Safeway and a local radio station are giving away $1000 to 14 people. All you have to do is put a sticker in your car’s windshield; they’ll randomly pick out cars parked in the parking lots of Safeway stores to be the winners.

But wait! My local Safeway has no parking lot. A number of Safeways in DC have no parking lots. Those people are out of luck. Same if you walk to the store. I wonder what will happen if I put the sticker on my folding cart? What if someone puts the sticker on their bicycle and parks it at the store’s rack? Somehow I doubt anyone will win that way.

Safeway is a national chain, and has run this promotion elsewhere, like San Jose, California. As with the free gas promotion, commenters will surely point out that, as a private corporation, they’re entitled to give away items to whatever group of customers they want. Still, it would be really nice if their corporate marketing department recognized that their customers don’t all drive, and their stores aren’t all auto-oriented.

If the central office has these blinders when designing promotions, what other opportunities to improve the customer experience (and make more money) are they missing at urban stores?

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Tagged: parking, promotions, retail

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.