[TenPoundHammer]

I've never really thought about it, but my local grocery store has one of the weirdest layouts ever. A couple aisles are diagonal, and there's even an aisle shaped like a lowercase "r". Mom told me that in the store's first year (it opened in May 1990), the aisles were all diagonal an very short, forming a herringbone pattern. There're still some vestiges of this layout, mainly in the fact that the floor tiles are still diagonal, and there're a couple diagonal side aisles. The (now smaller) service counter used to be rounded, with the more circular part being the video rental section. When this was removed, it became the bottle deposit section until that was moved to the back room, and this part is now additional retail space.

Also, Save-a-Lot has a very weird but effective layout. Literally every one I've ever been to has forced you to walk through the rightmost aisle to get to the rest of the store. I find it strange that, with Save-a-Lot being a known moocher of former buildings, they at least design the interiors consistently.

Finally, there's the Kroger in Grand Blanc, Michigan. According to my mother, this store (an anchor to a very small mall) in the early 70s. It seems to have been expanded in the greenhouse era and then sold to Kessel Foods, which bought a bunch of Krogers (and later, a couple Giantways), only to revert to Kroger just like almost every other Kessel in the late 90s-early 2000s. It's sort of a corner entrance; the main entry leads you right down the main entryway, with all the other aisles on your left. I have no idea where the entry was when it was still anchored to the mall, but I would guess a left entrance off the mall concourse.

It looks like the store took out part of the mall to expand, gobbling up an Ace Hardware and a drugstore. I think they might have torn down part of the mall to do this, as the Kroger's roof is higher than the rest of the mall. Here's what it looks like now: http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v ... &encType=1

Here're pics of the three layouts of which I speak:

[rich]

The only diagonal format I've seen has been in Rite-Aid remodels and new builds from about 5 years ago. It creates a confusing layout, although I think checkers and pharmacy staff have an easier time keeping an eye out for shoplifters.

The Save-A-Lot format is what supermarkets commonly used in the 50s and well into the 70s. It's easy to exit, but it forces you to circumnavigate a good chunk of the store after you enter. My old Publix in Decatur, GA (a former A&P Future store) was like this. Most of the old supers I recall growing up, built in the early/mid-50s onward into the early 70s used that configuration, unless they had two entrances and a horizontal axis for the aisles---that design was common in shopping centers with front & rear parking and some urban locations with a sidewalk entrance and arear parking lot. The Kroger may have had something like that when it was built.The few mall Krogers I've known had a mall entrance and a second entrance at the other end of the checkouts. They would have done this even in a small mall to keep cars out of the mall and make it easy for people to exit (rather tyhan going through non-electric eye doors at the entrance to the mall.

Sav-A Lots appear to be about the size of a 50s super---15K sf, so it's not surprising they'd use a lay out that fits that store size and maximizes shopping. You can probably use a layout like that up to a 30K sf store, but the width needed would make it more more difficult to do that in a 60K sf store, like chains build now.

[jimbobga]

The weirdest layout ever had to be the Harry's stores in the metro Atlanta area, specifically the store in Jonesboro/Morrow, GA. Once a customer was in the store, they had absolutely no idea where they were because the aisles were a total maze. Once you entered a shopping aisle, there was no choice whatsoever except to travel down the next aisle. While this wouldn't bother someone who had a cart and was accustomed to shopping an entire store, it did create issues when one visited the store to pick up one or two specific items; becuase there was no back or front aisle, it was impossible to see locator signs so, once again, the whole store was covered hunting for these few items. It worked the same way when you decided you wanted to get something you had seen earlier, and then couldn't find it.
Not a whle lot different from the way Ikea does their stores, actually.

While 60's-era Publix stores in Florida weren't overly unusual in their layout, it was odd that what most folks except to find first in a grocery store actually came last: produce. In addition to produce and the ice cream cases being at the far left side of the store, a customer would have to traverse the center aisle between the registers and the food aisle in order to get to the produce department because ice cream creezers blocked access to produce if a customer turned left upon entering the store. By the time Publix expanded into Georgia in 1990, produce was located to the right [and was not pre-packaged as was the case in the Florida stores.]

A strangely-arranged Publix in Gainesville, Georgia, replaced an A&P west of town. This was a long, narrow store with a side entrance. Consisting of four very long aisles, all perishables were located at what whould have to be called the end of the store. It was a highly claustrophbic shopping experience.

The former Winn-Dixie in the Habersham shopping center had an odd layout in that after entering the produce section to the left, four aisles ran parallel to the side wall; upon approaching the middle of the store, all of the aisles shifted 90 degrees so that the shelves were parallel to the front of the building. This was only changed recently after being operated as Jones' Red and White since about 1980.

[rich]

produce is a profit center. A produce dept with decent turnover makes more money than dry grocery. The same is true of meat dept---but it's often awkward to put that first because of the butchering space--usually it;s in back. I can recall several superstore Krogers where the produce came first and several Cleveland Pick-n-Pays with that layout including our local one. Usually Kroger put the bakery first. The Russo's Stop-n-Shop in Cleveland Heights had two entrances, but functionally most people came in and went past a leased bakery and then into produce--a very profitable layout!

[Super S]

I can think of a couple. Stock Market Foods used a diagonal layout. While I can't say how popular it was up north, here in Longview, WA it was not well-received and the store they built was not around for very long. Also, Winco as well as Top Foods have a layout that takes you first through the produce department.

One that really stands out though is not a grocery store, but a former Rink's store (originally Ontario) in Sandusky, Ohio. This building had a Pick-N-Pay on the other side, and there was a short time they moved the checkouts facing the wall dividing the two stores instead of the front. This did not last very long before they were moved back to the front.

[umtrr-author]

The Price-Rite near here in Rochester (NY) has a layout larger than but similar in intent to the Save-A-Lot-- entry is through the produce section and thence to the back of the store before being able to double back through any other aisle to the checkouts.

The few Aldi Stores that I have been to also force the shopper all the way to the back before being able to reach the checkout. These are relatively small stores with just three aisles.

I'm not sure I would call these layouts "odd" per se, but I would call them "annoying"...

[klkla]

The original Ralphs Giant stores in Southern California (most of which were later shrunk and converted to Food4Less) had a format where you had to enter produce on the left front side of the store and go all the way through it to the left wall in order to enter the store. Then the Service Deli and Bakery ran the entire length of that wall pretty much forcing you to pass them, as well. The grocery aisles ran sideways instead of back to from (Similar to a WinCo).

In another post on this thread someone mentioned meat is usually in the back, which is a good idea in my opinion. I was once in a Pão de Açúcar supermarket in Brazil and the meat prep area is behind a glass window next to the checkstands at the front of the store. One day while waiting in line I happened to be waiting in line and looked over and the butcher tossed a huge octopus on the counter and started pulling it apart with his hands. Ink (or blood or whatever they have) was splashing everywhere including against the glass and I was so grossed out I couldn't eat what I bought... LOL... but I digress.

[TenPoundHammer]

Here's a really weird Kmart layout in Fenton, Michigan. I don't know what's weirder: the diagonal aisleways, or the fact that the Kmart Café is also a custard shop and has an external entrance.



I don't know what the thinking is with this layout. Perhaps a prototype? Here it is on Bing maps:

http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v ... &encType=1

I think this store opened in or around 1997, replacing a much smaller store farther out of town which became a Farmer Jack and is now vacant. No doubt this store is feeling a pinch now that Walmart across the street has gone Supercenter, and there's now a (strangely small) Target on the SE side of the same exit.

[jimbobga]

The KMart in Peachtree City, GA, had the exact same layout until a re-do about two years ago. There was only one exception, and that was the restaurant and pharmacy were reversed. Those diagonal aisles looked diagonal from above, but when seen up close, they were just carpeted areas between racks and not true aisles like those around the inner perimeter of the store.

[rich]

Clothing is the most profitable thing they sell, so the idea is to walk through or by it, with the assumption that most shoppers are women. In the mid-80s, K-Mart had a prototype for remodels that was somewhat similar---men's and women's clothing each were set-up on the middle, each with department store-type layouts like the one here. Junk food and other impulse items were in front on the way to the cash registers. The cafe was in back to eliminate the stench of cheap subs and popcorn. hard goods wer the furthest away from the entrance, so so you had to walk by or thru the soft goods to get to housewares, automotive, etc. they never adopted it (partly because they abandoned any effort to remodel), although the pilots apparently were succesful.

[TenPoundHammer]

The Kroger in Essexville, Michigan also has a very odd layout. It has three "main" aisles paralleling the back wall: one at the front, one at the back, and one in the middle. The middle "main" aisle is interrupted in the middle of the store for the frozen food section, which stretches from front to back. If I recall correctly, frozen food also has walls separating it from the rest of the store. I know this store is under 20 years old; it opened as a Yankee discount store, becoming Tradeway and then Meijer Square (a failed Meijer prototype which was just a discount store). Kroger used to be at the east end of the strip, in a very obvious 1970s store that is now an ACO hardware and a dead Big Lots. I think Meijer Square closed in 1992.

Meijer in Birch Run, Michigan, a very recent store, also has a strange layout. The grocery section is along the left-hand wall of the store, and then it curves along the back wall — except for frozen food, which is way the heck over at the other side of the store, next to baby furniture. The side-wall portion of the grocery section has 45-degree aisles if I'm not mistaken, and the back-wall portion of the grocery section has aisles perpendicular to the back wall.

[rich]

Kroger has purpose built stores from the greenhouse era, which have a wall separating the produce department from everything else. I've seen two of these: one on Ponce de Leon Ave. in Atlanta (known locally as the "Crack Kroger" or the "Crazy Kroger" because of all the street people in the area, although it's not a bad store) and the Holland-Sylvania Road store near I-475 in Toledo. I remember when Holland-Sylvania was built--early 80s and it had the ugly 80s interior when I was there a few years ago.

[jimbobga]

The Kroger at Braelinn Village* in Peachtree City, GA, also had a wall separating produce and the early versions of organic foods from the rest of the store. The wall, which was not a partition but went all the way to the ceiling, began about 1/4 of the way back into the store and continued uninterrupted until one reached the back of the store, where access to the the meat department was possible. In the main part of the store, the wall was for canned goods for its whole length. This wall was removed around 2006.

The same wall divider was used by Ingle's in the late eighties, and they still exist...although I have only seen two examples of this type of Ingle's architechure. It could best be described as looking somewhat like a knockoff of the A&P "centennial" stores, but with two side entrances rather than one main set of doors in the front. One of these is in Fayetteville, GA., and the other is somewhere in the far eastern metro Atlanta area.

Nothing was really odd about the layout of either the Kroger or the Ingles store...but the wall in both instances made the produce/organic sections feel claustrophobic and somewhat dark.

*the Braelinn Village store was a typical slanted glass front atrium Kroger from 1989; just last month the entire front of the shopping center was ripped off from one end to the other, including all of the masonary work on the Kroger. The slanted glassartium remains. It will be interesting to see how this is adapted into the new look of the center.

[Jeff]

All the Food 4 Less stores here and Superior Markets here make you go through the produce first then you can go down the other aisles in the back of the store by the meat/dairy. Both chains have almost identical layouts, except F4L has the Bakery and Deli usually in the back behind produce, while Superior has it in front of the store.

I know this not really supermarket related, but the Home Depot in Whittier on Washington has a weird layout. It has one main Diagonal Aisle and everything fans out from it, like a Rite Aid store. The Flooring is in the front when you enter, lighting in the back corner, and lumber to the side/rear. The entrance of the store and exit are at a corner of a building.

[TenPoundHammer]

My local IGA did the "weird layout" thing too. First, in the 1980s, they moved the entry from the front of the store to the back, because the larger parking lot was in the back. Oh yeah, and they built that tiny Dairy Queen RIGHT IN FRONT of the former entrance way back in the 1950s. The old entry formed a "nook" in the store which is still used as DQ seating to this day. Said IGA also had produce in a sort of "nook" in the back of the store, to the right of the deli. When Dollar General took it over, they made the aisles (much) narrower and took out most of the former back space of the deli for retail space. The "nook" is still there. After maybe a year in business, DG switched 1/4 of the store from east-west aisles to north-south; a good decision, as it has made the store less claustrophobic.

Also not a grocery one, but the layout of the Sears in Saginaw's Fashion Square Mall always baffled me. If I recall correctly, there are five entries on the store: two on the west side, and one on every other side, with the south entry being the mall entry. The mall entry doesn't line up with the north entry, so to go out of the store and to the north-side parking lot, you have to enter, turn left and then turn right.