One thing I find rather strange about this decor is its use of what I like to refer to as "medical teal" for the health and beauty department, a color that was once ubiquitous in medical facilities' branding but which they seem to have largely phased out by the time this decor was designed. There's certainly nothing wrong with the color -- in fact, I quite like it -- but it just seems like a strange choice for a decor package that's trying to be modern. The lighted shelves, on the other hand, do look super modern and just generally amazing -- I'm sure it would be crazy expensive, but I wish stores would roll out lighted shelving more broadly.
I'm not sure if I've ever seen those teal signs before at a Houston Randall's. The Randall's I usually go to has a pharmacy, but the health and beauty aisles are quite small since the store is on the smaller side having being built in around 1970 as a Handy Andy supermarket (a chain from San Antonio which had a short life here in Houston). Thus, I'm not sure if there is room for any sort of fancy signage there, but I'm not really sure. It's possible it's there and it just never registered with me.
ReplyDeleteI have seen the lighted over the counter pharmacy racks before. I'm pretty sure the aforementioned Randall's does not have them, but the former 290 & Barker Cypress Randall's that closed a couple of years ago was much bigger (I think it was built after Safeway purchased Randall's) and they certainly had them. They looked quite nice.
Yeah, Safeway was rather inconsistent with their use of these teal category markers. Most stores never got fancy health and beauty departments like you see here, but some got the lighted shelving and/or the teal signage anyways (for example, here's one that got the lighted shelving but still has the standard black/woodgrain category markers). I honestly don't have a very good sense for how prevalent these are, simply because health and beauty is a department I tend to ignore in most Safeways unless something special was done with it (like in this store).
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