Safeway, a California based grocery chain, brought with it Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, something new to Alberta, which is exemplified in this building. Safeway arrived in Ponoka immediately prior to the onset of the "Great Depression", in 1929, but managed, in the face of stiff competition from local business, to stay in business here through the depression and into the 1940s, at which time it closed its operation here. This building remained in the grocery business only until 1960. Since 1957 this had been the site of an IGA store, but when the IGA required larger premises, the building bade farewell to the grocery business forever.
Cash Foods
The heritage value of the Safeway Store/Cash Foods lies in its historical association with the international Safeway Company based in California and its bid to enter the Alberta market in the late 1920s, with the slogan "Distribution without Waste". Safeway opened in Ponoka in early 1930 with a vigorous advertising campaign in the Ponoka Herald as it worked hard to make inroads among the local shoppers emphasizing quality and convenience, low prices and excellent service, and immediately promising free delivery, alongside promotional feature sales that urged buying in bulk. Serve-yourself epitomized shopping the modern way, the urbane and independent way that encouraged women to discover bargains and gather suggestions for meals, helped along by Safeway's weekly recipe cards.
The Safeway Store/Cash Foods represents the intense competition that marked the grocery trade in Ponoka through the 1930s in a period of economic downturn. By the mid-1930s there were a large number of grocery stores in town, including long term businesses such as F. E. Algar's general store, Thompson's, and Brody's, as well as Scotts' and Lee's, along side the UFA Co-operative Store, and Jenkins Groceteria, a Calgary-based company that had grown out of the first cash and carry business established in Alberta during World War I. While the long term businesses retained loyal customers, particularly those who bought on credit, Safeway outlasted Jenkins Groceteria, which left Ponoka by 1936. The Safeway Company closed its operations in Ponoka by 1940, but the premises, bought by James Hamilton, continued to function as a groceteria under the name Cash Foods. In 1957, it became the first store to open under the auspices of the Independent Grocers Association, but in 1960 when IGA relocated to other premises, the Safeway Store/Cash Foods ended its association with the grocery trade.
The Safeway Store/Cash Foods is also significant because its distinctive store front conveys the chain store feeling and modernism inherent in Safeway's signature retail architecture. A low height brick masonry structure with a broad rectangular footprint, it embodies the design elements and materials that made Safeway easily recognizable, including a signature faux pan tile roof flanked by brick pilasters capped by cross-gable decorative finials, and large display windows. While its California roots are expressed in the Spanish style tile roof that serves as a parapet, the faux pan tiles are made from pressed metal, an adaptation to the Alberta climate.
From the Ponoka Heritage Inventory