The front end seems to have been extensively reconfigured at some point -- I can't imagine a 65,000 square foot warehouse store from the 90s having so few checkouts originally! Plus, nothing seems to line up properly with the architectural features -- the windows and varied ceiling heights just seem random and out of place these days. It's still nothing like a typical Safeway front end, however -- just look at how much space there is between the checkouts and the aisles (which aren't even in frame here)! This place would actually be able to handle the very long checkout lines that are so common at Safeway these days, unlike pretty much all of their other stores. (That wasn't a real problem back in 2019 when I took these pictures... if you've been following the blog for a long time, you'll know that I was a lot more positive about Safeway back in those days compared to my rather negative feelings towards them today.)
Huh, it is certainly strange to see those ceiling windows like that at a Safeway!
ReplyDeleteI think some of the problems you're seeing at your Safeway stores are a Seattle Division thing. I was at Randall's last weekend and It was quite busy by the standards of that store at least. The pending storm probably had something to do with that and Randall's had some really good sales last week (bananas were 37 cents/lb.!). But, anyway, they had three manned registers open. That's not uncommon at some Randall's, but at that location, three is quite good. Things were moving along well and there wasn't a back up into frozen foods or anything like that. Moreover, they had polished the floors relatively recently (the floors are fairly new Colorful Lifestyle v2 vinyl floors anyway) and everything was looking sharp including the Lifestyle gas oven. I even remarked to Mike that it felt like the store was up to the pre-Safeway buyout Randall's standard!
It is unfortunate that the Seattle Division is being run the way it is and perhaps employee morale is now extra low given the divestiture list. It really looks like the Seattle Division's move to Modern also went with a move away from some of the Lifestyle ideals Safeway was pushing in the 2000s!
So, on that note, here is a shameless plug. I guess it's not that shameless since NW Retail helped out a lot on this post, but I have a new guest post over at HHR about the 20th anniversary of Safeway Lifestyle. NW Retail has already seen a draft of it, but there are some new additions including a beauty image I found on the Albertsons media page of Lifestyle v2...oddly with a burned out light on the 'fresh picked' uplight. Hey, it is Safeway, you can't expect perfection even in their beauty shots, lol. I'm a bit surprised Albertsons still has Lifestyle v2 images on their media page, but I'm not complaining. Also, check out the link where it says 'took a very different approach'. That link is new and you (NW Retail) will want to see that Safeway PDF I found from 2004! Link: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/2024/07/12/ingredients-for-survival-celebrating-the-20th-anniversary-of-safeways-lifestyle-concept/
There will be more modern Safeway coverage on HHR over the next few days, but that post will certainly bring back some early Lifestyle nostalgia!
Yeah, this whole setup is weird and doesn't look like any major grocery store I've visited! I can't imagine it looked quite this strange when Max Foods built it, but I don't know what it would have been like to make much more sense.
DeleteYeah, the Safeways from other divisions that I've visited in recent years are definitely more like what our stores used to be (though the decline in store-brand product quality applies Albertsons-wide). Even the Eastern Washington stores tend to be better managed from what I've seen. The Seattle Division never really bought into the upscale parts of the Lifestyle concept (despite being well ahead of other divisions in remodels, with only two pre-Lifestyle stores surviving into the late 2010s division-wide and a huge number of Lifestyle v1 remodels from the very first years of the program), instead competing more on price (even in the late 2010s, they were typically cheaper than any other chain except Walmart... that's very much not the case today, frustratingly). These days, they don't seem to be all that interested in competing on either price or service, not that my other options (Target, QFC, and Fred Meyer) are much better.
That 2004 Powerpoint is cool! Those Lifestyle v1 images are super nostalgic, even down to the beige pricetags (so much nicer than the yellow ones they've been using since sometime around 2010!). The Pastel Arches store in the "before" picture on slide 21 is completely identical to how the Port Angeles store looked until 2003ish, apart from being mirrored (the "after" appears to actually be a different store -- note the placement of the door in the back corner). My memories of those days are (unsurprisingly) extremely fuzzy, so it's cool to see that photo! The slide before that is fun too -- in those days, Safeway had the edge in all of those things except meat and the bakery (Albertsons had them beat on both counts, along with QFC and Haggen in the bakery). These days, it's hard to say that Safeway is the best at anything except for maybe floral, and even that isn't as good as it once was; the deli has probably gone downhill the most of anything to do with Safeway, and their bakeries are even worse than before the Albertsons merger while being as expensive as a proper bakery. (Again, most of these problems -- especially when it comes to pricing -- seem specific to the Seattle Division; I was much more impressed with the bakeries [the only thing I could really compare while on vacation] in the other divisions I visited last year.)
Oh, and I almost forgot -- the second picture on page 22 shows the cut-through from produce to natural foods that I mentioned a few days ago!
DeleteHuh, I didn't even notice that there was a cut-through in that photo! It's hard to see it unless you know it is there I suppose. Besides that, I think I was distracted by the grand opening banners with the square ribbon logo in a Lifestyle store! I just don't associate that logo with Lifestyle even though obviously there was a small overlap where that was the logo in use when Lifestyle was launched.
DeleteI know you find it hard to believe that Safeway, in Randall's form at least, is considered to be a higher-end store here in Houston. To some degree, that says a lot about the other grocers in Houston, lol, but the Southern Division does try harder than some other Safeway/Albertsons divisions (Seattle and Denver come to mind). Even Portland seems to be higher-end than Seattle and I don't really know why! I know competition is limited in Seattle, but then Portland isn't really any different. I don't know, but it is unfortunate for the Washington customers.