The rest of the back wall is taken up by the dairy department. Given how ancient the rest of the refrigeration in this store is, I shouldn't be surprised by the milk just being in the normal open-front cases rather than an enclosed walk-in box, but at the same time, I thought that had become a fairly standard thing by the 80s! While the interior design of this store is positively ancient, its overall layout and size feel fairly modern compared to many stores I've visited over the years, making this feel a bit out of place.
The dairy case doors weren't even standard equipment even in 1990s supermarkets. I bought milk from one of the Food Towns near me today that originally opened as a Food Lion in 1992-3. The Food Town still has an open dairy case like what you see here. Of course, the Cully Albertsons in Portland I went to just had cut outs in the wall for dairy racks on wheels! I'm not sure what was up with that since Albertsons of that era usually had doors. It looks like maybe it had doors at one time, but they were removed. Strange. Maybe I caught it in the middle of a renovation or something.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I've definitely visited some stores (maybe just Safeways?) with dairy cases with the same ancient gold doors this store has in its frozen food department. I know they became standard (at least at Safeway and Albertsons) by the early 90s at the latest.
Delete