Yesterday, as part of my Eastern Washington vacation, I photographed my 50th Safeway! (And overshot that target a little bit -- I'm now at 52 of them.) Totally copying Retail Retell's concept (though he did a much better job with his!), I threw together a quick collage of all 52 stores, arranged roughly from oldest to newest visit. Store 50, in the bottom right corner (above the logo), just happened to be a super cool store -- it's the most well preserved Marina Safeway still operational in Washington, and it was recently remodeled to my all-time favorite Safeway decor package, Colorful Lifestyle v2!
Of course, that's not the only interesting thing from this vacation. I got to visit a store I'd been wanting to see for a long time:
A decor package I'd been wanting to see for a very long time:
Some sweet flooring, sadly without the accompanying decor:
The coolest mall in the region:
And, of course, plenty of nice scenery.
Of course, that's only a fraction of the places I visited on this trip, but those will have to wait to be stuck into my posting schedule over the coming years! Regular posts will be back tomorrow.
For some reason, when I click on the mosaic to get a larger view, Google is giving me an Error 500. Oh well! Blogger, grr!
ReplyDeleteIs that aisle that looks like a road from a Grocery Palace Albertsons? Believe it not, we have some Krogertsons which still have those! It's really strange.
It looks like you saw some neat stuff on the trip. I'm looking forward to seeing them all on the blog!
Je's Louisiana & Texas Retail Blog has been around for over a decade now, but he just posted his first Safeway (well, Randall's) post just today! It's of one of the two Randall's that closed in early 2020 in the Houston suburb of Kingwood. Perhaps you can take a look at this and tell if it uses a Safeway stock design or perhaps something Randall's had designed before the merger with Safeway in 1999. This store opened in 2000 so I suppose it could be either a Safeway or in-house Randall's design. Link: https://southernretail.blogspot.com/2022/03/randalls-1776-kingwood-texas-randalls.html
Try again -- I initially uploaded a huge file that Blogger seems to have choked on, so I replaced it with a less-huge one that seems to be working better (and still lets you zoom in for close to full-size images).
DeleteThat it is, or was... it's in the middle of being Safeway-ized.
Cool stuff! That doesn't look like a typical Northwest Safeway layout, but I believe Safeway used different layouts in different regions, so I'm not sure.
Yep, it's working now. Whoa, what's the story with the Safeway at the very lower left? The one with the non-standard lettering, the old Safeway logo, and the pumpkins painted on the front facade?!
DeleteWhile I've seen a lot of strange Grocery Palace conversions before, I don't think I've ever seen a Grocery Palace Safeway before where Safeway kept any Albertsons elements.
Ha, the story behind that one is Leavenworth! And I think that's actually supposed to be the current logo, just rendered rather bizarrely.
DeleteYeah, I highly doubt that will survive the remodel. I'm glad I got to that store when I did, since I hadn't seen the Beverage Boulevard flooring before! That being said, #52 is a conversion with some minor Grocery Palace remnants left behind... but that's a story for another day.
Ah, yes, Leavenworth is the place with the Bavarian looking McDonald's....and Bavarian looking everything I suppose. I guess the Safeway is stuck in permanent Octoberfest mode, lol. I'm not sure what the story is with the logo, it's somewhere in between the old logo and the current one. I'm not sure if they had to use that design, but it's very strange!
DeleteCongrats on the milestone, and great collage! (And ha, thanks for the link -- yours is way better, in my opinion! The chronological order is cool, too.) Looking forward to more of these Safeways and especially the other cool sights you experienced on this trip!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I like yours better in that you don't need to zoom in as much to get the photo details. I could have put some work into cropping them, but I just didn't feel like it.
DeleteYou're welcome!
DeleteCongrats on 52 Safeway stores!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteCongratulations on the milestone!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteCongrats on the Safeway milestone, and looking forward to seeing your photos from the recent trip - there's some interesting things you've tempted us with!
ReplyDelete