Anyway, today is my 4th "retailversary" (thanks to Retail Retell for that term!). I know I mentioned that a while back, but that was just to explain why I was launching the Whole Foods set! Now it's the actual day of. 🙂 In keeping with Retail Retell's traditional "flickrversary" message, I'd love to see any of you who are reading this and aren't currently into retail photography dive in and join me -- especially if anyone who's reading this is from somewhere in this area! (Though I don't think anyone is.) It's too bad that four years into this, I'm still pretty much the only person doing this up in this part of the world, and I know that I'm definitely not able to cover everything that's going on around here -- let alone post about it in a reasonable amount of time! But wherever you are, I'd always encourage you to try this out. It's a lot more fun than you may realize!
Happy retailversary! Here's perhaps a nice retailversary present for you, but I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen these images before. I was researching something about Houston Krogertsons for a reply to Mike's new post on HHR about Krogertsons when these images of a 1969 Seattle (or maybe Bellevue) Albertsons (at 8th & 102nd? I'm not sure) came up in my search results. I'm guessing these are actually from Bellevue, but it's tagged as Seattle. Anyway, enjoy if you have not seen these!
ReplyDeletehttps://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/27/77/5a277737e72c7c530d9e91034aae6650.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/20/d2/d7/20d2d73fa21d2e0911cd8500c453de61.jpg
As for partaking in retail photography, well, I don't know. Now that I've started doing some guest blogging, I suppose it's only a matter of time before I start taking some photos. We'll see, but I suppose even the guest blogging that I do is relatively new so at least there is that. Also, my first retail photo did go public recently with that Randall's bag photo, lol.
Hopefully someone in your area will start taking/posting retail photos though. There aren't too many places with two different flavors of Kroger and I suppose at least three different flavors of Albertsons with Albertsons, Safeway, and Haggen. That's just the supermarkets, I'm sure there are a lot of other interesting things.
Thanks! You know, I have seen those pictures, but somewhere you might not expect -- printed, in black and white, on the wall of the very vintage Magnolia Albertsons! I was able to track down the pictures with more information: Here they are (1, 2), along with some more pictures of that store (1, 2, 3). Yep, it was at 102nd NE and NE 8th in Bellevue; the store was replaced with a shopping center at some point, which has apparently also been torn down recently for some new development.
DeleteI made a discovery of my own today that I think you'd be interested in -- I'm working on filling out that Safeway list I mentioned a while back, and as it turns out, there are at least two Colorful Lifestyle v2 stores in Eastern Washington! Perhaps I need to go on a retail road trip out that way some time! There's also at least one more Colorful PF&Hv1 Albertsons that I didn't know about. That's why I wanted to make this list -- you never know what you're going to find out there!
Yeah, it's certainly an interesting area -- though there's probably only going to be two types of Safeway in the state soon enough, as they're converting Albertsons to Safeways rather quickly. I feel like a lot of the more interesting stuff has gone away over the years, but there's still tons of stuff I haven't gotten around to covering and possibly never will, sadly enough.
Interesting, looking at that list, I didn't even realize that there was a Grocery Palace Albertsons left in Washington! Hopefully that does not get converted into Safeway Modern or something. It should be left alone for as long as possible just for the sake of preservation! But, yeah, that's a good list. I didn't even know there was a Lifestyle v1.9 and v2.1, lol. That's good to hear that there are some Colorful Lifestyle v2 stores in your region. They've become quite popular here in Texas. I'm not complaining, I like it better than Modern, lol.
DeleteThat's a good list and it sounds like it's coming along well. It'll be nice to have these as a reference for Kroger and Safeway/Albertsons locations.
I'm not surprised to hear that you've seen those photos, but I am a little surprised to hear they were used as local flair somewhere! That's pretty neat though and it's pretty neat that the photos are officially archived somewhere. It sounds like that site has been cleared twice over so it's fair to say that Albertsons is sadly long gone. Oh well. It's kind of strange to see an Albertsons from before the 1970s since those are all we've seen in Texas and the 1970s+ ones are the ones we've seen at AFB's blog.
That Grocery Palace store was a big highlight of my 2019 Portland trip! I posted it a while back, but that must have been before you were reading this blog. I have no idea how that store is still open -- it's just half a mile from a Safeway, and between the two is a Fred Meyer and a Walmart Supercenter, and all in a town of only about 20,000! But hey, I'm not complaining, obviously.
DeleteLifestyle v1.9 and v2.1 are both small modifications on v2: 1.9 has aisle and category markers from v1, and v2.1 has aisle markers (but not category markers) from v3, plus the red wall from the deli is extended to the bakery and sometimes the liquor department (which is the only way to tell it apart from v2 refresh these days, though the real difference is that v2.1 came with v3 aisle markers from the start instead of having them added later).
Back in those days, Albertsons and Safeway were the two dominant grocery chains around here, as far as I can tell. And really, they still are today, except its a monopoly instead of a duopoly. That's why they were supposed to sell stores to Haggen as part of the antitrust requirements for the merger... but we all know how that ended up. ☹️ But of course, it's rare to see stores of that age even around here anymore, especially for Albertsons, which built a lot of replacement stores in the 90s (whereas Safeway still has a lot of older stores in small towns, along with quite a few older stores that were expanded rather than being replaced).
Yeah, I'm taking a look at Battle Ground, WA right now. The Safeway and Albertsons are very close together with the Fred Meyer splitting the two of them. The aerial image really shows the difference in size between the Fred Meyer and the other two. Interestingly, the Safeway has a Google user review of 4.1 and the Albertsons has a 4.2. Maybe the customers have a slight preference for the somewhat older decor Albertsons. I don't know. I would guess the pricing and merchandise is mostly the same. The Fred Meyer has a 4.3. They edge out the other two, but only marginally.
DeleteThe Goodwill next to the Albertsons is pretty amazing. I'm not sure if you had a chance to see that on your trip. It's nicer looking than a Houston Goodwill and it looks like they have more used electronics as well. In addition to that, it's weird but they have like an aisle of junk food leading up to the registers I suppose. It's kind of like a mini-Fry's Electronics in that manner! It's pretty neat. Link: https://goo.gl/maps/RFnpQKDnY2zLbMrUA
Here's the link to the junk food aisle: https://goo.gl/maps/r1w2Sy5rSYrdt9vB8
Interesting -- I'd say that Goodwill is maybe a little bit above average for Washington, but generally fairly standard. I didn't visit that store, but I do have pictures of at least one local Goodwill that's a bit more interesting, which I'll post one of these days (...years).
DeleteSpeaking of Albertsons and Goodwills, here's an Albertsons in Vancouver, WA next to a Goodwill. What's interesting to me is that the Albersons Express isn't really an Albertsons Express. It looks like the Albertsons Express was sold off to someone running it as a Mobil station. Has that been a common thing in the NW? https://goo.gl/maps/wNvg64jj2suArD9f8
DeleteVancouver is obviously bigger, but here again you'll see the Albertsons is right by a Fred Meyer and a Safeway. I suppose those three liked to cluster together in that part of WA at least! The Albertsons is not at all interesting other than to say it still has a Blue & Grey Market era floor. The layout of the store is very similar to a mid-1990s Albertsons like what we had in Houston.
Yeah -- in fact, all of the Albertsons gas stations were sold off shortly prior to the merger, going to USA Gas, then to Mobil, and now to Speedway (they're the only Speedway stations in the region, as far as I can tell). With the merger and conversions, that's led to the weird situation of a bunch of Safeways with non-Safeway gas stations out front, even though most pre-merger Safeways have their own gas station. Honestly, I thought Albertsons had sold off all of their gas stations chain-wide before the merger, but maybe not.
DeleteI'm not sure how common it was (especially with Fred Meyer), but there are (were) a good number of Safeways quite near Albertsons, for some reason. In almost every case, the Safeway was the winner, either in the merger or in the years leading up to it (during which Albertsons closed many of their stores). So it's quite rare these days to see a Safeway and an Albertsons near one another. I've actually been to both the Safeway and the Fred Meyer in that Vancouver grouping as a kid, but not the Albertsons. (We often stayed at a hotel near there on Portland trips, but we were always a Safeway family, so that's where we would go when we needed groceries on vacations.)
Huh, I had no idea Albertsons sold off their gas stations in your part of the world. Here in Texas, I guess Albertsons still has a few gas stations. Here's one in North Texas. I don't know how common this is/was, but the Albertsons text and logos on the pumps are red!: https://goo.gl/maps/UHp4CCF2VgpW6vao9
DeleteBut then here is an example of an Albertsons Express that has been sold off in North Texas even though the Albertsons itself is still open: https://goo.gl/maps/qQZ6rmBpdbFCj1Sw5
Albertsons' United Supermarkets division in West Texas/New Mexico does have gas stations. They are usually branded as United Express even when they are at Albertsons Market supermarkets. Link: https://goo.gl/maps/dRnxfptCyvqpC8qu8
Actually, if you look at that last Albertsons Market/United that I posted, the gas station there has an interesting history if you scroll through the timeline on Google Maps. It looks like it was an Albertsons Express around 2008, but then somewhere between there and 2013, it must have been sold/leased off as it became a Valero that kept the Albertsons Express signage. Then, it became a United/Albertsons gas station again. Either United/Albertsons bought the gas station back or got Valero out of their lease. Either way, that's odd that Albertsons had to get their gas station back!
DeleteInteresting! I always thought Albertsons had gotten rid of all of their gas stations, but maybe not. It would make sense that they might want to take some of them back, since Safeway has a large gas station business (much larger than Albertsons' ever was, at least around here) and they don't seem likely to drop that anytime soon. As for the red logos, those pumps look otherwise identical to the ones that Safeway uses... I wonder if someone messed up and specified the Safeway logo color!
DeleteIt looks like that Albertsons Fuel Center in Sherman, TX closed at some point, but then was re-opened around 2016. That puts it after the Safeway merger so maybe that Albertsons Fuel Center is using Safeway's connection for fuel. Some of the recent Randall's in Houston that closed and were converted to El Ranchos kept the old Randall's gas stations and re-branded them as El Rancho gas stations. Albertsons is an investor in El Rancho so they probably continued to operate like they did as Randall's gas stations, but those gas stations recently closed even though the El Ranchos are still going strong. But, yeah, maybe that explains why the Albertsons logo is in red! Perhaps the Safeway gas station people hastily developed those gas pumps!
DeleteOddly enough, as important as gas stations seem to be for Safeway, very few Randall's locations in Houston actually have gas stations. Most of the Randall's that are left in Houston are older urban stores which don't have room in the parking lots for gas stations. The Randall's that had gas stations are the locations that have closed over the last several years. It's kind of an odd dynamic! Oddly enough, I think Randall's might have been the first modern grocer in Houston to install gas pumps in the 1990s. There were some early superstore type concepts in the 1960s that sold gas and groceries here in Houston like Sage, but that's really another store altogether, lol.
That is surprising that they'd be mostly closing the newer stores with gas stations! Around here, most of the stores that Safeway/Albertsons have closed recently are either older stores that never got gas stations, or Albertsons stores which almost never had gas stations in the first place. Safeway does still have a good number of urban stores without gas stations, as well as older rural ones that don't have the space (though quite a few of those have off-site Safeway gas stations), but that's certainly not the norm for Safeway.
DeleteSadly for Randall's, their newer locations with room for gas stations were mostly in areas where there was also room for competitors like HEB and Kroger to open stores nearby. While Randall's can compete in certain higher-end parts of town, they struggle in places where the shoppers tend to be more price sensitive and so a lot of those stores have closed.
DeleteAs far as I can tell, Randall's only has two remaining gas stations in Houston. Both are at somewhat newer stores. One is the suburban Pearland location and the other is the Westheimer & S Post Oak location. The latter is actually an old location that started out as a Handy Andy and was then converted to Randall's about 40 years ago, but about 10 years ago, Safeway demolished the old store and rebuilt it from scratch. That's a pretty prosperous part of town and is an example of a place where Randall's can compete against the neighboring Kroger, Target, and Wal-Mart Supercenter. It should be noted that Randall's has higher Google user reviews than all those other retailers I listed! Link: https://goo.gl/maps/r3BJc8yFaGSwQUcv9
Perhaps due to the lack of Randall's gas stations in modern times, Randall's has a partnership with Chevron/Texaco so that Randall's shoppers can earn discounts on either Randall's or Chevron/Texaco gas. There's some info about it here: https://www.randalls.com/justforu/program-details.html
Wow, I didn't know Randall's was that bad at competing with other chains. That's a big difference from around here, where Safeway's the dominant chain! Safeway has the same cross-promotion with Chevron (we don't really have Texaco around here anymore), but it probably doesn't get as much use since Safeway gas stations are so common around here.
DeleteYeah, Randall's presence in Houston is probably less than half the size as it was when Safeway bought Randall's in around 1998. Some of this can't be blamed on Safeway. Randall's stores were so well-liked in the 1980s and early 1990s that they opened a lot of locations in all kinds of Houston neighborhoods during that time. As stronger lower priced competitors became more numerous like Wal-Mart, HEB, and Aldi, Randall's didn't have a chance in those neighborhoods. Randall's higher prices also made them not-so-viable in truly middle class neighborhoods where there were a lot of competitors nearby.
DeleteMost of the remaining Randall's are in higher income areas. A lot of these stores are in areas that are older and built-out. Thus, it's hard for competitors to build stores nearby. Randall's has a real edge in those prestigious areas. Randall's still has a reputation for being a higher-end, higher quality store than Kroger and HEB and so they have some luck with what could be called Houston's blue bloods. While that might be a small percentage of the population, that is a desirable demographic for a retailer and so maybe (hopefully) Randall's will continue to keep a presence here in Houston even if it is a small one.
Randall's had a massive distribution center in my part of Houston. In fact, I believe that DC was actually supplying Florida's Albertsons stores in their last few months of operation. Unfortunately, due to the lack of stores in this area, Albertsons shut down that DC and is now supplying Houston's Randall's from the Dallas DC. Tom Thumb and Albertsons are more successful in Dallas and have a lot more stores, including new ones, so it's not a surprise they're more focused on North Texas. That said, TT/Albertsons' marketshare in the Dallas Metroplex is going to get a real test with HEB increasing their presence there. Dallas shoppers tend to be a bit more discriminating than Houston shoppers so maybe they'll continue to shop at Tom Thumb even if they have higher prices than HEB, but I still think HEB will do well up there...unfortunately.
Happy retailversary! I enjoy reading your posts, as its nice to see stores from out your way for a change, especially since there's really no one else in the Northwestern US doing this kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteHappy retailversary! And thanks for the shout-outs, but this is very much your day, so quit bringing me into it -- you deserve the praise, haha! I'm glad you took your own advice and jumped into this hobby, from your humble beginnings as an auction eagle :P Like you said, it's a shame no one else seems to be photographing any retail in the Northwest right now, but I'm sure there are people interested in the subject up that way -- so hopefully some of them happen across your blog and get inspired, or at the very least, simply get to join the rest of us in enjoying your content.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Yeah, sure would be nice to have others around here, but I haven't seen any interest yet myself.
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