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Safeway in Shreveport

Posted: 09 Nov 2017 23:37
by wnetmacman
In my research, I've found that though Safeway had a long, storied history in Louisiana (from Minden east), they did not enter Shreveport until 1972. Even better, the first store didn't spend much time as a Safeway.

That first store, at Jewella and Greenwood Road, was in a perfect site, with Weingarten and an older Piggly Wiggly across the street.
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Now the funny part is that the first time I remember driving through town in the late 70's, this store was K&B Drugs. I never knew it any differently. That's because Safeway closed this store and the store adjacent the Grant's on Mansfield Road in 1976. A third store would stay open on Kings Highway until Safeway pulled out of town in 1987. It still operates as Brookshire's today.

The Jewella store converted to Rite Aid when that chain bought K&B in 1997; Rite Aid added the failed Save-A-Lot department to this store in 2015, only to have it close in 2016, most likely due to the fact that there is a Walgreens across the street. 4 other Shreveport Rite Aids were closed at the same time.

Also to note; Shreveport's stores were from the Dallas division, while ALL other Louisiana stores along I-20 were served from Little Rock.

Re: Safeway in Shreveport

Posted: 10 Nov 2017 18:49
by Ephrata1966
Here's a Safeway commercial from the early-mid 80's that I'm assuming was aired nationally (but perhaps not in Hawaii, for obvious reasons) but was uploaded to YouTube after being recorded onto a home VHS tape from a TV channel in Shreveport: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P6EVq6wdIbU

By the way, when did A&P leave Shreveport? There was an A&P Centennial in Shreveport which now is a Big Lots that I know opened no later than 2000 (but I'm thinking could have opened possibly as far back as the mid-late 80's). I would think this wasn't the only A&P in the area, but A&P has definitely operated only one store for many miles in certain places (usually this wasn't originally the plan, but I know a couple examples of A&P pulling out of a region but for some odd reason, leaving only one store in that region open for a very long time afterwards). And it was kind of strange that A&P continued to be the only major grocer in New Orleans many years after leaving the rest of the South, meaning that in the final years of the A&P New Orleans division, the next closest A&P-owned store was the one lone Super Fresh store in Washington DC.

Re: Safeway in Shreveport

Posted: 11 Nov 2017 00:23
by wnetmacman
Ephrata1966 wrote:Here's a Safeway commercial from the early-mid 80's that I'm assuming was aired nationally (but perhaps not in Hawaii, for obvious reasons) but was uploaded to YouTube after being recorded onto a home VHS tape from a TV channel in Shreveport: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P6EVq6wdIbU
I doubt it was truly national, because Safeway wasn't. It would have been shown in Shreveport for two reasons; Safeway had 3 stores in Shreveport by that timeframe, and because Shreveport served a significant portion of east Texas, which was Safeway-heavy.
Ephrata1966 wrote:By the way, when did A&P leave Shreveport? There was an A&P Centennial in Shreveport which now is a Big Lots that I know opened no later than 2000 (but I'm thinking could have opened possibly as far back as the mid-late 80's). I would think this wasn't the only A&P in the area, but A&P has definitely operated only one store for many miles in certain places (usually this wasn't originally the plan, but I know a couple examples of A&P pulling out of a region but for some odd reason, leaving only one store in that region open for a very long time afterwards). And it was kind of strange that A&P continued to be the only major grocer in New Orleans many years after leaving the rest of the South, meaning that in the final years of the A&P New Orleans division, the next closest A&P-owned store was the one lone Super Fresh store in Washington DC.
A&P closed the last of its Shreveport stores in May of 1975. An announcement was made in late March that the 11 stores in Shreveport-Bossier, plus around 80-85 others in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana would close within the next three months. Closing sales were announced a week out, and were done gradually instead of just holding Store Closing sales simultaneously. The Mansfield Road centennial store was one of the last to go. That store was filled by a local pharmacy/drug combo store until the late 80's, and has been Big Lots ever since. A&P would gradually leave the state over the next 35 years. Stores were open as close as Natchitoches until 1995, and Alexandria until just a year later. There was an obituary for the Natchitoches store when it closed about sisters still remaining in Alexandria, Hodge (just north of Jonesboro) and Winnfield that were still open at that time.

This announcement was what most A&P enthusiasts refer to as the beginning of the end, or a 40 year slow, painful death.
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