I'm sure some of you aren't super impressed with this store based on this photo, but you'll have to just trust me for a moment. Entering the store drops you immediately into the produce department, a fairly common trait for Haggen, with the rest of the store fanning off from there. While the concrete floors look kind of blah in this picture, they're actually pretty neat -- it's dyed in regions of different colors, fanning off from the middle of the department, which looks quite nice in person but is difficult to show in pictures. (If you're still not sold on the concrete flooring, you'll be happy to know it's just in the produce department, with the rest of the store using real ceramic tile like what you can see to the left.)
I'm glad the concrete floors are limited to one department! Oddly enough, I was in a Kroger yesterday where the produce department has fake wood, but most of the rest of the store has a concrete floor! I guess that's a bit of the opposite of this Haggen.
ReplyDeleteCeramic tiles in supermarkets is pretty rare these days. The problem with tiles and brick floors in supermarkets is that when carts go over the grout lines, it tends to make a bit of a racket. This was the problem with the tiled fronts in 1980s Randall's stores, but I guess it wasn't too bad.
Interesting -- fake wood in the produce department is something I would associate with Safeway, not Kroger!
DeleteYeah, I've never thought real tile is a particularly good idea, even if it does look nice. I didn't think it was too rattly here, but I've visited some QFCs with ceramic tile (they used that in a few of their top stores in the Fresh Fare era), and the stuff they used seemed particularly bad. Nice vinyl flooring is always better than real tile for grocery stores, in my opinion.