As Retail Retell spotted way back at the start of this set, the front of the abandoned part of the store has a large "open during remodel" banner hung up, despite there being no evidence of an ongoing remodel at the time of my visit -- and there are quite a few photos of this store from this spring on Google Maps, and they show absolutely no changes to this store's setup. I have two theories about what might have happened here, neither of which sticks out as being super plausible -- either they intended for the to look like this, and this sign is a complete lie, plus they moved one of the frozen cases (which seems like a lot more effort than anything else about this "remodel") for basically nothing, or they started a remodel but only got as far as moving that frozen case before completely giving up. I'm leaning towards the second one, but I have absolutely no evidence to support that. Also, looking in the background here, it appears that the front right corner of the closed area was being used as a temporary breakroom -- thinking about that a little more, it almost makes me wonder if something happened to the back of the store to make it not usable, but I have even less confidence in that idea than in the rest of the imaginary possibilities I've made up in this post, so I'll just stop here!
Many Hispanic grocers here have a large dining area and hot meals for sale. Perhaps they intended to install such a thing, but then got cold feet about a dining area during the pandemic?
ReplyDeleteHere are a few images of the dining area of the El Rancho in the old Randall's at W. 34th St. & 290 just to get a sense for what a Hispanic supermarket dining area looks like. This used to be the Signature Cafe, but without the dining area when it was a Randall's:
https://goo.gl/maps/obLBGjKoELufuGN8A
https://goo.gl/maps/4YWvMaJTHMfVt25Y6
https://goo.gl/maps/eLJqK2TnRpQ8QFYJ9
https://goo.gl/maps/dPLJQv41dWh6C4jh7
Hmm, interesting theory! This store has a fairly large hot foods section in the original deli and a seating area behind the former pharmacy, but perhaps they wanted something better.
DeleteDid Haggen close this store outright, with Campeon moving in after the fact, or did Campeon buy this store off Albertsons/Safeway following the Haggen debacle and slowly transition it into Campeon? If the second scenario is the case, I wonder if this banner was just never taken down from when the store first opened, the "remodel" meaning the transition from Haggen's operations into Campeon's.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like this store sat vacant for a few years before Campeón took over, so probably not, but who knows! It certainly wasn't always in this spot, at least, since there are older pictures on Google Maps showing this area in use as the frozen food department, as Albertsons left it.
Delete