Part of that may be because this decor package seems to have been tailor-made for Ralphs stores in Southern California. It was designed by a local Los Angeles firm, and it seems that the design intent was for something specific to the region -- as the produce sign says, it was "made for California". Knowing that Ralphs is so often the proving ground for new chain-wide decors, I imagine there was always an eye to taking it national, but it definitely seems like they wanted to include some California flair here, something that I probably don't much appreciate as a Seattleite.
The California marketing push here isn't anything compared to HEB's disgraceful slapping the Texas name on anything and everything. Everything is Texas, Texas, Texas, especially in the produce department, but then you see where the produce is from and it is from Mexico, Guatemala, or Hood River, OR. Ok, the latter one probably sticks out a little bit, lol. HEB has been selling Hood River Cherries this year and they've also created a Hood River Cherry ice cream under their own brand of ice cream. Even here, you can see that while this is clearly a Oregonian flavor of ice cream, they slapped the Texas name and outline on the lid! It is just unavoidable at HEB. I'm surprised they didn't claim Mt. Hood is in Texas! The presence of this flavor might be an indication that Tillamook ice cream might be stealing some sales from Blue Bell here in Texas! Link: https://www.heb.com/product-detail/h-e-b-creamy-creations-hood-river-cherry-company-cherry-ice-cream/8382011
ReplyDeleteI'm generally not a fan of these wordy department signs. They're the 'Live, Love, Laugh' of supermarket decor, but at least the wood looks okay here. It's certainly more passable than Artisan's 'wood' even though I'm sure there is nothing wooden about it, reclaimed or not, lol.
The wood look is much more passable here because this store has a real floor! Fake wood at that. Hopefully some kind of real floor exists in the rest of the store. This is a lot better than that QFC disaster we've been looking at, lol.
I wonder what's up with the lights. Here, and in the other photo, it looks like maybe each light fixture is missing a bulb on the left side? I suppose this is intentional for energy savings or maybe to create a Lifestyle-like atmosphere. I'm not sure if it made the store, or at least this part of it, look dark. Maybe they keep things dark to emphasize the spotlighting.
Ha! Winn-Dixie's Florida branding has Reclaimed beat too. And several of California's independent grocery chains really push their California-ness too (admittedly, several of the decor packages I'm thinking of were designed by the same company as this one!).
DeleteAgreed about the word salad here. I like Urban Mix's local flair word collages, but not ones like this.
As for the floor, it's left over from Fresh Fare 2.0, which means it's quite a bit nicer than what you would be used to from Kroger these days!
I have no idea what the deal is with the lighting. The fact that it's consistent would indicate that it's intentional, but the way they did it looks pretty terrible! This would be fine in some fixtures, but the eggcrate design just accentuates the fact that one tube is dark.