Everything is pretty much normal at the customer service counter, other than the two missing hanging signs on the left side, and one blank one on the right. It's cool to see that this store's video drop slot is still highly visible! (Safeway didn't get rid of its video rental departments until the Albertsons merger, and was quite cheap about removing the old fixtures at first, but by now most stores have them removed or covered.)
Wow, that video drop really surprised me! It's even more surprising to hear that Safeway in the NW still had video rentals until relatively recently. I don't remember Randall's having video rental since maybe before the Lifestyle era. Maybe they did still have them and I just don't remember it, but I'm almost certain the video rental departments (not counting Redbox and such) were gone here by the start of the 2010s. The last grocer here I can remember who really put a lot of effort into their rental departments was probably Albertsons, but they left town around 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteIn local retail news which may have national implications, you may remember that there was an attempted Toys R Us reboot just before Covid where one of the stores was in The Galleria mall in Houston. The store closed during the Covid era and a local toy store chain, Toyz, took over the store. Since TRU left a lot of their decor behind at that location, Toyz took it over and is using it today. Well, Toyz is being sued by TRU in part because Toyz is using TRU's decor and I suppose there is a claim that the logo is similar to TRU's logo. It'll be interesting what happens, but I suppose a lawsuit like this might have implications for retailers using other retailer's decor. We know it's not a terribly uncommon thing and something retail bloggers usually have an eye on. Here's a story about the Toyz/TRU lawsuit: https://abc13.com/toys-r-us-toy-store-files-lawsuit-filed-against-houston-toyz/12187277/
Interesting! Around here, Albertsons was the first to drop video rentals, in the mid-00s, and the first place to have Redboxes.
DeleteHmm, that is odd. I will note that most stores that reuse an old building/old decor are very careful to get rid of anything that could possibly be trademarked, something that it seems Toyz didn't do so much...