Built into the corner of the floral counter is this little "concierge" room. There wasn't any signage to indicate what the Pavilions concierge would actually do, and DuckDuckGo isn't being helpful -- it can be frustrating to find any information on Pavilions thanks to the generic name! It looks as though Pavilions may have given up on the concierge concept at some point, as the room seems to have been used simply as a highly-visible storage closet at the time of my visit. Off to the right, you can see that this store keeps its greeting card section right next to the flowers, something I don't understand why more stores don't do!
I found an old Pavilions concierge job posting. It seems that the concierge mainly deals with catering and event planning issues for people who make catering orders through the store's deli, bakery, and presumably florist as well. Mike at HHR used to work at the deli at a Safeway-era Randall's so he can probably relate to some of the Safeway catering issues, lol. Granted, I'm pretty sure Randall's, even a Randall's Flagship store like the one he worked for, didn't have a specific concierge position for event planning. Link: https://www.snagajob.com/jobs/665098562
ReplyDeleteChiming in after AIH gave me the heads up.
ReplyDeleteAt Randalls the concierge job technically fell to the Floral Department employee, who would take the info from the customer and then relay it to the appropriate departments (deli, bakery, etc). However, they were also the only person running floral, so if it was just a deli or bakery order they'd usually just send them straight to us so they could attend to floral. This was like 15 years ago though, lol.
Ah, I guess that explains why the concierge office is in the floral section! Safeways around here rarely even have full-time floral employees any longer, and I doubt there's anyone acting as a concierge in stores around here (since they also no longer bother with full-time staffing for the bakery in most stores or even the customer service counter in some, and generally only have one person running the entire deli instead of the 2-3 they used to have).
DeleteSounds about right for Albertsons these days. They did the same down here, and it's terrible Randalls bakery and deli were the only places where they really outshined the competition before these slashings.
DeleteIt really is. I hardly ever buy anything from the Safeway bakery or deli any longer since prices have gone through the roof while quality and service are on the decline.
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