Since this was an early Modern remodel, it has the features that were cut from later versions, including the local flair aisle names -- always a nice touch. I'm not sure why they decided to pick such generic names for the aisles over here, though! Looking through the rest of my pictures, it appears that most of the street names they chose for this store are for minor residential streets very close to the store, instead of major streets and other relatively important landmarks like they normally do (at least based on the limited number of stores I've visited that have this local flair at all).
I knew that this store has a really hideous concrete floor, which certainly took some enthusiasm away from visiting it versus the Albertsons on the other side of town, but I forgot that it also has Modern! I didn't even know Modern existed in the Portland Division. Heck, Proto-Lifestyle still exists in the Portland Division, so seeing Modern would be a real disappointment!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of disappointments, I went to Kroger today. With that, you can imagine the disappointments, lol. There was an unexpected one though! I went to a Krogertsons first, one I usually go to and they're pretty good (even if their Neighborhood decor isn't), unlike a lot of other locations near me, about stocking the store and having a good selection of milk with distant expiration dates. Unfortunately, the expiration dates there today was not up to that location's usual standards so I went to another Kroger on my way back.
Now, I knew this other Kroger was in the process of getting a renovation. It had Bountiful with an original Millennium floor. The Millennium floor is still around, and I think it'll remain, but Bountiful is gone now and replaced with some new decor package I do not recognize. Maybe I should have taken pictures, but my stop was very quick because the milk at that location had even worse dates than the Neighborhood location! I should have known!
Anyway, the new decor is rather Artisan-like in many ways, especially with the abundance of white paint, but it isn't Artisan. It uses 'Fresh Cart' (spoon cart) logos in the wall designs, at least in some of them, and the pharmacy uses a lot of Kroger's modern logos for their pharmacy departments. All in all, it is rather bland for the same reasons why Artisan is bland, and certainly it loses some of the upscale look that Bountiful had. OTOH, the white paint does make the store brighter looking, but that was never a big problem at this location since it has a high drop ceiling and a Millennium floor. So, yeah, maybe you know something about this new decor package, though maybe not since I have no photos of it!
I saw some of the wall signs up-close, they are very cheaply made, either out of corrugated cardboard or plastic since you can see the ribbing from underneath the visible layer. Hey, it is Kroger decor, the cheapness won't be any surprise, lol. The aisle markers appear to be Artisan ones, so no big change there.
Oh, the new decor Kroger has bananas at 5 cents/lb. higher than the Neighborhood Krogertsons! Strange since Kroger does not use price discrimination in Texas, but I guess there is still some variance in pricing.
Since Kroger could not sell me milk with decent dates on them, I ended up going to the Food Town in the old 1980 Safeway near me. That's always a fun visit anyway, and I noticed they had new (well, new used) checkstands. Gone are the Albertsons turntables they got from the 2002 Houston Albertsons liquidation sales and in are some Kroger-style double belted checkstands, probably purchased from a recently closed Houston Kroger. I would say I will miss the Albertsons turntables, but I won't. Those were pretty terrible in terms of how much they could hold. Oh, and Food Town had 5 manned checkouts open, in addition to the self-checkouts!