This picture further illustrates the weird aisle marker font -- the "manager special" category marker and "charcoal" plaque are in the normal font (though the former looks extra bold for some reason), while all of the other category plaques use the older style -- which I believe is
the same one used in early Bountiful remodels. Clearly, QFC was working on transitioning from thanksgiving to christmas when I was here!
"Manager special' is a bit of an odd category! It's almost as if the manager of this QFC made that sign themselves, lol. Maybe these are normal for QFCs. The Krogers here usually do have a clearance area like this on the back end of the seasonal aisles, but I'm pretty sure they aren't marked as a 'manager special'. I may have to pay attention to that closer the next time I'm in a Kroger. The one with the most visible clearance aisle is actually the Grocery Palace Krogertsons near me.
ReplyDeleteNew state paperwork has been filed today for another Kroger remodel in my area. This one has a significantly larger budget ($1,100,00) as well for the remodel, but this is a store with Bountiful so it's an older decor package. The funny thing is that this is the least busy Kroger out of all the ones I shop at regularly/semi-regularly. It's near some upper-middle class/upper-class neighborhoods though, and it doesn't have much competition*, so maybe the service departments do well at this location to make up for the lack of overall volume. The paperwork says Kroger is adding a 496 sq. ft. addition to the store as well. I can't imagine this will be totally new construction. They must be converting an old bank space or something.
This store already lost the floor cover it had during the Bountiful remodel so hopefully it gets that back, but I'm not too optimistic about that. Otherwise, the store looks pretty good as it is. The lighting is a bit dim at this location so maybe that could use some attention. This is one of the later Kroger Signature store designs used here in Houston which has an open 2nd floor office area which is very visible to the rest of the shoppers especially in the checkout area. That should be obvious in the photos of this place: https://goo.gl/maps/KJPJmqK67z3C3Mw2A
* - The store has little competition now, but the area once had an Awnings Albertsons down the street (now the Enchanted Cypress Ballroom) and a very, very short-lived Safeway-era Randall's across the street where Goodwill and Ace Hardware is now. The Albertsons lasted from around 2000 to Albertsons' departure from Houston shortly after and the Randall's from around 2001-2005. So, yeah, this area was not kind to the Safeway-Albertsons duo! It'll be interesting to see if you can recognize the Ace/Goodwill as being something Safeway built. I can't say for sure that it's a Safeway design or a pre-merger Randall's one, but the store opened a couple years after the merger so I think it probably had some Safeway to it.
Oh, I think you've featured Half Price Books before on your blog or Flickr page. Here is a new article about them in a Dallas-based magazine about their 50th anniversary. I thought you might like to see it: https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2022/july/the-store-for-all-sorts-half-price-books-turns-50/
"Manager special" is actually a fairly common name for QFC clearance sections, when they're located in an aisle like this rather than just a random display put in a corner somewhere.
DeleteIt's funny to think of Bountiful as an "older decor package" -- as I mentioned in one of the other photos, QFC seems to have a rather low remodel budget, so despite being one of the first Kroger divisions to get Bountiful, they've still never remodeled a store away from it, and when they do decide to work on a Bountiful store, they just keep the decor in place. (That's better than Remix, at least!) It will certainly be interesting to see what decor it gets!
Wow, if even the single grocery store there is low-volume, it's surprising that three of them tried to compete at the same time! That Randalls certainly looks more like a Randalls than a Safeway to me -- heck, with those arch-in-gable entrances, it looks more like an Albertsons than a Safeway! (Ignoring the fact that Albertsons of that design typically only had one door, of course.)