Originally Posted by
diburning
It's an indication of them tightening their belts because people may place "pay at restaurant" orders and not pick them up, causing loss for the company and/or franchisees.
They could have been offline at the time. The system requests a signature for all card transactions (even PIN Debit; which I'm assuming will run as credit after they're back online since it does not give the option for cash back) if their communications are down.
I find Safeway needs signature over $25 again for some reason the past few months, but all such transactions I have had, have been NFC. I have observed people using Chip Cards also having to sign for transactions in the $30 range at self checkouts also (not sure about regular registers).