For whatever reason, the dairy sign was by far the most impacted by spotlight glare -- I did get another one, which is below, with less glare but a much blurrier overall scene. The oversized category markers for the dairy department are quite interesting, especially as the rest of the store doesn't have category markers at all, plus, I feel like they would be right at home with Lifestyle v3/Lifestyle Refresh decor.
It's certainly a bit strange to have refrigerated cases across from refrigerated cases in what I assume to be the back actionway or some other major corridor through the store. This certainly looks narrow, but I suppose it's not nearly as narrow as some back actionways at older US Safeways that you've shown!
ReplyDeleteHere's some sad, but not unexpected, local retail news. The Sears Hometown Stores at Willowbrook Mall and across from Deerbrook Mall here in North Houston are both closing. We know this is for sure happening at my local location, but we're pretty sure the Deerbrook area one is closing as well. That'll leave Houston with only one Hometown store and that is in Sugar Land, but who knows how long that might last. Anyway, my local Sears Hometown Store only lasted about half a year! Who knows what Eddie Lampert might have planned next!
It's a bit debatable whether this would really be an actionway -- in front of me it is, but directly behind me it turns into a normal aisle. This space is the back connector between the main salesfloor and the back salesfloor, next to the pharmacy box.
DeleteThat being said, most Fred Meyers that have been remodeled recently do have back actionways with refrigerated cases on both sides, effectively -- they've been replacing most of the endcaps on the back actionway with dairy cases.
It seems that Sears is closing a lot of their Hometown stores around here too. The Port Angeles and Sequim stores are still open, thankfully, but it looks like they've completely pulled out of the Seattle area. Perhaps they're going back to the original idea of having them primarily in small towns, though who knows how long that will last before Sears gives up altogether.
I'm thinking a lot of the Sears Hometown stores that have been closing here recently are ones that Sears had purchased and had been running themselves. The remaining ones are probably ones that are owned by a franchisee or are locations where Sears thinks they can reasonably expect to sell the store to a franchisee. Perhaps the Port Angeles store is independently-owned.
DeleteBelieve it or not, I did hear about someone who recently purchased a Sears Hometown franchise in a small Texas town! It's hard to believe someone would actually buy a Sears franchise here in modern times, but yet someone actually did.
Yeah, the Port Angeles and Sequim stores are both independently owned -- in fact, their service areas both include the other town, and as my parents found out when they recently had to replace one of their appliances, they're in fierce competition with one another! 😃 It will be interesting to see what happens to them when Sears eventually flops -- I feel like they have the customer base to keep going as independent stores, but who knows how they'll fare without corporate support (though it sounds like the Sequim one, at least, already has side-channel ways to get appliances!).
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