I've always liked the standard PF&Hv1 welcome sign, though I think we've already established that I'm just a sucker for nice shades of blue in store decor! 😉 The big local flair photo in the background is also a nice touch, though I'm obviously not familiar enough with this area to know what it's showing. Also, I have to assume the vertical wood paneling (under the darker paneling that's standard for PF&H) is a remnant, though I have no idea what decor it would have been a remnant from.
I'm putting this here because it's not letting me reply to the 'Colors' post, but this is a continuation of that discussion.
ReplyDeleteOn the topic of Haggen and also on the topic of Fred Meyer cartoon decor stores, are you familiar with Storewanderer's retail blog? I reckon this is the same Storewanderer who posts over at Retail Watchers. Anyway, he did a post many years ago with photos from various NW Haggen and Top Food stores. I love that neon at the Top Food Stores! Does any of that remain today? Link: http://storewanderer.blogspot.com/2014/12/haggen-store-photos.html
Here's his post of cartoon decor at the Newport, OR Fred Meyer: http://storewanderer.blogspot.com/2013/02/fred-meyer-newport-or.html
Here's some interesting photos of Denver Safeways...most with pre-Lifestyle decor. What's the story of the decor at the first store in the blog post? It almost looks like some kind of proto-Lifestyle decor. I'm not sure if any of our Randall's had that decor. It's certainly possible that some did have that, but maybe none of the Randall's I shopped at got that. I don't know if the NW had/has any Safeway Value stores, but we did have similar types of Safeway stores during Safeway's first run in Houston. Obviously, those stores didn't have Value-ized Lifestyle decor as this was way before Lifestyle. Link: http://storewanderer.blogspot.com/2015/05/safeway-denver-9-closures.html
I'm curious as to what you make of these two very vintage Colorado Safeways. The first is in Burlington, CO and looks like a little store that maybe hasn't seen an update since the early 1980s! There are some photos inside of what might be other Safeway locations, I can't quite tell, but the other photos all look incredibly vintage: https://goo.gl/maps/KxfYAgLgMWHHj6xK7
DeleteThe other Safeway is this one in Loveland, CO, which looks stuck in the early 1990s: https://goo.gl/maps/aaweyPxkxrbPWyL37
Sorry for the flood of replies, but here's one more. Do you know what the story is with the decor at this Nebraska Safeway? It looks like it has some kind of Lifestyle v3/Colorful Lifestyle v2 colorset, but with decor I've never seen before at a Safeway or Albertsons. The wording is more Safeway, but the aisle markers look a bit like something Albertsons would use. Is this some kind of experimental decor? Link: https://goo.gl/maps/bpXLvBtTrbC4MFVy7
DeleteYep, I am familiar with Storewanderer (both on the blog and on their Flickr account). I wish they were still active, since they're about the only other Northwesterner I've come across doing retail stuff!
DeleteTop Foods is interesting, being another failed Haggen venture. Only a few of their stores remain today, with Haggen branding (that Olympia store is one of them), and I don't believe any of the neon is left.
I actually visited that Newport Fred Meyer on my Oregon Coast trip, but didn't get any pictures since it's a boring Northwest-decor store these days.
Clearly you and I have similar views on that Safeway decor, since Proto-Lifestyle is my personal name for it! It first showed up at the very end of the 90s, and was briefly quite common around here before being wiped out by Lifestyle v1/v2. It's still one of my favorite Safeway decor packages! I believe I've only posted one store with it so far, but I have others in my backlog.
I'm pretty sure Safeway never had any "Value" stores around here. They're already a reasonably-priced option on most products, so I doubt there's much room for them to have lower-priced stores!
I did come across one Colorado Safeway with an 80s decor a while back, but it was a different one! I wonder how many surprises there still are down in Colorado... The second store has Safeway's early/mid-90s decor that I've been calling "Pastel Arches", which is pretty rare these days but nowhere near as rare as 80s decor (I've visited 3 stores with Pastel Arches personally).
That Nebraska store: Huh. No clue. The aisle markers seem to be modified from Proto-Lifestyle, and the yellow makes me think it might be related to those "Value" stores, but I've never seen anything like that wall decor!
I suppose calling it Proto-Lifestyle wouldn't have made sense when that decor first came out, but it's a good name for it now! I really do like how that decor looks and given that Safeway stores were still brightly lit before some of the Lifestyle-era renovations, I can see why some people are not fans of Lifestyle v1 and v2. Lifestyle is a bit of a functional downgrade compared to Proto-Lifestyle.
DeleteNow that I think about it, I'm sure some Houston Randall's, probably the ones that opened in the very early 2000s and maybe even the Albertsons that were converted to Randall's, opened with decor similar to proto-Lifestyle. Those typically weren't the Randall's that I shopped at back then though so I just don't remember. It's possible I saw this decor at the now-closed Barker-Cypress & 290 Randall's that did eventually get Lifestyle (v2 if I remember correctly).
It's amazing that there is still a Safeway, and maybe some others, which still have decor that was seen here in Houston during Safeway's first attempt here! From what I gathered from poking around Colorado Safeways on Google Maps, there are still some Pastel Arches Safeways there (including one that has Lifestyle v3 aisle markers) and maybe a couple of Proto-Lifestyles. One appears to have just been converted to Modern. That location aside, Modern seems pretty rare in Colorado. In fact, even Lifestyle v3 and Colorful Lifestyle v2 seem rare. I suppose the Colorado Safeways are a bit slow to update their stores, but I wouldn't necessarily complain about that!
Ha, that's true about the name! I wonder what people would have called it if the current retail community was around back then.
DeleteI definitely agree that Lifestyle v1 is a downgrade from Proto-Lifestyle. And while I really like Lifestyle v2 these days, my earliest retail-related memory is being extremely disappointed when the secondary Port Angeles Safeway was remodeled from Proto-Lifestyle to Lifestyle v2.
Yeah, in the early 2000s, those stores probably would have gotten Proto-Lifestyle! Back then, Safeway was a lot more consistent about using the same decor package across their whole store fleet than they are these days.
Yep, those old Colorado Safeways are super cool! Maybe one day I'll be able to do a retail vacation down to that area.