Perhaps the most interesting, or at least unusual, feature of this store is the Panda Express counter right next to the deli. Several of these pre-Safeway Pavilions stores have these, one of the last vestiges of the grocery store fast food fad of the 90s, and while I was already surprised to see it still hanging on, it appears that this one has had a major remodel in the last couple years! I wouldn't have expected either Safeway or Panda Express to have much interest in keeping this place going, especially in a store that doesn't seem to be particularly successful itself, so to see it get a real investment is quite a surprise (and it doesn't appear that this is a third party simply leasing space within the store, since that's a standard Safeway register system, like what their Starbucks kiosks have). If I had more time, I might have grabbed something to eat here, but I was already stressed out from LA traffic and had at least one more stop to make before I could drive out north of the city to where I was staying! It would have been interesting to compare this food to what Safeway's own China Express section (a brand I don't think they use any longer) sells.
Not counting Auchan, which was an even bigger than a Fred Meyer, I think Fiesta Mart and Kroger were the only chains in Houston which had national fast food chains in their stores. Even then, those experiments didn't get very far (Auchan had national vendors the entire time they were here, ~1988-~2003). Of course, there is Wal-Mart as well. Oddly enough, in Houston, Panda Express is known to put their locations as close to Walmarts as possible. If they aren't in a Walmart parking lot, they are probably in the neighboring shopping center. Panda Express most certainly targets Walmart shoppers these days which is a bit strange because they were mostly known as a mall food court operator here for a while!
ReplyDeleteIt would have been interesting to compare Panda Express food to Safeway China Express food. We don't have China Express, or anything like it, at Randall's so I know that is a bit of a west coast oddity to those of us who live elsewhere.
It is a bit amusing that the title of this post, at least as far as the URL goes, is 'blog-post' since you used the panda icon. I guess Blogger doesn't support those icons as blog post URL names, lol.
I'm not sure if any grocery chains in the Northwest had fast food places -- it seems like something Fred Meyer would have tried, but I haven't ever heard of them having done that. There is one QFC with a Panda Express (coincidentally enough) in it, but I believe that dates back to that store's days as an independent supermarket.
DeleteI never knew China Express was a west coast-specific thing! I thought it was part of the whole big Lifestyle concept for Safeway chain-wide (some stores definitely had it before the Lifestyle era, but that's when it became a common thing). I believe the only time I've actually had Safeway China Express food is in Canada, though (back when Safeway Canada was still part of Safeway, but they had a much larger selection there than the Seattle Division stores did, at least).
Yeah, Blogger does that whenever I use emoji or numbers on their own in post titles. I'm not sure if anything supports emojis in URLs!