In November 2016, Morrisons revived the Safeway brand for a range of products, manufactured in the company's own factories, for distribution through UK independent retailers.

Pre tax profits fell by 13% during the year ended 30 April 1994, prompting a wide-ranging strategic review known as "Safeway 2000", led by the then chief executive, Colin Smith, with assistance from McKinsey Consulting.

[6] This involved the sale of the Lo-Cost chain to Co-operative Retail Services and the redesign of Safeway shops to appeal to the family shopper.

[11] The outcome, if the negotiations had been successful, would probably have been the disappearance of the Safeway name and the emergence of a stronger Asda, still focussing on discount prices, but with a bigger volume to support it.

[12] As this was initially only introduced into selected shops on a trial basis, Tesco is able to claim the title for the first nationwide introduction of a loyalty card, with Clubcard.

Safeway, in 1999, started a rail container flow carrying goods to its far north shops, some as far as Inverness, Nairn, Elgin and Buckie.

In July 1999, Safeway announced the appointment of a new chief executive, Carlos Criado-Perez, who had held senior posts in Wal-Mart's international division.

According to estimates made by the Competition Commission, Tesco was able to negotiate significantly lower prices from its suppliers than Safeway – averaging about 3% on big selling branded items.

[18] It was growing more slowly than other large chains in the United Kingdom and this was reflected in a share price below the values of the group's assets, leading to the various takeover rumours that circulated during 2002, indicating the City was unconvinced with the Criado-Perez strategy.

Sainsbury's, Asda, KKR (the company which helped finance the sale of Safeway to Argyll in 1987), Trackdean Investments Limited (controlled by Philip Green, owner of BHS and Arcadia) and Tesco all said they were considering making offers.

However, a takeover by Morrisons was held to be acceptable on the condition that 53 shops of the combined operation be sold, due to local competition issues.

[20] Philip Green announced on 30 October that he was not proceeding with a takeover bid, on the basis that it was not clear whether approval could be obtained to sell off individual shops to other chains.

[21] On 11 February 2004, shareholders of both Wm Morrison and Safeway voted to approve the merger of the two companies, subject to the result of two High Court rulings later in the month.

Further to this policy decision, it was announced in October 2004 that the 114 smaller shops of Safeway Compact were to be sold off to rival supermarket chain Somerfield, in a two part deal worth £260.2 million in total.

[26] Morrisons continued to sell and close shops not covered by the Competition Commission ruling, which it felt did not fit with the scale and layout of its format of Market Street.

Following the termination of the BP/Safeway deal, BP began to roll out Marks and Spencer food forecourt shops in their place from 2005, with the network expanding over subsequent years.

[39] This was followed by McColl's signing an agreement to stock Safeway-branded products in its nationwide chain of small-format convenience stores in August 2017.