Peter Alden Magowan, former chairman and chief executive officer of supermarket giant Safeway, died Jan. 27 from complications of a liver transplant. He was 76. Mr. Magowan took the reins at Safeway in 1979, relinquishing them in 1993 to run the San Francisco Giants.

Mr. Magowan was born April 5, 1942, in Manhattan. He attended Stanford University, where he played varsity soccer and received a degree in American literature in 1964. He then earned a master’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University.

Mr. Magowan was the grandson of Charles Merrill, a founder of Merrill Lynch who helped create the Safeway chain in the 1920s. His father, Robert Magowan, ran the company from 1955 to 1970.

According to the Wall Street Journal, he considered a career in the U.S. Foreign Service, but summer jobs at the State Department persuaded him he wasn’t meant to be a bureaucrat. Instead, he joined Safeway and began climbing through the ranks. He told the Chronicle in 2003 that “Being a store manager was the toughest job I ever had.”

Mr. Magowan was a pioneer in the supermarket industry. The Wall Street Journal reported that, “He began experimenting with no-frills discount stores and larger supermarkets with a far broader range of products. Safeway converted some of its smaller stores into Liquor Barns. Though he was diplomatic with unions, he prodded them for concessions. When unions in Omaha, NE, wouldn’t play along, he closed 70 Safeway stores in that region.”

In 1992 Mr. Magowan assembled a group of investors to buy the San Francisco Giants for about $100 million, blocking the team's potential move to Florida.