This store has the unusual (for most stores, somewhat common for Fred Meyer) feature of a strip mall embedded in the front right side. At four spaces, this is about the normal size for a Fred Meyer strip mall -- though one of the spaces formerly held a Starbucks Coffee, which moved inside the main store after Tully's went out of business. The Ballard store had a similar arrangement, but there the Starbucks was the only exterior tenant. It feels a little weird that Fred Meyer would set up competition between two different coffee chains in the same building!
HEB is another chain that puts a little shopping center at the front exterior of their larger 'Market" stores. Here's a link to one below. The RediClinic on the far right side of this image below was Rite Aid's attempt at re-entering the Texas market, but they gave up on that concept in 2020 and closed all their locations. Most of them were located in these HEB 'shopping centers.'
ReplyDeleteThe picture of that Fred Meyer parking lot is really amazing. All those cars...and I don't spot a single Subaru! The NW seems to be losing their identity! Lol, more sadly, out of all those cars, only the blue truck in front of the cleaners seems to be a non-grayscale color! I suppose the Ford SUV in front of the Asian restaurant is also some kind of blue. Other than that, all the cars are white, black, or some kind of silver/gray! Yikes, no wonder industrial decor is becoming so popular!
Whoops, I forgot to put the HEB link: https://goo.gl/maps/bLrsSsiXFdE3brtH8
DeleteI like that HEB design, with the strip mall built in between the doors! Really makes it look more integrated than the Fred Meyer design.
DeleteHa, that's true! There is a Rav-4, though, which is the new super-popular car around here. And that lack of car color is something I've been noticing over the last 5-10 years -- just another way that my parents' cars stick out when they come to Seattle!
Now you've made me curious. What color car do your parents have? I wonder if it's a yellow Renault Le Car. Probably not, lol.
DeleteThe Toyota RAV-4 is popular just about everywhere it seems. Toyota has some ownership stake in Subaru so perhaps NWers feel some spiritual connection to the RAV-4 even if they choose it over a Subaru, lol. But, yeah, the lack of color options for cars is really disappointing these days. Things were totally different in the 1970s when you could buy cars in a variety of different colors...for both the exterior and interior.
Speaking of old times, I posted Part 2 of my guest blog post on the Houston Historic Retail blog. It's about the retail videos, of course. I put in a NW element to the post, but it wasn't an intentional nod to the NW Retail Blog, lol. I found a video about Jack in the Box being caught using horse meat in the early 1980s. I remember that incident and that very famous incident where 4 kids died and many others became ill after an E. coli outbreak at a Tacoma, WA Jack in the Box (and other NW Jack in the Boxes) in the early 1990s. I mentioned that Tacoma incident in the blog post and Mike found a video about that and included in the blog post. So, anyway, you've probably heard about that, but if not, maybe you should check out the blog post. There's more interesting stuff, IMO, than that though.
If you do check out the blog post, check out the spreadsheet of videos I made which is linked in that post. There's some really neat stuff there including some Kroger Superstore videos and such.
https://houstonhistoricretail.com/2021/04/14/taking-a-shopping-trip-to-stores-of-the-past/
Ha, just red and blue, nothing special -- or at least it was nothing special back in those days! In fact, just in Port Angeles, there were probably a dozen or two of the exact year/model/color of both of their cars back then (and there still are several others around).
DeleteHmm, I don't think I've heard of that exact Jack in the Box incident, but they certainly still have a terrible reputation! It's 30 years later, but I wouldn't be surprised if those things are part of the reason people tend to stay away from Jack in the Box. And I'll certainly have to check out those videos!
That Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in the NW was a very big deal in the whole US at the time. There was a lot of speculation at the time that maybe employees weren't washing their hands correctly and maybe that was causing the illnesses. That's when that slogan "employees must wash hands before returning to work" started showing up in restaurant restrooms. Some fast food places even started installing sinks right where customers could see them just to prove that employees were washing hands.
DeleteUltimately, the problem wasn't related to hand washing and the problem was identified as Jack in the Box not following Washington state laws regarding cooking temperature. There were also unsanitary conditions in the meat supply. Seeing how Jack in the Box was still suffering from a bad reputation from about a decade earlier when they were caught using horse meat, it's really a miracle that Jack in the Box even survived the Tacoma situation especially in the NW. Jack in the Box still has a pretty mediocre reputation even here in the US, but I suspect the legacy of them essentially killing children must really hurt their prospects in the NW.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the videos. If you have questions or comments about them, let me know in the comments over there and hopefully I can answer them. Some of the retailers featured in the post and on the spreadsheet may or may not be familiar to you.