PLEASANTON, CA-Safeway Inc., posting higher sales and earnings for the third quarter in financial filings released Thursday, reported that it is on track with its Lifestyle store makeovers, a program designed to turn all of its new and existing locations into the Lifestyle format. “Our Lifestyle store rollout, along with innovation in both perishable and non-perishable offerings, continues to generate sales growth in our stores,” Safeway president, chairman and CEO Steve Burd commented in a conference call with financial analysts Thursday.

Burd told the conference call listeners that the Lifestyle store program is “right on track” with plans first envisioned for the program three years ago. The new store portion of the program “is modest at this point” in the year because it is “heavily back-end loaded,” Burd explained. “In the third quarter we completed only one new store, but more importantly we completed 76 remodels during the quarter,” Burd said.

With the six new stores that Safeway has opened this year to date, combined with the 158 remodeling jobs that it has completed, some 53% or 915 of the chain's stores now feature the Lifestyle format. By the end of the year, Safeway will have 1,026 of its stores in the Lifestyle format, or 59% of its store total. The company has spent $1.2 billion thus far this year on the new store and store remodeling efforts, along with other capital expenditures, and expects to spend $1.7 billion by year end.