Groceteria.com

My last post somehow was posted twice, and it would not let me delete the second one here, so I just erased it. I don't know how the duplicate post happened.

This store converted to a Safeway, the second time the store changed names (I assume the Buttrey conversion, like many of the late 1990s Albertsons conversions, was done without a closure/reset). There's no aerials between 1965 and 1996, and the 1985 topo doesn't have it. Further oddities come in a...

On a similar note, did any store ever use the orangeish colored sodium vapor lights as interior lighting? Seems like a terrible choice as far as color of light, but offered somewhat better efficiency than mercury vapor. i have never personally seen sodium vapor in use inside a store.

Roseburg had a Warehouse Foods in kind of an odd location at the east end of Garden Valley Boulevard that survived for a couple of years after the opening of the current mainline store several miles away. When the new store opened, the food section was also in the Warehouse Foods model: center-stor...

I don't know if this still happens, but do remember when Albertsons took over the Safeway at Overland & Vista in Boise. (after Safeway had pulled out of Boise proper, but still had stores in Mountain Home, Nampa, and other surrounding towns) After Albertsons took over, the store operated as an A...

I do remember when Fred Meyer opened their first full-line store in Boise in Garden City, and they were promoting the food department as Warehouse Foods. It did have an open, warehouse ceiling, along with the home improvement area, but most of the store had a suspended ceiling. I remember when nearl...

Longview, which opened in the mid 70s, had one. At first it was in the main building, then moved into a building in front of the store (which, oddly enough, was an old Marina Safeway) during a remodel around 1989-1990 which placed sports, home improvement, auto, and garden center into that building....

The mercury vapor lighting had two major advantages over traditional fluorescent lighting. First, fluorescent lights require two components: bulb and ballast. In this system, the ballast boosts the power to the bulb to create light. Often, the ballast goes out before the bulb, thus requiring an ele...

It seems like there were two periods of time where many larger stores decided to experiment with mercury vapor lighting of various types. It seems like the advantage here was a relatively long life of the bulbs, however, they were known to gradually dim as they aged and tended to shift colors. A bul...

I want to say that Fisher's Landing and Orchards in Vancouver opened at the same time as they are identical buildings. I used to live near the Orchards store and remember it having the home improvement area as well.

The Andersons announced earlier this year that they are shutting down their retail operations. I have been wondering if any older photos of the stores themselves exist. I have seen a few from the 1950s, but very little from that point until about the mid-1980s. The current Maumee store itself dates ...

Just a little update....I was in The Dalles visiting family today and noticed that the Albertsons building has been demolished, and a new Goodwill thrift store building is now on the site. The rest of the strip mall looked unchanged though. I was kinda expecting the Grocery Outlet in that strip mall...

Tigard and Longview have Les Schwab Tire Centers in those buildings today.

The Longview location you can tell at least was built around the same time as the main Fred Meyer store in the mid-1970s. The Les Schwab has a few features shared with the main Fred Meyer store.

A fair number of the exteriors have retained their original signage through the years, but there are exceptions. Thief River Falls, MN actually has a "Funky P" in an oval still up on the side. And some have a common, current JCPenney sign. Pendleton, OR (which I have only seen in a recent ...

Just wanted to mention that I drove by Southcenter yesterday and noticed that the new Sears logo is now on the outside of the building (plus a very obvious rectangular space of new paint where the old signs were). My guess is that the inside has probably been redone as well, but I had no extra time ...