Isn't Morrisons a pile of crap

[DJF]

One of my local Safeway stores was the first to be rebranded as Safeway Megastore, with a £7 million conversion. It's a huge store for the area and sells a hell of a lot of stuff. It also has a big restaurant area with various 'Food to Go' outlets.




It's also seen as quite upmarket compared to some of the other stores in the area.



People down here too, are worried about what will happen once they get the big yellow and brown sign on the front

.

Same up here in Nottingham, supposedly it's the biggest Safeway in the country - I just can't see it as a crappy Morrisons!

[Martin]

Do any Asda branches still have the Milk button? Gateshead's has been missing for a while.

Ours got rid of it after the last revamp when they added an extra shelf to the top of everywhere :roll:

[A.J.A.]

My local Safeway is apparently becoming a Compact store, though Morrisons products are appearing on the shelves. I wonder why they are maintaining a Safeway brand - my local one is reasonably small, in a market town... maybe they plan to sell these off at a later date?

[nwtv2003]

I work for Morrisons and I don't believe it is crap.

Well that's only because you're all ex-Safeway, which is quite difficult to revamp into a Morrisons, yes it is more down market but it still provides a good service.

I can just see now that Morrisons won't be popular in the South.

Is this the Warrington one, with the weird spinning things in the carpark?

Yes it certainately is, the spinning things you call are the trolley parks.

I wouldn't call Morrisons that bad, anyone who works for any big supermarket will know all of the Health, Safety and Hygiene preperation that goes into the store, and believe me if it isn't done the managers can be bastards.

To make it in the south, morrisons need an in-store activity, like asda's egg button. Get people involved.

They are very funny and a great way to wind up customers, especially those who take about 12 kids and lets them run all over the place, you have the loud hen and the cows, AFAIK all 3 Asda's in W'ton still have them activated!

[cwathen]

I too, am getting pretty much fed up with the 'enjoy the change' advertising campaign. And describing Safeway as being 'part of the Morrisons family', and though trying to imply some sort of cosy nurtured relationship between the two, is stretching cheesyness too far.

One of my local Safeway stores was the first to be rebranded as Safeway Megastore, with a £7 million conversion. It's a huge store for the area and sells a hell of a lot of stuff. It also has a big restaurant area with various 'Food to Go' outlets.

I presume you mean Safeway at Plymstock? Have to agree, an excellent store. I've done all my main shopping there for the past 2 years. Sad to see that the Shop&Go system has now been withdrawn since Morrisons took over. I realise it was a flawed system but I did make use of it and when it worked in your favour it was brilliant - especially since the said Safeways is the epitome of a 'design it to have 30 checkouts but only ever staff 10 of them no matter how busy the store is' policy.

It's also seen as quite upmarket compared to some of the other stores in the area.

Hmm...well in the town there's Armada Centre Sainsbury's which is rather grotty and dingy, and Tesco Metro which is permanently busy.

Outside of it, there's the Tescos that time forgot at Lee Mill (still with it's late 1970's brown and red colour scheme) - admittedly though that store's days are numbered as the brand new store is being constructed across the car park, the newer Tescos at Woolwell which is badly designed, and the Asda store from hell at Leigham, with isles only about 3 feet wide. The only thing which compares to the Safeways is 'big Sainsburys' at marsh mills (with the petrol station which is permanently queued up off the forecourt because they were the last petrol station in Plymouth to sell fuel below 80p).

Outisde of the big national chains, there are such joyful choices as the Plymco supermarket in St. Budeaux - again hardly comparable wiyh Safeways.

Incidentally, why did Safeway suddenly become a takeover target? Asda being snapped up by Walmart was no surprise, but after that I thought that all of the major UK supermarket chains were in good health, and if there was one ripe for the picking I thought it would be Sainsbury's. Maybe I'm missing something, but the possibility of Safeway falling victim to takeover - especially from a chain like Morrisons who are after all a smaller brand with less stores than Safeway - is not something I thought likely.

[Ed Hammond]

Well, all I can say is that since Morrison's took over there's never any chicken in my local Safeway - none at all. Today I had to go to Waitrose, for goodness sake. I was livid, believe you me. They didn't have any red peppers either.

I don't know whether it'll be a good thing. Do you think that "Enjoy the change" might also be a good slogan for encouraging menopausal women to take HRT?

[nwtv2003]

It looks like all of you who shop at Safeway seem to be getting a hard time at Morrisons, up here in the North it has a pretty good reputation, I myself (I'm not being biased) think that it is a good place to shop at, plus the W'ton store is apparently one of the busiest in the country. (for now anyway) Though I can believe this take over is going tits up slightly, the problem is that they're doing it too quickly, as the amount of Safeway stores outnumbers the amount of Morrisons stores by at least four times!, they should do it slowly so they can get it done right, not rebrand at least 300 stores at once. Though for you Southerners, get used to it, it really should be providing a better service than the ones being mentioned.

Though I've never been able to experience Safeway as there has never been one at all in Warrington, I am not kidding, it was only last year we got our first Tesco, where as Morrisons has been round our area since 1994.

Plus I've never seen the big deal with Waitrose, I went in the one at Windsor last year and I thought it was like a Sainsburys from the 1980's and honestly was nothing special.

[James Martin]

The Tesco's in Rugby was appaling until the late 90s - *very* 70s that was! Can't say I've tried the "new-look" Safeway but Morrisons does look a little bit 80s doesn't it?

[Cheese Head]

We rarely shop at Morrisons, So I dont really care. Thats mainly because our closest store is in Coalville. We never shop at Safeway either, so I still don't really care.

For us it's asda, or Tesco online, hell, even Iceland sometimes.

Some people here livein Nottingham, so they might have seen the Tesco being built right NEXT DOOR to Asda in Long eaton.

I like Morrisons' tacky signs and uniforms. The logo could do with an update, but the whole ancient style is great.

[Andrew Muir]

Thought you might like this:

[Cheese Head]

Whats that? Morrisons in 1984