Dominick’s Stores Closing: Parent Safeway Announces It Will Be Moving Out Of Chicago

Safeway, the parent company of Dominick’s grocer, has announced that it will be moving out of the Chicago area, meaning that Dominick’s stores may be closing soon.

According to the Huffington Post, after Safeway announced that it plans to exit the Chicago market entirely by early 2014 due to declining profits, the fate of the 72 stores the company operates in the city remains unclear.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Safeway is trying to sell as many of the stores as quickly as it can, “it’s likely to fetch multiple buyers as opposed to a single grocer that would take over every location.”

Safeway did tell ABC7 that a small group of Dominick’s stores have been sold and it is working to find buyers for the rest of the operation.

The report continued on to say that Safeway had sold four of its Dominick’s stores to New Albertsons, Inc., which operates Jewel-Osco grocery stores.

Safeway did say that those stores will continue to run under the Dominick’s banner until Jewel-Osco can complete their conversion to Jewel-Osco stores.

ABC7 Noted that Safeway said the following in a statement:

“Dominick’s will be working with Jewel-Osco and the unions to ease the transition for store employees, and to facilitate continued employment for as many of them as possible.”

So how are shoppers and Dominick’s employees handling the news? Just check out what some of them had to say to ABC7:

“Take one day at a time and find another job if I can. I still got a family to support,” said Jorge Reyes, Dominick’s employee.

“That’s awful, people are going to lose their jobs. People are going to lose their jobs, they provide a great service and great goods and it’s gonna be awful,” said Patrice Ball-Reed, Dominick’s shopper.

How do you feel about the possibility of Dominick’s leaving the Chicago area? Safeway has noted that they are hoping to have the stores all sold by 2014, but that is still the deadline, whether they sell them or not.

[photo credit: swanksalot via photopin cc]