Vons Lifestyle remodels of old interiors

Uh...California.

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runchadrun
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Vons Lifestyle remodels of old interiors

Post by runchadrun »

It looks like Safeway is finally getting around to remodeling the Vons stores with the old black/red/white interiors. (When were they first done? About 1990?) So if you're looking to take pictures do it while you can.

This morning I drove by the Mission Hills store on the corner of Devonshire and Sepulveda and saw the construction equipment outside and could see work going on inside. I'm pretty sure this store is a former Market Basket, which Vons would have gotten in 1982. I've always avoided this store since it's small, there's no service bakery, and it doesn't seem very clean. It will be interesting to see what, if any, additional amenities are included in this store. There's a Starbucks in the next block, though that's never stopped them from putting one in a Vons before.
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Post by Jeff »

Get those pictures!

Montebello still has the red-white last time I went a few months back. This was a former Thriftimart-Safeway.
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Post by runchadrun »

I was just in the aforementioned Mission Hills store. According to the cashier it was a Smith's Food King and not a Market Basket. This is only their second remodel in 27 years, while the Granada Hills store a couple miles away which opened in 1996 has been remodeled twice already.

There are some great terrazzo floors that have been uncovered but are sadly all cut up and are being covered with concrete and then with the faux wood flooring. Most of the store has a light brown flooring and in the produce department it's still polished. Up in front of the registers it's alternating black and green diagonal stripes, about 2 feet wide. The cashier said that the floors were built to last a lifetime and was also sad that they wouldn't be saved.

I asked about a Starbucks and she said that they are over budget so it won't be installed until February. (There is a Starbucks a half block away already.) And they are installing something of a service bakery, but only to bake bread. It will be in back and the bread will be brought out. Immediately adjacent to the store is an independent bakery so between space and possible lease issues that's probably why that is being done.
WhenenRome

Post by WhenenRome »

runchadrun wrote:I was just in the aforementioned Mission Hills store. According to the cashier it was a Smith's Food King and not a Market Basket.
I'm pretty sure you're both correct. This store, like many others with nearly the exact same style of fascia, was originally a Market Basket. Then a banner of Kroger, Market Basket was undergoing a chain-wide rennovation when the State of California brought them up on anti-trust violations and declared them a monopoly. Market Basket / Korger was forced to sell-out of California circa 1982. *** ETA: This is incorrect; see follow-up post below. ***

Smith's Food King acquired the vast majority of those former Market Basket stores (ladened with talking cash registers), but lasted only about two years. They failed, closed the stores and sold them off piece by piece. You'll find the same mission style storefront in Pasadena, which ever since has been a Ralphs (ironically, a Kroger banner again). The Covina location, which I grew up around, became a Lucky in 1985. That closed after Albertson's acquired Lucky, because only a block away there was a then-new Albertson's that had opened in - of all things - a previous Smith's store (one of the huge superstores that was part of Smith's failed CA comeback attempt in the 90's).

So for only a relatively brief time between Market Basket and Vons, the Mission Hills store was a Smith's Food King.
Last edited by WhenenRome on 03 Oct 2006 20:09, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by klkla »

WhenenRome wrote:Market Basket was undergoing a chain-wide rennovation when the State of California brought them up on anti-trust violations and declared them a monopoly. Market Basket / Korger was forced to sell-out of California circa 1982.
That is absolutely not true. Kroger sold Market Basket because with only 65 stores they realized they had no chance of ever gaining significant market share in the greater Los Angeles area. They had remodeled many of the stores, as you mentioned, but the results were below expectations and they decided to sell the stores piecemeal (each store sold individually rather than as a full chain to avoid any possible anti-trust problems).

However, the state of California NEVER declared them a monopoly. You might be confusing the feds actions against Vons/Shopping Bag in the 1960's?
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Post by klkla »

WhenenRome wrote:Smith's Food King acquired the vast majority of those former Market Basket stores (ladened with talking cash registers), but lasted only about two years. They failed, closed the stores and sold them off piece by piece.
This is incorrect, although Smiths did acquire some stores.

The break up occurred like this:
Ralphs - 16 stores
Boys Markets - 13 stores
Hughes Markets - 7 stores
Smiths - 6 stores
Vons - 4 stores

The other 19 were either closed or sold to independents.

Smiths was sold to Lucky in 1984 and left for basically the same reason as Kroger/Market Basket, because they were too small of a presence in the market to make a difference. A few years later they tried to enter the market again with large 65,000-85,000 square foot stores but failed because they were not able to get enough good sites.
WhenenRome

Post by WhenenRome »

klkla wrote: That is absolutely not true... the state of California NEVER declared them a monopoly. You might be confusing the feds actions against Vons/Shopping Bag in the 1960's?
Ow! That almost felt like a mild spanking!! :-)

Seriously, though - I should have mentioned that I was only a 9-year-old recalling this... so, no, I probably wasn't thinking of anything from the 1960's.

What I probably did was mind-jumble news of the state blocking a chain-wide sale to some competitor, preventing a monopoly. I know I'm not pulling that out of the sky. You even mentioned the avoidance of anti-trust problems, and I know at minimal that I heard news to that effect - that the State of California was somehow involved in the Market Basket closure. The phrases of "monopoly" and "anti-trust" still come to mind. (Yes, I was an observant 9-year-old!).

***ETA: Okay, I did some research and figured out exactly what I was thinking of:

Some of the grocery chains that ultimately acquired the Market Basket stores did so in a most unconventional manner, via a proposal from Kroger which some accused of being illegal and provoked scrutiny. These stores (at the time, the only involved company disclosed was Federated) purchased a significant chunk of Kroger stock through a broker, then traded it back for respective proportional ownership of most Market Basket locations. This meant it was a tax-free exchange and that is what led to all the controversey and attempts to block the sale. However, the deal still went through.

According to the archived news articles I found, this deal involved between 39-to-41 of 63 Market Basket locations. The rest were to be sold off independently. ***

I apologize for scrambling that up.
Last edited by WhenenRome on 03 Oct 2006 21:41, edited 2 times in total.
WhenenRome

Post by WhenenRome »

klkla wrote:
WhenenRome wrote:Smith's Food King acquired the vast majority of those former Market Basket stores (ladened with talking cash registers), but lasted only about two years. They failed, closed the stores and sold them off piece by piece.
This is incorrect, although Smiths did acquire some stores......
.......A few years later they tried to enter the market again with large 65,000-85,000 square foot stores but failed because they were not able to get enough good sites.
Again, in the mind of 9-year old that sees stores in his area become Smith's Food King, it plays out differently - and stayed that way in my mind for over 2 decades... to the point of where I took it as fact. So again, I apologize... But you have to admit that at very least, I had the talking cash-register thing right! Because those I damn well remember! :-D

However, my memory of the second Smith's outing is a little more clear. My understanding is that they pulled out of the market here simply because their stores, with the exception of just a few (one of those few being the Glendora location on Route 66 & Grand Ave. - now a Ralphs) were all losing money.

In any case, I loved Market Basket. I remember going to look at the live lobsters swimming around in their meat section. Little did I know they would be someone's dinner...

OK, so we were talking about Vons? They've become my new favorite store. I love the Lifestyle conversions they've done in both the North Glendora (Foothill Blvd. & Grand Ave.) and Covina (Badillo St. & Grand Ave.) locations. They're very attractive, comfortable, and easy to shop.
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Canyon Country Vons

Post by mfricke »

Well, since the topic is about Safeway Lifestyle remodel of old Vons interiors... Last time I was out in Canyon Country, I noticed the Vons store there on Sand Canyon and the 14 Freeway still had the old blacnk and white interior. Considering all the other Santa Clarita Vons and Pavilions stores have new interiors, I wonder when this store will be updated.

Also, the Pavilions on Robertson and Santa Monica in West Hollywood still has the original Pavilions design from the Bill Davila era. This store is in a very trendy part of town, and a few blocks outside of the Beverly Hills city limits. The interiors are old and claustrophobic-feeling. Why has the company not-yet re-done this store? Any ideas??? Obviously, the demographics are there...
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Post by steps »

I used to work at that store...that store makes close to $1 million a week....they didn't want to close the store down and lose its customers. Also they city was in the way of the remodel. Now the company and the city have compromised. They are tearing down the old store, expainding the store even more and building a 3 level parking structure. From what i know, i think this is the only Pavilions store left with this prototype. I'm scanning my memory and this is the only store i can think of that still has the white/purple interors. I personaly lke this prototype. Its very 80's. The very first stores in the chain usually had very interresting signs designed!

The west hollywood store is closing at the end of the year for the remodel. The store will be closed for 1 year and then re-open. If this store looks like burbanks, they are going to put every store in the surrounding area out of business.
Pavilions, the new, the unusal, the BEST of everything!
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Post by runchadrun »

Back to the subject of the Mission Hills store...

While looking up stuff on Fox Markets in the LA Times database I found an article from March 1959 about Fox building a new store at Sepulveda and Brand which sounds something like the Vons store so I wonder if they are one and the same. The only problem is that Brand is about 1/2 mile north of Devonshire. It's possible that it's an issue of the streets having different routings and names, which is entirely possible since I've seen area maps from the 50s. Or it's possible that the center was built but torn down either for the 118 Freeway or for a postal facility but it probably isn't much newer than 1959.
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Post by runchadrun »

Upon further research, I found out that the Fox Market was located where a postal facility sits today.
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