Anonymous in Houston visits Oregon and Southern Washington!

Greetings, this is Anonymous in Houston here!  I’m sure you weren’t expecting to see me do a guest blog post here at the Northwest Retail Blog, but today’s topic is much more related to this blog than my usual guest blog post outlet, Houston Historic Retail, so I want to thank Northwest Retail for allowing me to post a guest blog post on his blog.  I recently took a vacation to the Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA area.  This is a beautiful part of the country, which I will discuss later in the post, but it is also home to Fred Meyer and it is also home to some of the Safeway stores that Northwest Retail has shared on this blog before.  I was able to visit Fred Meyer, Safeway, and Albertsons in the Portland area and so now I can compare first-hand how these stores compare to Houston’s Kroger and Randall’s stores.

While I took plenty of photos of non-retail stuff, I didn’t take many retail photos.  We’ll mostly rely on Google Maps to visually illustrate the retailers which will be discussed in this post.

Fred Meyer

Wood Village Fred Meyer

Fred Meyer paper bag

Gresham Fred Meyer

I visited two Fred Meyer stores and both are located in the northeast suburbs of Portland.  It should be noted that Fred Meyer is headquartered in Portland and so it is possible that my experiences at Fred Meyer are not quite the same as what Northwest Retail experiences at Fred Meyer stores in the Seattle area.  

The retailer I visited most frequently during my stay in the Portland area was by far the Wood Village Fred Meyer located at 22855 NE Park Ln, Wood Village, OR 97060.  This was the closest major retailer to my hotel which wasn’t named Walmart or Target.  I really don’t shop at Walmart and Target very often in Houston and, thus, I had almost no desire to visit these retailers while traveling.  Indeed, I didn’t visit either Walmart or Target.  I should note that while some may remember reading headlines about Walmart leaving Portland, that only applies to the City of Portland itself and Walmart still has a presence in the Portland suburbs.

The Wood Village Fred Meyer is located in a shopping center near the old and now-demolished Multnomah Greyhound Park with a Kohl’s and several eateries such as IHOP.  It is a very clean looking area and I would guess that the Fred Meyer was probably built at some point since after Kroger bought the chain, but I can’t say for sure that is the case.  The store is two stories with clothing in a somewhat isolated section of the store on the second floor.  Clothing has their own registers and items from upstairs must be purchased upstairs.  There is an elevator which goes upstairs, and stairs, but no escalator and certainly not a cart escalator.  This all makes this Fred Meyer feel like two different stores.  In fact, the upstairs clothing department has older décor, Northwest Style I believe, as compared to the rest of the downstairs store which carries Banner.

Perhaps due to the isolated nature of the clothing department, it wasn’t very busy with other shoppers even though the downstairs part of the store was always moderately busy.  This was my first experience seeing a Fred Meyer clothing department and my overall feeling is that it is like Kohl’s, but with much more reasonable and honest pricing.  Of course, Kohl’s is also at this shopping center so those wanting a Kohl’s-like shopping experience have their choices in Wood Village!

As far as the grocery and hardlines departments go on the first floor, hardlines are on the right side of the store and grocery is on the left of the store.  The stairs/elevator complex for the second floor is in the middle of the store.  It is a bit of an odd layout, but one which doesn’t take much time getting used to.  The second floor overlooks the grocery part of the store.  The walls and ceiling height over the grocery section of the store is especially huge.  Even with very large implementations of Banner décor, there is still a ton of room up above the décor on the walls.  The grocery section of the store isn’t all that large relative to Kroger stores I’m used to in Houston, but the ceiling height alone makes it feel big.  

The most impressive part of the grocery section of the Wood Village Fred Meyer is their deli & bakery area.  The amount of offerings in this department exceeds even the nicest Houston Kroger stores.  I was really impressed by the hot deli offerings and pricing.  The store had several Boar’s Head sandwiches, some prepared in the store itself, and they were priced very reasonably like the $6.99 1.38 lbs. Italian caprese Boar’s Head sandwich I purchased which was made in the store.  Houston Kroger stores cannot compete with this.  The bakery also had French breads and other items which do not appear in Houston Kroger stores.

The selection of regular grocery items is nothing particularly noteworthy as compared to a Houston Kroger.  In fact, for a store as big as this Fred Meyer, I thought they’d have more, but what I will say is that inventory control is superior to Houston Kroger stores.  Houston Kroger stores are known for running out of certain types of milk and such, or for having nearly expired dairy items, but this was not the case in any of my visits to a Fred Meyer.  Fred Meyer had plenty of dairy items and all had good dates on them.  Pricing is also not too far off from Houston’s Kroger stores.  Houston is cheaper, but not by as much as you might think.  I will say that the difference between grocery store prices in Portland and fast food is even wider than what is the case in Houston.  With that, perhaps it is not a surprise that hot delis at Fred Meyer and Safeways are so popular!

The front end experience at Fred Meyer is also miles ahead of the current experience at most Houston Kroger stores.  During all my visits to Fred Meyers, they had either four or five manned registers open (not counting specialty department registers like electronics and clothing) and the lines were never long.  In case you’re wondering, yes, the Kroger Plus card does work at Fred Meyer and I even earned Seattle Mariners points with my purchases.  I don’t know what that is useful for, but I have them!  As far as bags go, it is my understanding that Oregon law does not permit stores to give away free bags.  At Fred Meyer, they charge 5 cents per bag for paper bags of varying sizes and they did not offer plastic bags of any kind.

The other Fred Meyer I visited is located in the large suburb of Gresham at 2497 SE Burnside Rd, Gresham, OR 97080.  This is a single-story store with an odd layout of groceries on the right of the store, clothing in the middle, and hardlines on the far left of the store.  The main entryway of the store has a mini-mall type design with the Fred Meyer Jewelers on one side of the entryway and the electronics department on the other side with both being somewhat enclosed like in-line mall stores.  

Fred Meyer recently made news by stating that they would implement security guards who would act at as receipt checkers at some of their Portland area stores.  The Wood Village store never had receipt checkers during my visits, or any security measures beyond what Kroger uses in Houston, but the Gresham store did utilize a guard who did receipt checks.  Aside from that, the store didn’t have any special kind of security measures that I could tell.  HBA items and other items which are sometimes locked up were completely open like at most Kroger stores elsewhere in the country.

The Gresham Fred Meyer is probably older than the Wood Village one and it still utilizes what I believe is the Northwest Style décor package, but with Banner aisle markers.  One thing I noticed is that although the Gresham Fred Meyer has a large hot deli like the Wood Village store, they had different items in the hot deli, and the bakery for that matter, and the pricing wasn’t the same at the two stores.  Sandwiches at the two stores were made with different breads and so forth.  Perhaps consistency between stores isn’t part of the Fred Meyer experience!

In case you’re wondering, Portland/Vancouver does have QFC stores, but not many of them and I wasn’t able to visit a QFC.  Given that I found the grocery section of Fred Meyer to be upscale compared to Houston’s Kroger stores, I can only imagine how much more upscale QFC is!

One thing I did experience at the Fred Meyer Fuel Center, and at other Oregon gas stations, is the required use of ‘mini-serve’ gas.  It is not legal for customers to pump their own gas in the more populated areas of Oregon.  The Oregon legislature recently passed a law allowing for self-serve, but my understanding is that the governor has yet to sign the bill...at least she hadn’t during my trip and so we had to let the pump attendant pump gas.  That said, this didn’t prove to be much of a problem and gas was, if anything, slightly cheaper in Oregon than in the Vancouver, WA area where self-service is pretty much the only way to get gas.  Still, gas is a lot more in the Portland area than in Houston, it was about $4.50/gal. compared to about $3.00/gal. in Houston.

Safeway & Albertsons

Gresham Safeway

Troutdale Safertsons

Cully Albertsons

Comparison of the thick reusable plastic bags used by Safeway and Albertsons in Oregon (left) with the standard plastic bags used by Randall’s, Tom Thumb, and Albertsons in Texas and Louisiana (right)

Two of the things I was most excited to experience while in Oregon was shopping at Safeway and Albertsons stores.  I had not stepped foot into a real Safeway since my visit to San Francisco in 1990 and I had not stepped foot in an Albertsons store since they left Houston in 2002.  Granted, our Randall’s stores in Houston really aren’t that different from Safeway stores in modern times and they aren’t that different from Albertsons stores either.  Plus, the legacy of Albertsons is quite strong in Houston via our ex-Albertsons Food Towns and Krogertsons.  Thus, there was probably less reason to be excited about visiting Safeway and Albertsons than visiting something quite new to myself like Fred Meyer, but I was still excited to visit Safeway and Albertsons especially with the future of Safeway and Albertsons being so questionable right now with the proposed merger with Kroger.

I ended up visiting three Safeway/Albertsons properties in Oregon, a Safeway in Gresham, a Safertsons in Troutdale, and an Albertsons in the Cully neighborhood of Portland.  The Gresham Safeway, located at 1455 NE Division St, Gresham, OR 97030, is an older Safeway store.  I can’t say when it was built as it was likely renovated extensively in the Lifestyle era, but I would guess it is from the 1970s or early 1980s.  I was excited to visit this Safeway as it is probably the closest I can get to experiencing what it would be like if Safeway never left Houston in the late 1980s and if they still had some of their 1970s and 1980s Safeway Super Stores open here.  Like almost all other Portland area Safeways (and Albertsons), the store has Lifestyle v3 décor and it has the Northwest special layout which puts the pharmacy on the back actionway.  Northwest Retail may consider this to be normal, but for the rest of us, this is a truly bizarre layout.  Fortunately, the pharmacy wall bumps out away from the actionway a bit so it doesn’t make the back actionway tight.

This store really didn’t feel that different from a Houston Randall’s given the colorful Lifestyle décor, real flooring, and a drop ceiling.  It is sized similarly to most Randall’s stores as well.  That said, for whatever reason, it feels like the Safeway had more merchandise than a Randall’s.  Where this is most evident is in the hot deli where Safeway has many, many options in addition to the popular ‘Cheep Chicken’ that Randall’s has.  Portland Safeways have prepared Chinese food which, at least at one time, was called China Express.  

Although the Safeway was renovated somewhat recently, there were a few aspects to it which felt a bit more tired looking than the average Randall’s, but otherwise it felt like a pretty normal store.  The store might feel a bit tired because it was so busy.  The store was really packed with shoppers...especially in the hot deli area of the store (my shopping trip was near dinner time).  Like with my other two visits to Safeway/Albertsons, the person in the manned register line ahead of me bought over $100 worth of items.  Maybe it is just a coincidence, but my general impression was that the local people really like shopping at Safeway in Portland, even compared to Fred Meyer, even if the Fred Meyers I went to were arguably nicer stores.  It should also be noted that each Safeway/Albertsons I visited had at two or three manned registers open (though the lines were still long given the large purchases people were making) and the Gresham Safeway had a manned floral counter.  It also seemed like the customers liked chatting with the generally older clerks at Safeway/Albertsons stores.  This is something you almost never see at Houston supermarkets and I didn’t see it at Fred Meyer either where the clerks are mainly teenagers or something close to it.  The chatty nature probably did slow things down a bit, but perhaps this is why people in Oregon like shopping at Safeway as it is something I associate with local stores rather than chain stores.

The bag situation is a bit different at Safeway than at Fred Meyer.  Safeway has both plastic and paper bags, but they default to plastic bags.  The plastic bags are 10 cents each (I’m not sure about the paper) and they are bigger and thicker than traditional plastic bags that most of the country sees.  The bags say they are designed to be reused more than 125 times.  Indeed, all the people I saw buying over $100 worth of stuff were reusing old Safeway bags.  The person shopping at Albertsons was actually reusing Vons bags!

The Troutdale Safertsons, located at 25691 SE Stark St, Troutdale, OR 97060, is a former Grocery Palace Albertsons that was converted to Safeway and Lifestyle v3 décor only in the last few months.  This store received a cheap Lifestyle v3 remodel and it is quite obvious that the store used to be an Albertsons.  There was a nearby Safeway in Troutdale that closed in the last few years, but Safeway kept that fuel station, located at 2533 SW Cherry Park Rd, Troutdale, OR 97060, open since the old Albertsons Express is now a Speedway Express.  Like with Fred Meyer, the deli items sold at this Safeway are not the same as the items sold at the Gresham Safeway.  I’m not really sure why that is the case given that the Cully Albertsons had the same items as the Gresham Safeway!

The Cully Albertsons, located at 5850 NE Prescott St, Portland, OR 97218, is the only supermarket I visited in the City of Portland itself.  I take it that Cully is not a ‘Chamber of Commerce’ neighborhood in Northeast Portland, but nothing in the store was at all off in terms of security measures.  I noticed the Cully Albertsons in the Portland news a week or two before I left on my trip because the store actually caught on fire!  Albertsons was having some repair work done on the roof and something related to the repair became botched and it caused the roof to catch on fire!  The Portland Fire Department has photos and a write-up about the incident.  Fortunately, the store itself was not damaged and re-opened soon after and was, obviously, open for business during my time in Portland.  The only sign of problems was that many ceiling tiles were missing from the right-side (pharmacy side) of the store.

All of the photos of the Cully Albertsons online show it with Albertsons’ Legacy décor, but it most certainly had Lifestyle v3 during my visit.  It is possible that this is a very recent remodel.  The store was likely built in the mid-to-late 1990s, like the Houston Albertsons I know, and originally had Blue & Grey Market décor.  In fact, the store still has a Tetris floor pattern, which is quite tired looking these days, and turntable checkstands.  One odd thing is that instead of glassed-in dairy cases, this store simply has cutouts in the back wall dairy area with rolling carts holding milk.  I don’t think I have ever seen that before!  I quite enjoyed shopping at this Albertsons given how retro 1990s it felt even with it having Lifestyle décor!  Someone like Albertsons Florida Blog would have felt at home at this store.

Roth’s Fresh Market

Roth’s Fresh Market, West Salem, OR

 

One supermarket chain I really wanted to visit on my trip was Roth’s Fresh Market.  This is surely a chain which most readers will not be familiar with, but it should be noted that Roth’s was recently purchased by the Jim Pattison Group in Canada, a name that should be familiar to Northwest Retail Blog readers.  I came across the West Salem, OR Roth’s Fresh Market on Google Maps a few months ago and was stunned to see that it is a combination higher-end supermarket and events venue that holds things such as weddings on the mezzanine of the store!  Yes, a wedding hall at a supermarket!  

Mike from HHR and I did some research about Roth’s and found an article where Roth’s people described being inspired by a two-story supermarket, Simon David, they saw during a supermarket conference in Texas.  Simon David was an upscale supermarket concept of Tom Thumb.  Tom Thumb and Simon David were later bought by Randall’s.  Given the overall design of the West Salem Roth’s located at 1130 Wallace Rd NW, Salem, OR 97304, and of another Roth’s in Salem located at 3045 Commercial St SE, Salem, OR 97302, Mike and I were left strongly believing that while Simon David was the inspiration for the West Salem Roth’s, the Roth’s people must have been at least a little bit inspired by Randall’s Flagship stores as well.  Now, Randall’s Flagship stores never had a wedding hall, but they did have stores with mezzanines, my local Champions Randall’s comes to mind.  I really wanted to see how much Roth’s was like 1980s/1990s Simon David and Randall’s Flagship stores and I also read that Roth’s takes their in-store eatery very seriously and that it rivals restaurant food especially in terms of their hamburgers.

We happened to be in West Salem on the way to Salem itself and so this was the perfect opportunity to stop at Roth’s for lunch!  Roth’s uses self-ordering kiosks for ordering.  One nice thing is this allows one to really customize their burger given the number of different options Roth’s presents.  Once the order is made, one pays at a manned register in the deli area.  One odd thing is that as nice as the store and the area around it felt, Roth’s locks their restrooms, which are on the mezzanine where the conference center is, and you have to get a code from a staff member.  It was very odd that the deli clerk didn’t know the code so I had to go to the front end of the store to get the code.  That was quite an inconvenience, but I will say that the restrooms are nicer than the average supermarket restrooms.

The food itself was very nice, especially for supermarket food, and I enjoyed walking through the rest of the supermarket which is clearly a higher-end store.  My overall impression is that, yes, Roth’s was inspired by Simon David and Randall’s Flagship.  In fact, the register lights at the main registers are the same square style register lights that Randall’s used in the 1980s!  Who would have guessed that Salem, OR would be the place to relive Texas’s most exciting supermarkets of the 1980s and 1990s?

Powell’s City of Books

 
The most famous Portland retailer is probably without question Powell’s City of Books, a new/used bookstore located at 1005 W Burnside St, Portland, OR 97209 which is considered to be one of the largest bookstores in the world.  No trip to Portland is complete without a stop at Powell’s!  Unfortunately, Powell’s is located in an urban area and so parking is limited and a bit expensive.  That limited how much time I spent at Powell’s, but I still got to spend enough time there to get a bit lost!  Getting lost at Powell’s is not hard to do given that it has multiple floors and wings!  It reminds me of a library at a large research university with all the different floors and wings!  

Vancouver Mall

Vancouver Mall Macy’s

It is a bit odd that the only indoor shopping mall I visited during my trip was the Vancouver Mall in Washington state!  I say this is a bit odd because Oregon is considered to be the better place for shopping since they do not have a sales tax.  Nonetheless, Vancouver Mall is a successful two-story mall that was quite busy during my visit.  The mall was initially developed by May Department Stores and initially had Meier & Frank (May), Nordstrom, and Sears as anchors when it opened in 1977.  JCPenney and Mervyns were later added as anchors.

The only remaining anchors out of that bunch are Macy’s (formerly Meier & Frank) and JCPenney, but a combination of new anchors such as AMC, Hobby Lobby, H&M, and a bowling alley have replaced the departed ones.  One of the stranger aspects of Vancouver Mall, at least from the perspective of a Houstonian, is that the mall has carpeted corridors.  I’m not used to malls with carpeted corridors, but I quite liked how quiet it made the main part of the mall.  Also, the bottom floor of the mall has a popcorn textured ceiling in parts kind of like a 1970s house.  I thought that was a bit unusual for a mall, but kind of neat as well!  The food court is a busy place.  I ate at Taco Time, a chain I didn’t know much about.  After eating there, I learned that there are two Taco Time chains with a shared history, Taco Time (the Vancouver Mall location is part of this company) and Taco Time Northwest which primarily operates in and around the Seattle area.  My best guess is that Taco Time Northwest is made up of Taco Time franchisees who had a dispute with the main company somewhere along the way and broke off.  I’m not sure though.  Taco Time is confusion time!  

Non-Retail

The North Oregon Coast

I first want to thank Northwest Retail for offering a lot of great advice about things to see around the Portland area.  We certainly had things in mind that we wanted to see, but Northwest Retail’s advice helped refine our plans.  While I didn’t take many photos of the retail I saw, I did take many photos of the beautiful scenery in and around Oregon for reasons that should be obvious.  With that in mind, I’ll try to let the photos do the talking for me!

Symons State Scenic Viewpoint near Cape Meares

Cape Meares

Somewhere between Cape Meares and Cannon Beach

Cannon Beach

Astoria, looking towards Washington State

Astoria

Tillamook Creamery Tour

The Tillamook Creamery offers a free tour of one of their cheese plants in Tillamook County, Oregon.  Here are some photos from the gift shop, which looks like a supermarket dairy case, and from their restaurant/Tillamook ice cream shop.

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum – McMinnville, OR

Spirit of St. Louis & Spruce Goose

Inside the Spruce Goose

Inside a Douglas DC-3 cockpit

Douglas DC-3

Various stewardess uniforms from Aeroflot, United, Republic, and Northwest Orient

Spruce Goose and Wright Flyer

Close-up of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird nose

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

Boeing 747 cargo plane re-purposed as a water park slide

Boeing 747 sitting in a vineyard

Douglas DC-9/VC-9C

Mt. St. Helens (Washington State)

Hoffstadt Creek Bridge

Mt. St. Helens

Coldwater Creek

Unfortunately, a mudslide closed off access to the Johnston Ridge Observatory not long before our trip.  That said, we were able to capture a number of nice scenes from the Spirit Lake Highway up to the road closure caused by the mudslide.

Columbia River Gorge/Mt. Hood

Mt. Hood from Timberline Lodge

Mt. Hood from Trillium Lake

Multnomah Falls

View from the Multnomah Falls bridge

View of the Gorge from the Vista House

Vista House

Bonneville Fish Hatchery

International Rose Test Garden/Japanese Gardens/Urban Portland

Montgomery Park.  This office complex used to be a Montgomery Ward store and mail-order warehouse until the 1980s.

International Rose Test Garden

Mt. Hood from the Japanese Gardens.  The haze you see in this photo is partially from the fire at the paper mill in Longview, WA, but mostly from the burning abandoned Kmart in Northeast Portland which happened just a few hours prior to this photo being taken.

Editor's note: Thanks to Anonymous in Houston for sending this all in! I hope you had a great trip, and that you'll be able to make it back up to this corner of the country soon!