Safeway-Meat Department-1961
Posted: 03 Oct 2015 23:49
On March 10, 1961, a Marina-style Safeway store opened in Livermore, Calif. The March 10, 1961 edition of the "Livermore News" reported, "The Meat Department, which will feature only USDA Choice Grade Beef, which has been aged for maximum flavor and tenderness in Safeway's Meat Aging Rooms, has been set up for both service and self-service operation."
This one sentence offers a quaint view into bygone supermarket practices. Today Safeway store Meat Departments apparently are 99% self-service (with the exception of counters at some stores that package premium ground beef and sausage links for customers). "Meat Aging Rooms"? I wonder if those rooms were in individual stores or at some distribution center. A retired longtime Safeway meat department manager tells me that back in the '60s and '70s, they employed "butchers." Today's meat department employees are "meat cutters." Whereas they used to butcher whole sides of beef at stores, today they do minimal cutting and mostly packaging at stores.
This one sentence offers a quaint view into bygone supermarket practices. Today Safeway store Meat Departments apparently are 99% self-service (with the exception of counters at some stores that package premium ground beef and sausage links for customers). "Meat Aging Rooms"? I wonder if those rooms were in individual stores or at some distribution center. A retired longtime Safeway meat department manager tells me that back in the '60s and '70s, they employed "butchers." Today's meat department employees are "meat cutters." Whereas they used to butcher whole sides of beef at stores, today they do minimal cutting and mostly packaging at stores.