Despite the nice new flooring Safeway installed in the produce department, they left the same old plain white vinyl everywhere else, even replacing some of the fancier Proto-Lifestyle flooring that certain departments had with it. Something seems really off to me about the way the Modern woodgrain trim becomes just a stripe through the pharmacy and dairy departments -- it's pretty much always installed wrapping around the bottom edge of a soffit, and it's so rare that there isn't a continuous, consistent soffit, or some other sort of trim or fixtures for it to line up to, that it looks quite strange for it to just be floating like this.
Hey, I spot an Albertsons basket in this photo! Granted, it is not like Albertsons really puts much effort in trying to hide the Albertsons name at Safeway (and other banners) stores so this should not be that big of a surprise I suppose!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you've heard about Albertsons' new 'Sincerely' marketing campaign. Randall's is using it as well. Hopefully this new marketing campaign proves to be less annoying than Kroger's 'Fresher than Fresh' campaign, but we'll see. The whole 'Sincerely, Food' thing seems kind of silly, but I suppose we'll have to see how it is implemented.
The more I see the pharmacy being on the back actionway, the less I like it! It seems a bit odd to make someone who is sick have to go to the back of the store. Also, doesn't the pharmacy and the sometimes long queues pharmacies have contribute to actionway clutter? The actionway here doesn't seem very wide as it is. I think I prefer the common design here where the pharmacy is at the front corner of the store, but it should be said that some Safeway pharmacies here in 1970s/1980s stores was in the back corner behind produce.
Haha, yeah, for a couple years (it seems to be getting a little better now), it seems Safeway wasn't even trying to keep consistent branding when it comes to carts and baskets -- I've posted some of the stranger ones on here before, but it was even more common than that shows.
DeleteUnfortunately, they've already rolled it out around here, and it's far worse than I had expected, with the campaign seemingly being entirely based on incredibly stupid puns. Here are just a couple examples from my local Safeway today.
The pharmacy-in-the-back setup is extremely common around here, being the standard for Safeway (the only exceptions I can think of are stores that weren't built for Safeway and the two that were built after the Albertsons merger) and seemingly the standard for QFC too (though as you've seen on here, QFC has a lot of very strange stores!). It can definitely cause some congestion in smaller stores (larger ones will widen the actionway into the aisles around the pharmacy), but that's honestly just something that people around here are used to -- the front end tends to back up far worse since grocery stores around here don't have anywhere for checkout lines to go, either. And at most Safeways, the pharmacy doesn't tend to be very busy for very much of the time.
Oh, wow, those puns are pretty bad! Albertsons could probably get away with those if they place them here and there, but posting them all over the store is going be a bit cringeworthy! Sincerely, Anonymous in Houston
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