On the way in, something drew my eye to the mailboxes out front. These were plainly visible in one of my 2019 photos, but unsurprisingly I paid no mind to them at the time. This time, I did stop to take a closer look, and quickly noticed the "Olsen [sic]/Max Foods" labels on two of the boxes on the left! (I briefly panicked when I reviewed this picture, thinking I had been spelling Olson Foods wrong this whole time, but no, it was whoever put up these stickers that messed up, over 30 years ago. I also wrote "20 years ago" in both places initially... it's hard to process how long ago these things were!) This is also how I learned that Safeway's neighbor was originally Drug Emporium; the rest of the box is a list of all sorts of former tenants, including Hollywood Video (which was in every 90s strip mall, it feels like) and Cinnabon (which I've only ever seen in mall food courts locally).
It seems hard to believe that a supermarket would be using a mailbox like that! Then again, I'm not sure how much mail a supermarket typically receives. I suspect bills probably go to a district office and any forms and stuff are sent via UPS/FedEx if they can't be sent electronically. These places were probably relying on mail more in the 1990s.
ReplyDeleteSince I'm guessing this is going to be a 'bad remodel' set based on what you're saying about it, I do have a related experience from today. I went to my local Grocery Palace Krogertsons, the one in the middle of the Artisan renovation that I mentioned a few days ago, and I overheard a conversation between a customer and an employee. "Why are you remodeling this store?!" was the question being asked by the customer, lol. The employee said it was something Kroger liked to do every five years. In reality, it had been a decade since the last remodel, but I don't think that was the answer the customer wanted to hear!
I guess there is some good news and bad news with the remodel. The bad news, aside from the Artisan decor itself which looks terrible on the huge walls of a Grocery Palace, is that they are pulling up the Albertsons Grocery Palace floor. I'm very disappointed about that, but the good news of sorts is that, believe it or not, Kroger is putting in fake wood vinyl flooring throughout the store. Yep, a Krogertsons without tile scar! I'd still rather have the old Grocery Palace floor, but at least it is getting some kind of floor and that's unusual at a Kroger these days.
Mike photographed this store a couple of days ago and has some great photos from it which I'm sure everyone here will want to see. I think Mike said he's going to work on a post about it which will be up on HHR soon so that'll be something to be on the lookout for!
Yeah, I don't feel like I've seen this sort of mailbox at other shopping centers of this sort, but I'm not sure how much of that is just due to me not paying attention!
DeleteHmm, that will be interesting to see! I haven't seen Kroger using woodgrain vinyl like that in recent years... hopefully that's a sign of them changing for the better, but I won't hold my breath.
It is not completely unprecedented for the Kroger Houston Division to use the fake wood flooring, but it is almost always used at much older locations from the 1970s. These locations likely have terrible looking concrete floors and those stores are often expansion stores so there will be problems exposing that concrete to the public (not that that stops Kroger from doing it sometimes....or often, lol). At wealthier area Kroger where Kroger does not want to offend the shoppers with concrete floors, Kroger generally keeps the old Millennium or Script era vinyl floors and maybe touches them up a little bit.
DeleteNow, this store is not an older store. It is not an expansion store and it isn't a wealthy area store (though it isn't a low-income area store either). So, with all of that, I'm not sure why Kroger is using a vinyl floor here and not elsewhere! I'm not complaining given that this is a Kroger very close to me though! That Grocery Palace floor isn't really any older than the Millennium-era floors Kroger has kept around in places, but I guess Kroger figured it was finally time to get rid of the Beverage Boulevard, the toy blocks, and all of that, lol. Millennium might have been cartoonish, but not so much on the floors, lol.
I wouldn't be optimistic about the Seattle Krogers using real floors. It would probably be expensive to put those floors in a Fred Meyer and, well, we can tell what Kroger thinks of QFC based on the divestment plan!