Moving along the front end, the next space was Playland, Fred Meyer's kid's play area. Fred Meyer was closing these as they remodeled stores even prior to COVID, and I have to wonder if the ones that remain will ever reopen from their "temporary" closures. Having a place to leave your kid while you shopped for groceries always seemed like a weird idea to me, but perhaps that's just because I loved grocery stores as a kid (hmm, some things never change!).
Supervised children's play areas, often on the store mezzanine, were a common feature of 1990s Kroger Signature stores in Houston. I think they had a sponsorship agreement with Huggies diapers and they called these children's areas 'Huggiesland' or something like that. They even had little CRT monitors throughout the store showing video from the children's area so I suppose shoppers felt their kids were safe.
ReplyDeleteThese did fade away eventually, but at least prior to the pandemic, we did have one Kroger which still had the play center. Since I suppose the Huggies sponsorship went away, it was/is called Hugslie Land. Here's a photo of it: https://goo.gl/maps/gfDcf3nqJXSzSc4W6
Here's a general look at the store: https://goo.gl/maps/AndbXeybyFethZvG7
Hmm, interesting! I wonder how common these things were across different companies. The only store I can think of that still seems interested in the concept is Ikea, but even theirs are (unsurprisingly) closed due to COVID. I feel like the concept makes much more sense at a place like Ikea than it does at a grocery store!
DeleteEven back when Kroger was putting Huggiesland departments in most of their new stores, I don't really remember other grocers copying them. In fact, off the top of my head, I'm not aware of too many retailers which have or had child care.
DeleteFurniture stores are one type store where I can imagine having child care is a benefit. Furniture shopping can be very tiresome. The stores are often big and it can take a lot of time to find the right furniture matches. I'm not aware of Ikea having child care, but they might. The history of Ikea in Houston is very bizarre. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, we had a knockoff Ikea store from California called STØR which opened in Houston on a franchise basis. Since STØR was a clear knockoff of Ikea, they were sued by Ikea and eventually taken over by Ikea. Ikea took over the Houston STØR, but they kept it as a franchise store which was very unusual for Ikea. I'm not sure if the Houston Ikea is still franchised. Some years ago, they finally tore down the original STØR building and built a new Ikea from scratch over the same plot of land.
When I think of big furniture stores, the first thing that comes to mind is the Nebraska Furniture Mart in the Dallas area. The store is over 550,000 sq. ft. in space and is around 1,300,000 sq. ft. including the attached warehouse the store has for inventory. It's absolutely huge. I don't know if they have child care, but they probably do need it. In addition to furniture, they also sell housewares and electronics. Not just any electronics, but they also sell high-end audio stuff so it's a really neat store. I'd like to visit it sometime. For a size comparison, look at Google Maps and see how big the Nebraska Furniture Mart is compared to the Home Depot across the highway! This is really amazing: https://goo.gl/maps/8UTTLU9ouoxX5grE8
Back to Kroger for a second, retail blogger Pseudo3D has some info about 1990s Kroger Signature stores on his Carbon-izer website. Here's the link to it: http://www.carbon-izer.com/retail/kroger/signature.html
If you click on the link within that link that says "visually compelling," you'll see a store map which shows you where Huggiesland (actually, it seems it was Huggieland according to the map) was in a typical 1990s Kroger Signature store. It also shows you other neat aspects of the Kroger Neon decor. I recommend checking that out.
Oh my god that's a giant furniture store! I'd imagine it's rather overwhelming to shop at -- Ikea is already overwhelming enough, and the one here (which is already fairly large for Ikea) is about half that size!
DeleteThat is a cool store map! Unsurprisingly, the layout is completely different from Fred Meyer.