Customers at the Mount Rushmore Road Safeway supermarket recently spotted a lot of people in the store with clipboards and other gear. They looked like they were from Safeway corporate headquarters - and they were.
The store will undergo a remodeling project beginning in mid-June, Safeway spokeswoman Kris Staaf confirmed. When it's done, probably in October, the store will become a lifestyle store, similar to the Mountain View Road Safeway, she said.
The lifestyle store is one of Safeway's answers to the increasing competition in the retail grocery business. Wal-Mart is jumping into the food business throughout the country, and upscale specialty stores such as Whole Foods are also gaining a share of the supermarket market.
The lifestyle concept emphasizes freshness, convenience and variety. In other words: everything that the big "super centers" are not known for. Lifestyle stores are designed to appeal to contemporary families. The Mount Rushmore Safeway will have an expanded natural-food section and more heat-and-serve home-meal replacement dishes.
It will also have an expanded produce department, a fresh meat counter and a large seafood counter with fresh fish packed in ice. In addition, Safeway is adding a fresh flowers kiosk and self-checkout lanes.
Staaf said a key element of the lifestyle format is the decor. It includes soft lighting that emphasizes the foods. "It's an inviting ambiance designed to make the shopping experience more comfortable," she said.
Shoppers at the Mount Rushmore Safeway were fairly noncommittal about the coming change. One of them, Beth Sand of Rapid City, said she does nearly all her shopping at the Mount Rushmore store. Once in awhile, she ventures to Wal-Mart.
Told about Safeway's plans for a lifestyle store, she said, "More variety wouldn't be bad, especially for seafood," she said. Recent events - Nash Finch bought the Albertsons store on Omaha Street, and Wal-Mart wants to build a south side Supercenter - will likely up the ante for grocers in Rapid City. But Staaf said those events have nothing to do with Safeway's decision to convert the Mount Rushmore Road store.
"Our plan is to touch all of our stores with the lifestyle model. We hope to do them all by 2010," she said. "This would have happened, regardless."
Safeway has about 1,700 supermarkets. In November, the 1,000th Safeway had been converted into a lifestyle store.
She said Safeway plans to do all of this without expanding the size of the store. Its last remodeling project, six years ago, added about 1,400 square feet to its size.
The Mount Rushmore Road Safeway opened its doors in 1976. It was remodeled in 1995 and 2002. The Mountain View Road store was converted into a lifestyle center in 2005.
What's in a "lifestyle" store?
Soft lighting
Wood floors in the produce section
An olive bar
Heat-and-serve quick meals
Fresh flowers stand
Bigger meat and seafood counter
