Morrison was founded by William Morrison in 1899; initially, their business was egg and butter, based in Rawson Market, Bradford, England. In 1952, Sir Ken Morrison took over as chairman of the company. From a stall there came the inspiration to innovate the way in supermarket retailing. In 1900 the company was named Wm Morrison Limited. In 1958 they opened a small shop in the city centre, which was the first in Bradford to offer self-service and to have price labels on the product. This was followed by their opening a supermarket “Victoria” in Girlington in 1961.
By ongoing expansion became a public limited company. In 1978 the company acquired Whelan stores operating in Lancashire. The first Morrison distribution centre is established in Wakefield 41 and included chilled storage and ambient storage to produce and Tom Bread Warehouse. From 1998 onwards, it extended its operation nationwide. In 2000 Morrison received a knighthood in the 2000 New Year’s Honour List, for the services to food retailing.
Morrison became the fourth largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom by acquiring Safeway, in order to serve the additional fresh produce packhouse and distribution centre at Thrapston in Northamptonshire. In November 2005, Morrison’s completed the process of converting Safeway stores to Morrison Format. Morrison at present has 370 stores across the UK, welcoming 9 million shoppers each week. The company employees 114000 members of staff in-store, factories, distribution centre and head office administration.
History of Safeway Inc
Safeway is one of the largest food and drug retailers in the United States. The company has about a dozen major distribution centres and about 1368 stores in the United States and Canada. Safeway’s retail outlets are located in the Western United States, Alaska and Hawaii, the mid-Atlantic region and Canada. Safeway provides thousands of food and non-food items both national and private label brands. The company holds a 47% stake in Casa Ley, S.A.de Kohlberg in Western Mexico which operates 74 food and general merchandise stores in 1986 Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts Company acquired Safeway and made it private. The company went again public in 1990.
Safeway was started by S M Skaggs in the early days of the 20th century. He gave the company to his son M.B Skaggs because he was not able to make the company profitable. By 1926 the younger Skaggs expanded his father’s business into a chain of 428 grocery stores throughout California and the Pacific Northwest. He worked hard to ensure the quality of the meat and other perishables provided by the company. In 1926, Charles Merrill one of the founders of Merrill Lynch purchased Safeway stores along with a chain of 240 stores founded by Sam Seelig. Skaggs was made the president of Safeway’s operating subsidiaries in California and Nevada. He also got retaining over his stores.
Skaggs expanded his business into 2020 stores by 1928 and its stock was listed on the New York stock exchange. Because of this success, Merrill elevated Skaggs to the presidency of the entire company. The next year they established Canada Safeway limited in Winnipeg and also acquired a Canadian wholesaling business. In 1931 Safeway took over MacMarr stores founded by Lingan A Warren in the Pacific North West united. So Lingen Also formed a part of Safeway. That year Safeway reached an all-time high of 3257 stores. By 1955 Skaggs became chairman of the board. The innovative policies by Lingen and Skaggs together enabled Safeway to sustain itself in all difficult situations.
After World War – II Safeway experienced rapid growth. In 1955, Lingen Warren retired from his post as president, general manager and director of the company. After that Robert A Magovan, Charles Merrill’s son in law, become the director and chairman of the company and he took over Safeway completely in 1957. Under Magowan’s leadership, Safeway expanded at a faster rate and it had moved into Alaska and Iowa. In 1960 the company started operations in Louisiana. In 1962, the company bought a string of eleven stores in England and in 1964 it acquired several Big Bear Basar stores in West Germany and started the first international Supermarket in Washington D.C. In 1969 Robert Magovan resigned as CEO of the firm and in 1970 Quentin Reynolds became the CEO and William Mitchell became the president of Safeway.
In 1986 Safeway was acquired by Kohlberg, Kravis, Robert & company. In 1990 Safeway Stores became public again, and in the following years, many acquisitions and issues happened in Safeway and in March 2004 Morrison acquired Safeway.