built there, but I think there's still a patch of vacant lot at the corner.

Oh that Lucky - I remember it now somewhat, I heard it had issues in the late 70s with sanitation and then had a fire of some sort. My mom (who moved to SF in the 1970s) used to live a mile or two from that store.

4950 Mission is a bit of a drive from the Visitacion Valley, but clearly a better location.

345 Williams also seems to have befallen the fate of changing demographics, though as FoodsCo it is thriving. Kinda interesting that the store is not located on (or within a block of) any major street, unusual for a modern Safeway (let alone a Marina).

I just read on the site that 4950 Mission is actually an older site...was that one of the smaller urban stores of the 1940s, or a former pylon building?

Mapquesting a buch of Safeway locations turns up an interesting pattern: in general, Safeway's market presence is so strong that they locate stores about a mile and a half away from each other (i.e. Fulton and La Playa), and 4950 Mission is just under two miles from the 30th/Mission location and one and a half from 625 Monterey.

Bayshore/Sunnydale is noticeably further away from 4950 Mission, at about two and half miles - well within driving distance, but several neighborhoods apart.

Did the 345 Williams marina close at about the same time as Bayshore? (For that matter, was it immediately converted to supermarket usage?) The area east of Excelsior and south of Potrero Hill doesn't seem to have been Safeway territory for about 25 years now.

Actually, I'd say that Safeway's location patterns in SF are as much a function of the city's population density as of market share.

The 345 Williams location closed approximately 1986. In 1991, it reopened as ABC Market, which was owned by Cala/Bell, and subsequently was rebranded Food4Less and then FoodsCo.

Groceteria wrote:Actually, I'd say that Safeway's location patterns in SF are as much a function of the city's population density as of market share.

That makes sense - I was wondering if part of the reason the Clement store closed was simply that the LaPlaya site (not too far away) was seen as more viable for remodeling.

Groceteria wrote:
The 345 Williams location closed approximately 1986. In 1991, it reopened as ABC Market, which was owned by Cala/Bell, and subsequently was rebranded Food4Less and then FoodsCo.

Did the 2630 Bayshore location ever operate as a supermarket again, or was it immediately purchased by the nearby statue manufacturer?

TheStranger wrote:Did the 2630 Bayshore location ever operate as a supermarket again, or was it immediately purchased by the nearby statue manufacturer?

It was a MacFrugal's (now Big Lots) when I moved to SF in the early 1990s. The statue and stone place took over about 2000, as I recall.

Groceteria wrote:

TheStranger wrote:Did the 2630 Bayshore location ever operate as a supermarket again, or was it immediately purchased by the nearby statue manufacturer?

It was a MacFrugal's (now Big Lots) when I moved to SF in the early 1990s. The statue and stone place took over about 2000, as I recall.

I remember that Big Lots has a location further north on Bayshore, another example of consolidation here?

Immediately after this location closed as a Safeway in the early 80's became a "Food Barn". Pops and I would stop there before going to watch the Giants at the Stick.

Wasn't Food Barn Safeway's attempt at a warehouse store?

Groceteria wrote:In 1991, it reopened as ABC Market, which was owned by Cala/Bell, and subsequently was rebranded Food4Less and then FoodsCo.

My mom worked for ABC Markets in So Cal...are these the same markets...??? If so, someone has the history mixed up....since she said they went outta business late 80's/early 90's....and the owner of ABC only owned 6 markets...which became a food4less or Ralphs which from my knowledge are still in operation and have recently been remodeled....only thing i can thick of is that the owner of ABC sold his stores to Cala/Bell which kept the ABC name until Ralphs bought them then rebranded them Ralphs...?

Food4Less had Alpha Beta, Boys Markets, Viva, and ABC markets when it bought Ralphs and converted the stores to Ralphs in 1995. How they got all the stores and when is another story. I was involved in the conversions and most of the ABC stores were converted to Boys Markets and then Alpha Beta before they were all changed to Ralphs. Boys Markets had also brought back the Market Basket name in the early 80's.

SF Chronicle, 19 September 1991:

In May, the ABC Market decided to move into the area after the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency purchased the Safeway site and agreed to lease the building to the supermarket chain in exchange for guaranteed neighborhood jobs. ABC agreed that 75 percent of the estimated 100 job slots ``from management to bag checkers'' would be filled by people living in the area.

The ABC Market is a division of Food 4 Less Inc., which also operates stores under the names Cala Foods, Viva, QFI and Bell in Northern California.

Mayor Art Agnos said he hopes to eventually turn over the property to a nonprofit community group, which would continue a leasing arrangement with ABC and use profits to help small businesses in the area.

All of which pretty much agrees with what was said above. If I'm not mistaken, the entity referred to as Food 4 Less Inc. was in fact the company that would eventually be known as Yucaipa Corp.