The front of the grand aisle, as it were, is home to the giant Thank You sign, installed directly onto the angled wood soffit. I'm not entirely sure if this is an original touch, but it's clearly fairly old regardless! I've never seen a "race day"-themed giant chip display like this in my part of the country -- makes me wonder if car racing is a big thing in this part of California, which isn't something I ever knew.
I can't remember when exactly you were in California, but if it was around early June, the race day reference is probably for the NASCAR Winston Cup (or whatever they call it these days!) race at the Sears Point road course in Sonoma, CA. That race has been sponsored or co-sponsored by Save Mart since 1992 (it is currently called the Toyota/Save Mart 350) so it is safe to say that Save Mart is quite well invested in the success of the event! I'm not entirely sure how Pepsi is involved in the race, but maybe they have some sponsorship in the event as well.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota/Save_Mart_350
California is quite a big state for car culture stuff. I'm not sure if NASCAR has a lot of fans in Northern California, but I'm sure they do have some fans. Professional auto racing in general is not nearly as popular as it was back in the 1990s when Save Mart was first sponsoring those Sears Point races. There are a lot of reasons for that. F1 is more popular in the US than it used to be, but then again, F1's popularity in the US was almost zero for many years so they only had up to go.
Interesting! I hadn't realized that at all. Since Save Mart is a sponsor, I'm surprised they couldn't get any specific branding here! Maybe that's just because this is a Pepsico display. Anyway, I was here in mid-May, so that seems reasonable when it comes to timing!
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