Stepping out from the clothing department, we're greeted by... a big blank white wall. Sure, there's the nice Murray's 2.0 decor and a Wine & Beer sign that looks like it would fit in more with Urban Mix (which uses that blue/woodgrain paneling design for the liquor section), but the blank white walls of meat and dairy are really right there in your face. Recent Kroger decors (Urban Mix and Banner, particularly, but even the cheap decor packages like Neighborhood and Colorful Value) did a very good job of avoiding blank wall space, and particularly blank
white wall space (which looks significantly worse than blank colorful wall space, in my opinion). Artisan just doesn't do that. And it's particularly bad in Fred Meyers, which dedicate a huge portion of the back wall to the meat and dairy departments, the worst offenders for this treatment. It appears that some Kroger divisions have recognized the problem and resorted to
rather tacky treatments to try to mitigate it; Fred Meyer either doesn't think it's an issue or hasn't found a solution they like, for better or for worse.
Even the local flair that I suppose you're talking about on the Mid-South Blog is monochrome and kind of boring looking! Oh well, at least we have Food 4 Less decor Krogers here in Houston to keep things interesting! It's too bad Kroger couldn't make a Fred Meyer like this! Even for us, the Food 4 Less package isn't the most common one here even if it isn't unusual either.
ReplyDeletehttps://goo.gl/maps/s7YLZAtgW4QQms8G8
I've never seen it in person, but from pictures, I love the Colorful Value (Food 4 Less) decor! I really don't understand why they kept it for their lower-end stores -- to me, it looks less cheap than some mainstream Kroger packages (Remix, obviously, but also Neighborhood, which (at least in QFC's implementation) looks super low-end in my opinion).
DeleteWhile the use of the Colorful Value decor seems to be designated for lower-end Food 4 Less stores in California, it's really harder to say how Kroger uses it here in Texas. It has been deployed in older Greenhouse stores here in areas that can be described as not being prime areas, but it's also been deployed in stores designed as Kroger Signature stores (like the one I linked above), including a recently-built store near Deerbrook Mall in the Houston suburb of Humble (Deerbrook is a pretty successful 2-story mall with anchors like Macy's, B&N, and Dillard's so it's not a low-end area for retail), and Signature stores are what Dallas/Houston market Kroger considers their nicest stores. That said, in the last couple of years, it seems that Kroger in Houston at least is moving away from designating stores as being Signature stores as they've done for the last 25 years.
DeleteMy best guess is that at least as far as Houston goes, the Food 4 Less decor is being used in stores deemed as having a 'diverse' demographic of shoppers in terms of ethnicity. However, many parts of Houston are demographically diverse so that doesn't explain why many Krogers in diverse areas don't get the Food 4 Less package. Of course, it should also be said that Kroger here doesn't seem to remodel stores as frequently as they do in your part of the world and in Retail Retell's part of the world. The great majority of our stores have the 2012 decor and I wouldn't be surprised if no stores here have decor newer than Fresh & Local and Marketplace. Perhaps the sheer number of stores Kroger has here, which is over 100 just for the Houston Division, makes it more difficult for Kroger to justify remodels here.
Huh, interesting! I didn't have the background so I just assumed it was about the same as other areas.
DeleteAnd even though there aren't a ton of Krogers around here, remodels are still super slow compared to the Delta Division and some other areas. The most common decor package for QFC might still be Fresh Fare, even (though it's possible that there have been enough recent Urban Mix remodels to give 2012/Bountiful the edge). Over at Fred Meyer, the story's a little different, with most of their stores having Banner, but there are still quite a few Northwest stores (another mid-2000s decor package), and I suspect recent remodels have been more motivated by the desire to shift the product selection a bit more towards Kroger's standard product mix than by an actual interest in updating the stores.
Yeah, I'm really amazed at how quickly stores are remodeled in Retail Retell's part of the world. Perhaps the situation here in Houston is more like what you have in the NW. Very few stores here have been remodeled since the big 2012 rollout several years ago now except for some which were flood damaged during Hurricane Harvey and a handful of other stores mostly in the industrial east side of town that were hanging onto Script decor before getting renovations into F&L or Marketplace decor. The 59 & Buffalo Speedway store might be a rare exception. It got Marketplace decor, but that's really unusual for a Kroger like that in the populated part of the Houston market. Stores like that usually got the 2012 decor early on and have kept that. That's a wealthy area store and HEB recently opened a new store across the street so maybe Kroger felt compelled to give that store another refresh.
DeleteGiven the lack of competition in Retail Retell's part of the world, it's a bit surprising that Kroger is so aggressive in some of their remodels there. Maybe they are a test market to see what works well and what doesn't since it's not like customers will run to competitors if they get things wrong? I don't know. If Delta Division Krogers really think that Walgreens is their biggest competitor, lol, you'd think that Kroger there would keep Millennium era decor or something like that in all their older stores because there isn't any pressure to update things. That's clearly not the case though!
If you want to see what the Foods 4 Less decor looks like in a newer warehouse style store, here's that aforementioned Kroger near Deerbrook Mall in Humble.
https://goo.gl/maps/WW8Y4iNNNcrnWh167
Yeah, I really don't get it! Around here, it seems like all of the major chains (except Target) are really slow to remodel stores -- until the big Modern remodel wave of 2019-2020, most Safeways hadn't been touched since the big Lifestyle remodel wave of the mid-2000s, and it seems like Walmart is much slower to remodel stores around here than in other areas too (though I don't follow Walmart in the same way I do Safeway/QFC/Fred Meyer). And it seems like we have a pretty competitive market for grocery stores around here (though significantly less so than before the Albertsons/Safeway merger, of course).
DeleteAs far as I know, all Houston-area Randall's have Lifestyle decor, usually v2, except for the Midtown Randall's so Safeway is not very quick to update our stores, lol. That said, Safeway/Albertsons probably doesn't put much effort into the Houston Randall's stores since they are a pretty niche player here and maybe the Lifestyle v2 packages are a better fit for the wealthy areas that have Randall's stores than some of their newer packages. In Dallas, where Tom Thumb does better, they do have more stores with the Modern package, but even then most stores still have Lifestyle v2 as well.
DeleteI don't think Target has been as diligent about rolling out P17 and such to Houston stores as they are elsewhere, but I'm pretty out of touch about Target and Walmart as I don't shop at either all that often these days. The one Target I usually shop at during my rare trips in recent times did get the P17 package in 2018-2019. It doesn't look as bad as some other implementations of it that I've seen online.
Many Fiesta stores here still have neon decor from the 1980s as you've seen and Food Towns around here still have Food Lion and Albertsons Blue & Grey Market decor from stores they acquired. It's debatable whether HEB stores even have 'decor', lol. They aren't too keen on frequent updates. So, yeah, maybe Houston isn't a place to see the newest decor trends, lol. McDonald's acted quickly in renovating stores here about a decade ago if you want to count that!
I know so many of these Remix remodels are happening too soon, but besides that, I don't think the Delta Division remodels quite as often as y'all think they do! Most often it seems to occur in big waves... there was the big 2012/bountiful décor push, which seemed to occur mostly around 2012-2015 or 2016. That got a majority of stores, it seemed. Then there was a dearth until just recently. A couple remodels have taken place here and there in the interim, including Trinity Commons, Millington, etc., plus some long-overdue fresh and local remodels to script stores in the last year or two. But it's really only been with the introduction of Urban Mix (which has gone into five stores) and the rapid rollout of Remix that remodels have really ramped up again in the Memphis metro area. I can't really speak for Arkansas, and I'm not sure when all the Banner remodels took place in Mississippi. I feel like they might alternate between areas though -- e.g. when they're not focusing on Memphis, they're focusing on one of those other two areas.
DeleteRetail Retell: It's possible that prior to recent events, Delta Division Krogers might have been even slower to receive remodels than the Houston Krogers since you guys had some Bauhaus and neon into the 2010s (and fake neon may remain in Arkansas). In recent years, however, it seems like the Krogers in your area have been on a strange remodeling spree. I'm really not sure what the difference is that is leading to all the remodels in your area.
DeleteI suspect one thing which might limit remodels here in Houston is that if one store is remodeled here, there is almost a need to remodel all of them. Kroger stores here are close enough together that people shop multiple Krogers, but they may feel slighted if their local store gets passed over for updates when others don't. Of course, for me, I'd probably be upset if my store was updated and given some of these half-baked designs Kroger is rolling out recently! Also, I really don't know which Kroger is 'my' Kroger since we have so many of them within a 5 mile radius of me, lol!
I think the reason it feels like your region (and other Kroger divisions) are so fast with remodels is that they're remodeling out of packages that seem relatively recent (2012/Bountiful and Banner). I suspect that the majority of your 2012 stores will be remodeled before a single 2012 QFC is! The only store with a recent decor package to be remodeled recently was the Fresh Fare 2.0 one, which was a big surprise to me when they have so many Fresh Fare 1.0 stores left to remodel, some of which are very busy!
DeleteAnonymous: That's an interesting theory! Safeway seems to have done something similar around here, with the wave of Lifestyle remodels over just a few years in the 2000s and then the recent wave of Modern remodels that touched almost every store in just two years. Safeways around here probably don't have quite the same density as Krogers around you, but there's certainly still a lot of them.
Fair point about the newer décors being the ones to be remodeled, NWRetail -- and that works to Anonymous's point too, because we do still have the last neon store in the chain, and something like four out of the last five wannabe neon stores! So it's interesting that Kroger is choosing to remodel some, but not those ones. (Of course, it could also be that they're waiting to see whether or not they will close them in the future...)
DeleteAlso, I believe it was the Schnucks purchase in 2011 that began to drive all of the remodels. There was an article around that time describing "Kroger's new bag," or M.O. They were surprised a lot of shoppers expressed dislike at the Schnucks deal, and decided to ramp up store investments to make shopping more pleasant. It would seem that initiative has continued even one decade later!
Thanks for the link! Thankfully the local flair in the Oxford Kroger is much better than in that Madison store. In my descriptions for this week you'll be seeing my comparison of the blank wall space in Remix to the blank wall space in Artisan. I like how you wrote it here... at least blank colorful wall space typically looks better than blank white wall space. However... I'm almost thinking I like Artisan better (God forbid!). Not only do I not particularly care for the colors chosen for Remix, it also feels like the paint is overly shiny/glossy for some reason... which just doesn't look good, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteHa, you're welcome! I certainly like Artisan better myself, not because of this part of the store but because it at least has some redeeming qualities in other departments, unlike Remix. There are quite a few elements of Artisan I actually quite like -- it's just that the package as a whole has too many issues compared to other decor packages.
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