[Derek Sutton]

There's no way the union stays, Sobeys will do whatever it takes to eliminate the unionized employees. The contracted out there trucking several years ago the many unionized employees. Also UFCW would/ will be all over the current Sobeys employees, which could mean more trouble... What I see happening, is many, maybe all of the Safeway stores closing for a year (or whatever it take to eliminate the union employees) then re opening the stores as either A) a wholesale grocery store to compete directly with Superstore Costco etc... or B) a discount grocery store (no frills, etc.. competitor) or perhaps some store become A and some become B.

It will also be interesting to see what happens to Lucerne and all their associated products and any other businesses Safeway owned outside of the actual grocery stores.

As for preferring produce, deli, meat etc... from one over the other; the two stores have the same suppliers for the most part, and are selling the same things. As for the merchandising, it all depends on the management and employees as to what stays on the shelf, for how long, how often it gets replenished. That is where you'll see the difference and it will vary form store to store and manager to manager. Safeway typically has "Career Managers" as they pay better, whereas Sobeys managers are mostly just people who started out as courtesy clerks, a couple people quit and next thig you know they are running a department, until they find something better, usually a job at Safeway. This is why fresh goods generally seem better at Safeway.