With this store having been built in 2002, it must have been one of the last Grocery Palace stores to open, which is lucky for us as Save Mart has left the decor largely intact! These initial remodels during the Save Mart takeover were generally pretty cheap, mostly consisting of new paint and a little bit of signage, and clearly they weren't interested in the level of effort that would be required to remove Grocery Palace's over-the-top detailing. Most of these stores eventually got full remodels (though a lot of them hung on until the late 2010s or early 2020s), but a few remain today, perhaps as the result of cost cutting during the chain's private equity ownership. I visited a handful of these on my road trip last year, with this one being the most interesting (I drove about an hour out of my way just to see it, and it was completely worth it!).
Ha, with all that NASCAR stuff, you'd think this photo was from 2002 back when people actually still cared about NASCAR! Then again, as mentioned the last time you posted about Save Mart, they have sponsored the NASCAR race at Sears Point in California for many years now so I suppose they are (or were before Pattison bought them) run by NASCAR fans or, at the very least, their marketing is centered on NASCAR.
ReplyDeleteThis visit was pretty close to the Coca-Cola 600, so I suspect that was more relevant than the Save Mart connection, but who knows! I've definitely seen plenty of advertising tie-ins from food brands that sponsor NASCAR stuff, even in recent years.
DeleteInteresting, it has been many years since I've seen any kind of elaborate NASCAR display like this in Houston! That is true even at Kroger even though I know Kroger does sponsor a NASCAR team. Granted, NASCAR was never as big here in Houston as it was elsewhere even back in the day. I remember back in 2001 when the local NBC affiliate put the Pepsi 400 on tape delay (that was the first race at Daytona since Dale Earnhardt Sr. died there earlier that year so there was a lot of national interest and NASCAR was huge back then) so I guess that shows how popular NASCAR was here even in NASCAR's prime!
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