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Here are a few pictures that I took of the Smith's stores in Riverton, Wyoming and Columbia Falls, Montana.

The Columbia Falls, Montana, Smith's pictures are first. This used to be a unique grocery-only Fred Meyer. After Fred Meyer bought Smith's, they turned the store over to Smith's. I'm not sure if this was under Fred Meyer or Kroger ownership. Smith's stores in Montana are fairly sporadic (they bought a bunch of former Albertsons or Buttery stores when Alby's bought Buttrey and ended up closing a good number of them) and there aren't any more Fred Meyers (there used to be). In this case, there is a new Smith's in Kalispell, approximately a half hour away. Smith's hasn't done anything to the interior of this store, besides putting up a few new signs, as far as I can tell. It definitely feels like a Fred Meyer, between the shelving, the checker patterns on the walls, and the font of the signs. I tried mentioning things like "This is a weird Smith's" when I checked out, but the checkers didn't say anything interesting. The pictures are from June. The only other supermarket in Columbia Falls is a new Super 1 Foods. The Super 1 was more like a WinCo store than a traditional supermarket. It seems like they had Western Family products in there. The store was nice and my checker was the manager.

The Riverton Smith's looks like it was built as an original Smith's sometime in the early 1990s. They haven't done much to the exterior, but the interior seems to have received a very boring, underwhelming remodel. They painted over the little Smith's logos that were presumably on the enormous bank of lights over the checkstands, but the lights were still there. Riverton has a Safeway, this Smith's, and a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The Safeway had received a nice remodel. The Wal-Mart was like any other Wal-Mart, but became my friend when I noticed that the company car was completely out of oil at 8:30 a.m. and decided that an oil change was a good idea. Anyways, those pictures are from late March or early April.

Here's the link. Enjoy: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=aig ... &y=-2kk9eb

The Montana Fred Meyer stores were turned over to Smith's when Fred Meyer was independent from Kroger. In fact there used to be 3 Fred Meyer stores in Montana. They were in Kalispell, Columbia Falls and Polson. I do believe that the only full line Fred Meyer store of the bunch was the Kalispell store. But these stores were not new builds for Fred Meyer. They were part of a 3 store chain called "B&B Stores". I believe that Fred Meyer acquired B&B because they were the parent of a Spokane based wholesaler called, "The Roundup Company". Or it could be that Roundup owned B&B. Also included in the acquision was a warehouse store in Soap Lake, WA called "Consumer Warehouse Foods". This was one of those old time stores where you marked the prices on the product with a grease pencil. The Consumer Warehouse Foods concept was eventually expanded to some Fred Meyer food departments on a limited basis, when food and the other departments were seperate. Getting back to Freddy's in Montana, does anyone know why they never expanded in Montana beyond the 3 stores?

Gardnerville, NV:

Original interior. Produce floor is not original. The candy/energy bar display used to be books.

I thought they used to list Fred Meyers in Great Falls and Missoula too in their ads.