In the late 1940s, a Safeway grocery store stood at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Washington Street amid a streetscape that otherwise offered a handful of electronics shops selling radios. The neighborhood was on the cusp of a technological shift: television was emerging and, in 1949, KPHO began operating as the city’s first television station. That early Safeway storefront, photographed beside a city bus, marks one of the earliest visual records of the chain’s presence in Phoenix and the modest beginnings of what would become a major grocery name across Arizona.
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Late-1940s street scene at Seventh Avenue and Washington Street with a Safeway storefront beside a city bus, showing the chain’s early presence in Phoenix as described in the article.
Photographs from later decades trace a pattern of steady growth and infrastructure investment. A 1976 image captures a Safeway on 24th Street in Phoenix, while a 1978 photograph documents the chain’s state warehouse on Fourth Avenue. Those facilities reflect the logistical backbone required to support an expanding retail footprint. By 1991, Safeway outlets displayed merchandise such as canvas grocery totes for sale, a small detail that illustrates how stores curated both food and related goods for shoppers over time.
Across the 2010s, Safeway’s role in local communities broadened beyond food retail. In 2017, Banner Health launched its first retail-based clinics inside three Safeway locations in Tempe, Chandler and Tucson, embedding basic health services inside grocery stores. A photograph from Jan. 16, 2019, shows devices in a patient room at an Akos clinic in Tempe; those clinics were designed to enable patients to get medical advice primarily through AI technology. The presence of clinical spaces within grocery stores highlights a period when retail space increasingly served multifunctional community needs.
The chain’s operations and store environments also responded to episodic events and changing public expectations. In 2018, a sign in the Cottonwood Safeway commemorated the late Sen. John McCain one day after his death, a moment that connected a national figure to a local retail setting. More routine scenes — last-minute shoppers at a store flower desk in 2019, customers leaving with umbrellas on a rainy Christmas Eve in Chandler in 2021, and a shopper loading groceries into a vehicle during rain in Phoenix on Feb. 8, 2024 — document the everyday rhythms of store life.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought more visible operational changes. Photographs dated May 21, 2020, show social distancing messaging, floor markers for lines and plexiglass barriers separating employees and customers in a Tempe Safeway, and a masked customer waiting on a social distancing marker. These images record the chain’s adoption of safety measures that altered how customers shopped and interacted with staff during the height of the public-health emergency.
Construction and expansion remained a consistent theme in recent years. Multiple images and project updates show stores under construction or newly opened across the region. A Safeway in Queen Creek neared completion along Riggs and Gary roads on Nov. 13, 2025, and that location formally opened as the 76th metro Phoenix store on Jan. 9, 2026. Work was also underway in Buckeye’s Verrado Marketplace near Verrado Way and McDowell Road, and a new Safeway fuel station was under construction at The Trailhead shopping center in north Peoria as of Aug. 20, 2025. The Queen Creek opening and the other construction projects indicate ongoing geographic expansion, with new store formats and amenities being added to the chain’s portfolio.
A modern Safeway storefront in Arizona, its glass-and-steel facade and branded sign illustrating the chain’s current presence as a statewide grocery staple.
Over the decades, Safeway has been recognized among the top grocery retailers in the United States on multiple occasions. Locally, the company’s investments in warehouses, stores and additional services such as in-store clinics and fuel stations reflect a business model that has adapted to meet shifting consumer needs and operational challenges. Images from the last several years — depicting shoppers queuing at a flower desk, staff and customers navigating pandemic protocols, and scenes of new construction — together form a visual record of a retailer that has evolved in place while remaining a visible part of Arizona’s retail landscape.
As of early 2026, the chain’s footprint in metro Phoenix reached a new milestone with the opening of the Queen Creek location on Jan. 9, designated as the company’s 76th store in the metropolitan area. The sequence of photographs and dated captions presented over the years charts a trajectory from a single storefront at a city intersection to an enterprise operating dozens of outlets and supplementary services. Those images and project notes serve as an archive of how the chain’s presence, store design and service offerings have changed alongside the communities they serve.
Following the Queen Creek grand opening, Safeway donated $50,000 to Queen Creek Unified School District programs plus additional grants bringing the total over $100,000 to local schools and nonprofits, including $25,000 to the education foundation and $1,000 to each of 15 schools. Superintendent Perry Berry praised the company's rapid community engagement. (Queen Creek Independent)
Safeway is operated as a banner of Albertsons Companies; Albertsons reported in its 2026 annual filings that, as of Feb. 28, 2026, it ran 2,244 stores across 35 states under 22 banners and maintained nationwide networks including roughly 1,713 in‑store pharmacies, 405 fuel centers and a loyalty program with about 51.2 million members.
The new Queen Creek Safeway is listed at 18495 E. Queen Creek Road and the store’s local listing shows on‑site services including a pharmacy, an in‑store Starbucks, DriveUp & Go pickup and fuel services in addition to standard grocery departments.
The Queen Creek grand‑opening ceremony on Riggs Road included performances by local high‑school groups — Queen Creek and Crismon High School bands, cheer and football teams — and appearances by district leaders, underscoring the event’s community focus.