This picture turned out frustratingly blurry, since I wanted to show the odd tile this deli has! Instead of replacing everything with Lifestyle's standard diamond tiles, it looks like Safeway left most of the wall tile in place and just installed a new beige accent stripe in the middle of the plain white tile. That isn't something I've seen very often (in fact, I think this is the only time I've seen it in this area) -- even in cheaper remodels and older stores, Safeway was very consistent about installing the full version of Lifestyle in every store and not leaving remnants (note, I'm specifically talking about the Seattle Division -- other divisions were far less consistent!).
This photo reminds me of something I've been meaning to ask you! I'm sure you've heard about the Boar's Head recalls concerning listeria. Given that some Safeways in your area have Boar's Head as opposed to the more common Safeway/Albertsons Dietz & Watson products, has there been any issues with that? Have Boar's Head locations started to stock Dietz & Watson instead?
ReplyDeleteThat listeria scare mostly affected the Northeast and Midwest and the news of it came down just as I was starting my trip. We normally buy sandwiches on vacation to eat on picnics, as we did a lot of in Oregon, but we decided not to do that given the listeria scare and the unknowns about it. During the vacation, it started to come out that the listeria was linked to Boar's Head products specifically. I guess we still could have bought Dietz & Watson stuff from Shaw's once that news came out, but I think that came out right when we were leaving Shaw's territory so we just ended up not eating any sandwiches.
But, anyway, I know some people have criticized Safeway/Albertsons for selling Dietz & Watson versus the more advertised Boar's Head, but I wonder if that criticism is still around now! I'm sure someone in Pleasanton was going around saying "How do you like Dietz & Watson (or Boar's Head!) now!", lol. For what it is worth, I did try chicken strips from the Shaw's deli! They were okay, but I probably should have bought the hot ones rather than the cold ones since all I had to heat it was a microwave.
Related to the other photo with the BBQ pit, I went to my local Randall's today and saw that someone had bought a huge pool floatie type thing and they were trying to tie it to the roof of their Lexus SUV! I guess people do actually buy those things from Safeway after all so I guess that's why they sell them, but I was still a little surprised to see that!
I also knew that this had happened because Je of the Louisiana & Texas Retail Blog had posted photos of it (he was at my local Randall's to chronicle the demise of Red Box), but my local Randall's was damaged during Hurricane Beryl. The roof in the dairy corner was damaged which caused some big leaks in the drop ceiling. I'll link to Je's photos, but the damage still has not been repaired. Hopefully they can get to it soon. Your eyes are not deciving you in the second photo, the lights are indeed dipping and they are still like that! I'm surprised they have not closed off that portion of the store. In other news, you can see in the photo that Randall's has relocated the eggs out of that cooler on the wall and they're being sold out of a coffin cooler exclusively now. Obviously that Colorful Lifestyle v2 egg photo is a tad misleading now, but it was accurate when it was installed.
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I'm not really sure -- none of the stores I visit regularly have Boar's Head. It's still pretty rare in the Seattle area (unlike some other divisions). I guess that's not a bad thing, considering everything that's going on right now!
DeleteWow, I don't think I've ever seen anyone (around here) buying stuff like that from Safeway! (Hawaii or California, maybe.) Seems like it would be easier to deflate it to fit it inside the car...
Yikes, that's not good! I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere around that collapsing bit of ceiling! Hopefully they'll get that all fixed quickly... Eggs being in a coffin case are weird, but not as weird as the shape of the boxes of butter in that picture! I once got butter from Kroger in a box like that (it was in the height of supply chain issues at a point when butter was one of the hard-to-find items around here -- I wonder what part of the country they ended up bringing that in from) and even the individual sticks are a different shape from what I'm used to. Butter around here comes in a flat, longer box. Even the name brands of butter are different shapes in that picture, which really surprises me!