Despite what the concrete floors and open ceiling (which seems to be an original trait, despite Safeway rarely using those in the 90s) may suggest, this store gained quite a few premium features in its Modern remodel, some of which I imagine Safeway was at one point considering rolling out to most of their stores. Perhaps the strangest of those is the dedicated refrigerated endcap for salad dressing -- I hardly ever see salad dressing in a refrigerated case at all, but having practically the whole department in its own dedicated case is something I don't think I've ever seen before! Meanwhile, the juices and such that I would have expected to be in here are instead in a little endcap-of-the-endcap case that Safeway clearly made no effort whatsoever to integrate into the decor.
Was this store really opened with a concrete floor? Concrete floors would have been very unusual in the 1990s...especially in the earlier part of the decade. Concrete floors were still widely considered to be 'low rent' in the 1990s. When Kmart's Builders Square developed their Builders Square II store concept, they specifically made a tiled race track for their stores because they thought it made the stores feel more like a real store than a warehouse. They thought this would attract female shoppers who didn't like the older Builders Square stores and presumably Home Depot type stores.
ReplyDeleteSo, yeah, it would be really surprising if this store had concrete floors in the 1990s, but I suppose stranger things have happened. Open ceilings would be less of a surprise. I know Safeway was playing around with those here in Texas even in the early 1980s.
Ha, no, I'm just talking about the open ceiling here -- most likely, this would have just had cheap vinyl floors when it was new. There are a handful of other 90s open-ceiling stores around here, but Safeway was still building most of their stores with drop ceilings into the 2010s.
DeleteHa, endcap-of-the-endcap -- I like that :P
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