I was going to say that this store's layout feels a little off for a 90s Albertsons, but that makes sense now that I know it was originally a Lucky! The decor, though, is still a bit of a mystery. At first I thought it was perhaps a prototype for the PF&H decor family overall, but looking back at these pictures, the darker color scheme reminded me more of
PF&Hv2 (a rare decor package itself, at least in my area)... and then I thought about it some more and remembered
the ultra-deluxe Star Market decor from circa 2011 that Acme Style cited as the predecessor to Lifestyle v3. While the overall decor here is more similar to the normal versions of PF&H, the script font is a match for that package! The SoCal Supermarket Blogger described this as a stripped-down version of that Star Market package, but I'm not sure if the timelines line up -- the earliest pictures of the two San Clemente stores I was able to find were from 2011 and they already had this decor in place by then. Perhaps it was a prototype for PF&Hv2 after all, but Star Markets took more inspiration from this than the finished version? I doubt we'll ever know for sure.
The combination of Lucky and Albertsons! Since we had Lucky in Houston at one time (Gemco and Eagle), this is an odd combination of grocers we no longer have here even though I suppose we do have Albertsons via Randall's. This should be an interesting set!
ReplyDeleteHuh, that Star Market decor looks like a more 3D version of Lifestyle v3! I like it, but I wonder what you think about it, lol. This also looks like some amalgamation of PF&H and Lifestyle v3. Well, you know I like Lifestyle v3 so, unsurprisingly, I think this looks pretty good so far. The store looks pretty good so far except for those ratty ceiling tiles! I suppose I can't complain too much, my one visit to an Albertsons this summer was the Cully one in Portland which had the roof fire so it was missing many of the ceiling tiles there and that's probably worse than a few ratty looking ceiling tiles! I wonder what is up with that one strip light which is a completely different size than the other ones.
Cool! You'll probably know more about this place than me, then -- I'm not familiar at all with Lucky in its original form.
DeleteThe Star Market version is pretty nice, though some of its elements (including the script font...) look a bit outdated. It's weird seeing Lifestyle v3 without the Lifestyle elements, too!
The ceiling is definitely dragging this store down. I'm not sure what the deal is with the strip lights -- they're a mix of recessed and surface-mount fixtures. I wonder if there was once fancier lighting around here and it was replaced by the surface-mount strip lights at some point... though that doesn't explain the one random one in the middle of a row!