Safeway's larger 90s stores often included a little cut-through from the produce department to the first aisle, traditionally the home of natural and specialty foods. In the 2010s refreshes, some stores (including the Port Angeles store, which is why I'm so familiar with this) had those cut-throughs expanded in width and length to cover the first several aisles and provide a small promotional space, as seen in this store. This seems to have been a short-lived concept, and at the Port Angeles location the aisles beyond the first one were filled back in within a few years (returning it to its original configuration), but it stuck around a bit longer at this store.
Huh, I can't say I'm familiar with this design of cut-through. The only Safeway cut-throughs I've ever seen are at the Randalbertsons Grocery Palace in my general area and those are just re-used Albertsons cut-throughs! Maybe the Troutdale, OR Grocery Palace Safertsons I went to last year has those cut-throughs as well, but I really don't remember seeing them.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Grocery Palaces, here's some possible unfortunate news. My local Krogertsons Grocery Palace, which still has the original Albertsons floor with the boulevard, fake wood bakery, stars, letter blocks, and so forth has started a remodel! It had Bountiful before, but now the walls have been painted white and light grey. I take it then that the store is getting fArtisan, but I can't say for sure since the wall paint and the deli tile backsplash are the only change so far. In an odd move, they took the Bountiful letters off the baskets and attached them to pieces of plywood painted black to make temporary department signs until the new signage is installed. The temporary move looks better than most modern Kroger decor packages!
Anyway, the Krogertsons still had the Albertsons floor as of this past weekend, but I don't know for how much longer that'll be around. It is hard to imagine Kroger doing a remodel here in 2024 and leaving behind an Albertsons floor from 2000, but the floor is in good condition. They could keep it, but I'm guessing it'll become a terrible tile-scarred concrete floor like so many other Krogertsons in Houston. Grr. Well, we'll see, I'm not happy about this remodel regardless of what it ends up getting. Maybe it'll even be Remix, which Kroger loves to use in Houston, but I don't know if the white and light grey wall paint line up with Remix.
These certainly aren't a common thing -- the first-aisle cut-through was only used in the largest 90s Safeways (and seemingly dropped by the early 00s), and the enlarged cut-through seen here only showed up in a few of those stores, and only for a short time before being removed. I'm not sure if any stores outside of Washington ever had this design.
DeleteUgh, that's unfortunate. There are extremely few stores left with the full Grocery Palace floor design -- most of the remaining ones have the later version that dropped Beverage Boulevard and others. White and light grey (if those are the final colors and not primers) would seem to imply Artisan or possibly Reclaimed, neither of which I particularly like... those aren't colors you normally see in Remix or (my preference) Urban Mix.