Back in the day, bulk foods were a big thing for discount grocery stores. I remember when I was a kid, the sketchy Saar's Market Place in Port Angeles had a huge bulk food section, including giant towers of bulk candy that always drew my attention! Over the years, bulk foods have moved back to being mainly found in high-end and natural foods stores, and I have to wonder what happened to change their perception from being a cheap option to being a high-end thing. When stores like Safeway and QFC started adding bulk foods in the 2010s, they marketed it as a fancy feature, not a cost-saving one. And, of course, COVID really killed off bulk foods in mainstream stores -- though surprisingly, this store did still have a small bulk foods section as of 2023, though I'm sure it was a fraction of what it had in the 90s.
Specific to this picture, just look at how horrible the flooring is back here! Proof that it's not just concrete floors that can look terrible, I guess. Also, does anyone have any idea what the "Uts/Snacks" category plaque on aisle 20 could mean? Google only brings up Utz snacks!
The 'uts' probably was 'Nuts' at one time, but the N probably found the freedom that the G was trying to get from the vegetables sign, lol.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this has to be just about the worst vinyl floor I've seen in a long time, maybe not counting some of those horror stories with the early Safeway Modern stores! There's nothing modern about this one though and I'm sure trying to get a concrete floor out of this location will reveal something even worse than the terrible state of the current vinyl floor!
That makes sense! I hadn't even thought about that since category plaques typically are pre-printed rather than being individual letters, but considering the general decrepit state of this store, who knows what might have happened to that sign over the years!
DeleteI can't think of any worse vinyl floors I've seen, even at similarly ancient Fred Meyers! Honestly, if this store had gotten a concrete floor in the 90s, it might look better than this today. But since it was subdivided out of some other larger store, maybe not, considering the concrete floor disasters we've all seen! Those Modern remodels weren't nearly this bad, though considering the floors in question were brand new, that was quite embarrassing for Safeway and would have looked like this in much less time if they had left them as is!