Top Retailers

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway on Wednesday announced that it plans to file a registration statement in the United States for a potential initial public offering of a minority ownership stake in Blackhawk Network Holdings, a leading prepaid payments network.

TUCSON, Ariz., and PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway has commenced its annual fundraising campaign for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Running through Sept. 3, the nationwide campaign gives customers the opportunity to contribute funds to MDA's "Make a Muscle, Make a Difference" program. Along with Safeway, Vons, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Dominick's and Carrs stores also will participate. Through its longstanding partnership, Safeway has raised more than $68.7 million for the MDA.

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway has raised more than $9 million during its month-long prostate cancer awareness campaign.

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway is looking to its recently launched Just for U loyalty program, which this month became available across all U.S. divisions, to help drive a positive sales story through the rest of the fiscal year. The key differentiator for that program is Safeway's ability to personalize the loyalty card experience to a factor of one.

"Registration is on track," Steve Burd, Safeway chairman and CEO, told analysts during a conference call late Thursday morning. Safeway is capturing approximately 70% of its customers into the loyalty program.

AMSTERDAM — A division of Ahold USA has completed its acquisition of stores in the greater Philadelphia area.

Giant-Carlisle officially closed its acquisition of 15 Genuardi's stores, a subsidiary of Safeway. The deal was previously announced in January and was approved by the Federal Trade Commission last month.

As previously reported, during the conversion process, five stores at a time will temporarily close for about a week. The three-phase staggered approach is expected to be completed on July 22.

CARLISLE, Pa. — The Federal Trade Commission has approved Giant Food Stores' proposal to acquire 15 Genuardi's stores from Safeway.

The announcement follows Giant's Jan. 5 announcement that it would acquire the Genuardi's stores, all of which are located in the greater Philadelphia market. Giant also noted that under the terms of a consent order approved by the FTC, the Genuardi's located in Newtown, Pa., will be purchased by Newtown Market and will be operated as a McCaffrey's supermarket.

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway on Wednesday announced that it has transitioned to using reusable product containers, rather than corrugated boxes, to ship many types of produce from the farm fields, through the distribution channel and to the final store destination.

This transition eliminated the use of more than 17 million pounds of corrugated boxes, the grocer reported.

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway is gearing up to launch five filtered coffee pods that can be used in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters' Keurig brewing system, according to published reports.

Reuters said Tuesday that a Safeway spokesman confirmed that the new private-label cups will differ from the retailer's current offering, which were launched earlier this year.