Returning my cart to the corral outside the main door, something caught my eye. While the carts here looked fairly normal -- black metal carts, which were common for Albertsons and later Safeway in the 2010s -- several of them were quite obviously not built for Albertsons, as shown by this trio that has their blue plastic handles partially or completely missing. Carts with incorrect branding aren't particularly common for Albertsons and Safeway these days, but normally it's a simple matter of mixups between those two brands -- not carts from a store that only exists on the other side of the country! Also, this Wegmans logo -- a better closeup is below -- is a rather old logo of theirs, being replaced in 2008, so these carts are surprisingly old, and certainly predate Albertsons' use of this cart design. Plus, it's a bit odd to see them just slapping a normal cart handle on top of the tube-shaped one that they were built with -- and based on what we're seeing here, I suspect that was a poor choice on Albertsons' part!
How did a Wegmans cart end up at an Albertsons in the NW?! That's truly bizarre and it's also bizarre how Albertsons tried to cover up the Wegmans logo! Oddly enough, there are still a few ethnic grocers and stuff in Houston who are still using old blue plastic Albertsons carts from the 1990s/early 2000s if Albertsons wants to buy those! Who knows, maybe some of the carts from Randall's that closed here in Houston ended up in NW!
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, when Ollie's opened their first store here in Houston a couple of weeks ago, it was discovered that half of their carts are Kmart carts! This was not unexpected though as others have noticed the same thing at other Ollie's across the country. Still, they probably shipped those Kmart carts in from a long ways away and they did very little to hide the fact that they are Kmart carts as you can see in this post: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/2021/09/20/retail-news-ollies-holds-grand-opening-despite-hurricane/
Yeah, it really is one of the more bizarre things I've seen over the years I've been doing this! I've seen those blue plastic carts at some assorted stores around here myself, too. And that wouldn't be too surprising -- it seems like Safeway no longer wants to give stores around here brand-new carts, so they're just getting random old carts from closed stores, or perhaps from areas that actually get brand-new carts, to replace all of the ones that end up disappearing.
DeleteI've seen that sort of thing about other Ollie's too. I guess they must have bought up a bunch of old Kmart carts from somewhere!
What usually happens is whenever a retailer gets rid of carts in mass, they put them up for auction. Whatever company bids on them may be in an entirely different region than where the carts originated from.
ReplyDeleteYep -- it's just funny to see them all the way on the other side of the country, and at a major name-brand chain rather than some discount store!
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