Safeway will close its lone grocery store in Newport, Oregon, on July 25, eliminating 69 jobs and forcing residents of the coastal city to drive nearly 27 miles to the next-nearest location. The pharmacy inside the store shuts even sooner, June 2, giving customers and staff barely a week's notice before prescriptions must be transferred elsewhere.
A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed May 26 with Oregon's labor authority laid out the damage in plain numbers: 38 all-purpose clerks, six courtesy clerks, four persons in charge, two pharmacy technicians, two meat cutters, and one pharmacist will all lose their positions when Store #0378 goes dark.
The closure fits a pattern that has become painfully familiar in communities across the country. Major grocery chains keep pulling out of locations where the economics no longer pencil out, and the people left behind, workers, elderly shoppers, families without reliable transportation, absorb the cost.
The federal WARN Act requires employers to give 60 days' advance written notice before mass layoffs. Safeway's May 26 filing with Oregon's Higher Education Coordinating Commission met that threshold for the July 25 store closure, though the pharmacy's June 2 shutdown date sits just days after the notice was filed.
The notice offered a thin reassurance, as The U.S. Sun reported:
"While opportunities for continued employment at other company locations are available, a small number of associates may experience separation from the company."
That language deserves a closer look. Local news outlet KOIN reported that no other Safeway stores operate in Newport. The nearest alternatives sit in Lincoln City, 26.6 miles away, and Corvallis, 47.3 miles out. For a clerk or meat cutter earning hourly wages, a 50-mile daily commute is not a transfer, it is a polite layoff.
Safeway spokesperson Jill McGinnis offered an email statement to OregonLive that stayed carefully within corporate-communications territory:
"Our team is working with the affected employees and the labor unions, where applicable, to attempt to find them work that is both consistent with the law and/or labor agreement."
Note the qualifiers: "attempt," "where applicable," "consistent with." None of those words promise a single worker will keep a paycheck.
The property will not sit empty for long. Darren Dickerhoof of Dickerhoof Properties, which owns the site, confirmed that employee-owned supermarket chain WinCo Foods has signed a lease on the 32,000-square-foot space. Safeway's lease ends in August, and WinCo plans to move in on September 1.
WinCo intends to open a Waremart grocery store after a renovation estimated at $6 million, covering both interior and exterior work. But neither the property owner nor WinCo has announced an actual opening date. September 1 is a move-in date, not a ribbon-cutting.
That gap matters. Newport residents could face weeks or months without a full-service grocery store in town. For a community on the Oregon coast, where winter weather and winding two-lane highways already make travel difficult, even a short gap creates real hardship, especially for seniors and lower-income families who depend on nearby options.
The pattern mirrors what happened when Save A Lot closed its Hopewell, Virginia, store after 27 years, leaving residents in a similar bind.
Newport's Safeway closure is not an isolated event. It is one data point in a nationwide contraction that keeps hitting working-class and small-city neighborhoods hardest.
Safeway's parent company, Albertsons, has been shedding locations at a steady clip. The chain recently announced plans to close its Hechinger Mall Safeway after nearly four decades of serving that neighborhood. The company's problems extend well beyond the Safeway banner.
Albertsons has also shuttered stores in Texas and California in recent months, cutting workers loose in communities that had relied on those locations for years. In one case, two Texas Albertsons stores closed as the company shed workers following its failed merger with Kroger.
The Sun noted that steep competition from growing national chains has pressured legacy grocers across the industry. Aldi confirmed the closure of a competing location on May 31. Lidl, another discount chain, announced a major leadership change this month. The grocery landscape is shifting fast, and the incumbents are not winning.
A similar story played out when Albertsons closed an Escondido Vons store and laid off 65 workers, almost the same headcount as Newport.
Safeway has not publicly stated why it chose to close this particular store. The WARN notice does not include a reason. McGinnis's statement addressed employee placement but said nothing about the business decision itself.
Several questions remain unanswered. How many of the 69 affected employees will actually land positions at other Safeway locations, given the distances involved? Will the pharmacy's abrupt June 2 closure leave patients scrambling to transfer prescriptions on short notice? And what happens to Newport shoppers during the dead zone between Safeway's departure and WinCo's eventual opening?
Some associates may continue working past July 25 to finalize operations, the WARN notice stated. But that is cleanup duty, not continued employment.
WinCo's planned $6 million remodel signals a serious commitment to the Newport market. The employee-owned chain operates on a low-cost, high-volume model that could serve the community well, if and when the doors open. But construction timelines slip. Permits take time. And Newport residents need groceries now, not after a renovation wraps up on someone else's schedule.
The property's quick turnaround from Safeway to WinCo at least suggests the location itself is viable. Dickerhoof Properties lined up a tenant before Safeway even vacated. That is a better outcome than many communities get when a major grocer leaves town.
But viability for a landlord and viability for a community are two different things. The landlord avoids a vacancy. The 69 workers still lose their jobs. And Newport still loses its only Safeway, and its only in-town pharmacy option tied to that store, before any replacement is ready.
Corporate grocery chains make closure decisions based on lease terms, profit margins, and competitive positioning. Those are rational business calculations. But the consequences fall on people who had no seat at the table: the clerk who now faces a 50-mile round trip or unemployment, the retiree who relied on a pharmacy two miles from home, the family that will spend more on gas just to buy groceries.
Safeway's carefully worded statements promise effort, not results. The WARN notice checks a legal box. The corporate spokesperson pledges to "attempt" to help. And 69 workers in a small Oregon coastal town wait to find out whether "opportunities for continued employment" means anything more than a line in a filing.
When the big chains leave, the fine print is always polished. The people left behind rarely are.