Safeway has been stocking shelves since 1915. That is older than sliced bread, older than the modern traffic light, and older than pretty much every snack sitting in your pantry right now. So it lands a little strange to hear that the 111-year-old grocery chain is shutting down stores across the country, with even more closings already scheduled for 2026. This is not a rumor or a rough patch. It is a slow, deliberate pullback, and if you shop at a Safeway, Vons, Tom Thumb, or Albertsons, there is a real chance your local store is on a list somewhere. Let’s get into what is actually happening and why.
A Chain Older Than Almost Everything In Your Kitchen
The story starts with a guy named M.B. Skaggs, who bought a tiny grocery store from his father in American Falls, Idaho. He ran it on thin margins, poured the profits back into new locations, and somehow built a 428-store chain across ten states. In 1926 he merged with the existing Safeway network and took the whole thing public on the New York Stock Exchange. According to the company’s early history, Safeway was the outfit that started pricing produce by the pound instead of guessing per item, put “sell by” dates on perishables, and built parking lots so shoppers could actually pull up and load their cars. Stuff we take for granted today.
At its peak, Safeway pulled in around $44 billion in revenue back in 2008. Then in January 2015, Albertsons (backed by Cerberus Capital Management) bought it for roughly $9.2 billion, ending Safeway’s 87-year run as an independent public company. The old SWY stock ticker disappeared. Safeway still exists, but now it is just one banner in a much bigger machine.
The $24.6 Billion Deal That Blew Up
Here is where things get interesting. In October 2022, Kroger agreed to buy Albertsons for $24.6 billion. On paper, it would have created a grocery empire big enough to go toe to toe with Walmart. The Federal Trade Commission was not having it. Regulators sued in 2024, arguing the merger would raise prices and kill competition, and federal and state judges agreed. By December 2024, the whole thing fell apart.
That collapse is the single biggest reason the closures are happening now. One report about the worker fallout put it plainly: the force behind the 2026 shutdowns is a deal that never happened. Without the extra size and money the merger would have brought, Albertsons stopped trying to grow and started trimming. It began closing the stores that make the least money and pouring resources into the ones that make the most.
Where The Stores Are Going Dark
Albertsons closed at least 30 stores in 2025, and the cutting kept rolling into 2026. More than half of the newer closures are packed into two states: California and Texas. But the map stretches wider than that, with locations also shutting in New Jersey, Connecticut, Nevada, and Washington, D.C. The company’s own closure list touches nearly every banner it owns, from Acme and Balducci’s to Randalls, Safeway, and Vons.
Some specifics from the 2026 round: Vons stores in Escondido and Redlands, California, went dark in April. A Safeway in the Alameda area closed back in February. In Seattle, the Safeway on Rainier Avenue South shut down, leaving that neighborhood without a full-service grocery store. Down in Texas, a Tom Thumb on East Lovers Lane in Dallas closed in April, and another Tom Thumb in Plano followed. The Georgetown Safeway on Wisconsin Avenue in D.C. closed way back in January after the company called it underperforming. If you live in the West or the Mid-Atlantic, keep an eye on your usual store.
The D.C. Store That Fed A Neighborhood For 40 Years
One closure stings more than the numbers suggest. The Safeway inside Hechinger Mall at 1601 Maryland Avenue NE in Washington, D.C. shut its doors for good on May 16. It was a big one, about 58,000 square feet, and it had served that community for nearly 40 years. The pharmacy inside had already stopped filling prescriptions on April 1, so regulars saw it coming.
Safeway’s explanation was about as corporate as it gets. The company said it is “constantly evaluating our store footprint” and that it was “coming to the end of our lease at this location.” Translation: the rent was up, the numbers did not work, and the money is going elsewhere. For the people who walked there for four decades, that is cold comfort, and local officials in more than one closing city have raised concerns about neighbors suddenly losing the closest place to buy groceries.
Hundreds Of Workers Are Getting Pink Slips
This is not only a store story. It is a jobs story. Along with the closures, Albertsons is laying off 295 corporate and divisional support staff. On the store side, the layoffs stack up fast. Those Vons closures in California wiped out about 135 jobs. An Albertsons near Riverside that closed March 19 cost 75 positions. The Alameda Safeway hit 76 employees. In North Texas, two Tarrant County locations went dark by late April, pink-slipping 138 workers according to WARN filings. The D.C. store took another 87 jobs with it.
The company says it is working to move as many store associates as possible into nearby locations. That is the best-case outcome, though “as many as possible” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. Advocates advise affected workers to read their union contracts and check their transfer rights right away, since those documents usually spell out exactly what a worker is owed and where they can land.
Why A 111-Year-Old Giant Is Shrinking
Money, basically. Albertsons is getting squeezed from every direction by Walmart, Costco, and the Texas favorite H-E-B. And the ugly truth is that it costs more to shop there. A Consumer Reports study found that Albertsons prices run about 24.8% higher than Walmart’s baseline. When your groceries cost a quarter more than the giant down the road, you cannot win the price fight. You have to find another reason for people to walk in.
So CEO Susan Morris is betting on technology instead. The company is leaning hard into automation, AI, and online sales, and it says it wants to squeeze out $1.5 billion in savings to reinvest. Its digital sales jumped 21% in the third quarter of 2025, which is the one number the company loves to shout about. Morris has described the closures as “smarter decisions.” And this is not happening in a vacuum. Store closures announced across all of retail in 2025 were up 67% compared to the year before, per CoreSight Research. Albertsons is riding a bigger wave.
What It Means If Your Store Is On The List
When a nearby grocery store closes, the pain is real even if you rarely think about it. It means longer drives, more gas, and fewer choices. It also means less competition, which rarely helps anyone’s grocery budget. If the only remaining option near you is a Walmart, you might not mind the lower prices, but plenty of shoppers relied on that Safeway or Vons being three minutes away.
Albertsons still runs a huge operation, with more than 2,200 stores across 35 states and D.C. under names like Safeway, Vons, Acme, Pavilions, Shaw’s, Jewel-Osco, and Tom Thumb. So this is not the end of the company. It is a company deciding it would rather be leaner and lean on apps than keep every aging lease alive. If you have a store you love, it is worth checking whether it is one of the confirmed closures before you show up with a cart and find the lights off.
A chain that survived two world wars, the Great Depression, and every fad diet since the 1930s is now getting outrun by cheaper rivals and a merger that never crossed the finish line. Safeway is not disappearing tomorrow. But the version of it that anchored American neighborhoods for a century is quietly getting smaller, one shuttered storefront at a time. Keep your receipts, know your alternatives, and do not be shocked if the store you have shopped at your whole life is next.
