I was talking about this with Anonymous in Houston in the comments yesterday -- Grocery Palace is well-known as a fun decor package (almost universally the first example anyone thinks of in that genre), but it has some notable classy/stately elements too. The deli is the biggest example of that, which does make it stick out (in a boring way) from the rest of the store to some extent, but that contrast is part of what makes Grocery Palace so interesting. In isolation, this looks right at home with Kroger's Flagship packages! Things would have been a bit different in Grocery Palace's early days with the giant, cartoony props and signs overhead, but it's still interesting to note. It's also interesting how similar this store's wall tile looks to
what some of the PF&H stores got -- both Grocery Palace and PF&H were extremely inconsistent with their wall tile, but if I saw this in an ex-Grocery Palace, I would assume it was from the PF&H remodel rather than being original!
This does look pretty classy, at least if we ignore the giant black hole and the open ceiling! Granted, it probably helps that the hanging spinning chef isn't there along with the Cheep Chicken sign from your previous photos! Perhaps because the department signage was on the hanging signs, Albertsons was able to give what remains a more consistent, classy look rather than breaking those elements up by putting a signage area somewhere.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the black hole, it is interesting to compare this to my local Krogertsons and Randalbertsons. Even with the drop ceiling, the black hole is, to me at least, still quite large at my local Krogertsons. That said, we can clearly see that the drop ceiling does help cover at least a pretty good chunk of the black hole. That really shows how tall the ceilings and walls are at these Grocery Palace stores! Krogertsons: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/IMG_4770-jpeg.avif
The Randalbertsons doesn't have a black hole at all since the walls are finished there (something I'm guessing Safeway did after they acquired this store from Albertsons). Also, it appears that the Randalbertsons has the same kind of lights as this Albertsons. I'm not sure if either of them are original to the Albertsons or if maybe these are more recent Safeway/Albertsons lights: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_8667-jpeg.webp
Yeah, the black hole isn't a good look. It looks even weirder with a drop ceiling like in that Krogersons! I think the lighting in this store and your Randalls is pretty new (it looks like LED to me), but it's strange they decided to install hanging lights in a store with a drop ceiling! I think the original lighting was more like what the Kroger has.
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