Quick, let's get back to happier topics, like the bakery -- always one of my favorite Grocery Palace departments. This is another place where you can see that Albertsons wanted a classy aesthetic rather than just whimsy, with the trim, old-fashioned ceiling tiles (including some really nice copper tiling), and in most stores, a very nice woodgrain flooring pattern. This store really drew the short straw when it comes to flooring, with just plain vinyl in almost every department -- a real letdown compared to the cool stuff you normally see in Grocery Palaces!
Huh, I wonder why this store does not have the wood/fake wood flooring in the bakery department! I wonder if this is a later Grocery Palace store where maybe they were cheapening out a bit? I'm not sure, but the bakery floor was quite possibly my favorite part of Grocery Palace!
ReplyDeleteEven with Bountiful, the bakery wall decor was quite lacking at my local Krogertsons. As you saw, with Artisan, it is down right pathetic! Certainly the original Albertsons look was much nicer even if it was, probably intentionally, a bit dated looking even when it was new. Also, for whatever reasons, Kroger runs a really basic bakery at my local Krogertsons even by Kroger's standards! By the looks of things, it seems this Albertsons isn't a whole lot better, but maybe that is to be expected in the Albertsons-Safeway era...though I think my local Randall's bakery is better than what I see here. The Shaw's I went to were better than this as well.
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DeleteI don't know -- it doesn't have the cheap (flat) bakery sign that we saw at the SaveMartsons, but this store definitely lacks a lot of the special features of Grocery Palace.
Artisan isn't great (ever), though it is cool that your store still has the bakery soffit bit unlike most ex-Grocery Palaces! I think the bakery decor looks better than what they did in the deli, at least...
As I've grumbled about many times, Safeway's bakeries in this area are pretty bad overall. I'm not sure if this store is run by the Seattle Division or the Portland Division, but it seems to be about average, maybe even a little above average, for Seattle Division stores. That's definitely my biggest frustration with Safeway today, and they just keep finding ways to downgrade their bakeries even further with high prices, bad selection, and more and more stuff being outsourced/mass-produced rather than baked in store.