Now it's time to get back to the pictures! It's not like the store makes any more sense as you get further into it, so it's hard for me to pick out a weirdest part... but one of them is the location of the produce department, plopped into the middle of the store, next to the deli and meat department. It's pretty much universal for Safeway-built stores in the northwest to have the produce department up against a wall, so having it just float here feels super weird whenever I shop here.
It's kind of unusual for any supermarket not to have the produce department against the wall. Kroger Marketplaces might be an example of an oddball where the produce is kind of floating, but even then it's not too far from a couple of walls. So, yeah, this is a bit strange.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's a bit strange seeing someone wear a fanny pack in the year 2021! Maybe that's not that rare in Seattle though!
I notice bananas are 69 cents/pound here. Is that a bit more expensive than other Seattle Safeways we've seen or is that the normal price for bananas at Safeway?
Very true -- the main reason I mentioned Safeway specifically is that Fred Meyers almost always have a floating produce department. Plus, whenever I assume something about store layouts around here is standard elsewhere, I get comments saying that no, our stores are just weird!
DeleteHa, these are 2019 pictures, but I doubt that changes much! The Blue Bunny shirt makes me wonder if he's a vendor or something rather than just a shopper.
I know we've had this discussion about bananas before, and I think the price you were commenting on was 69 cents that time too! I think that's about normal for Safeways in Seattle. QFC/Fred Meyer is actually slightly cheaper this time, though.
Yeah, I really can't think of anyone else with a floating produce department around here other than Kroger Marketplace stores. Well, maybe Aldi, but their stores, and produce departments specifically, are so small that I'm not sure if they should count. The Auchan produce department was kind of floating, but even then it wasn't too far off from a wall. Pseudo3D has an Auchan store map on his blog if you want to see that: http://www.carbon-izer.com/features/auchan/auchan.html
DeleteYes, I know I've seen bananas for 59 cents/pound somewhere. I thought it was QFC and Safeway, but maybe it was just QFC/FM. I thought maybe this urban Safeway had different pricing than others, but maybe that is not the case.
Yeah, I figured the person with the fanny pack was a vendor. Still, it's not too often one sees/saw someone wearing a fanny pack in 2019 or in 2021, lol.
It's quite interesting how similar that Auchan layout looks to what I'm used to from Fred Meyer! Obviously, there are quite a few things there that Fred Meyer doesn't have, but still, the food side of the store looks incredibly similar, and the other side is a similar design to some of the Fred Meyers I've visited (but they're all over the place).
DeleteI wouldn't be surprised if you had seen that at a Safeway in my pictures -- perhaps they were even older pictures, or perhaps from a store out in the suburbs or further. I haven't done any real analysis, but I know there's at least some variability from place to place.