Safeway Operations

[storewanderer]

My Vons now has local street names on the sign for each aisle. I also saw something similar at a Safeway in Colorado recently.

My city doesn't have too many iconic streets, so while some are well known, there are also some random names that I didn't recognize despite living here for a decade.

Is this in all divisions now?

All stores that got remodeled into Florida (Modern) decor got street named aisles. They did a terrible job choosing street names in many locations.

The colorful lifestyle format got historical pictures on walls, but many are poorly chosen. There is a "historical photo" in a Murrieta store that is actually a sleazy liquor store featured as if it was a local historical landmark.

I could do without the street names on the aisle signs, there is a genuine attempt to be local but it is just cluttered and sloppy. And every time I look at the aisle signs to scan what is on them I read down the list including the street name. This is unnecessary noise; aisle signs should be clear and useful to the customer. Putting the street name on the aisle signs makes them cluttered and does not add any sort of "local" feel since 90% of the customers won't know where said street is and do not care about seeing the street name when they are trying to figure out what aisle the marinades are on or what aisle the light bulbs are hidden on.

If they want any additional words on aisle signs they should make the signs bi-lingual as Kroger does in many stores in diverse areas. But given Safeway's tract record with Hispanic customers over the years plus the price structure in itself is a total turnoff, I guess they don't care to bother to even try on that front.

I'd rather see pictures of food in a grocery store than pictures of a local historical landmark.

Despite all this I do still really like the Colorful Lifestyle package. Florida decor, not so much. I'm already very bored with it. At this point I feel the same way about Florida decor as I do about Lifestyle: drab, boring, needs more color, just not fun. Wal Mart's latest interior is a lot nicer than Florida on the grocery side of the store (looks more like the old 2000 era Jewel interior).

I do wonder if some nicer flooring/flooring variations could improve my opinion of the Florida decor. I have either cement floors or stores that still have Lifestyle floors with Florida decor.

[Alpha8472]

The Pavilions decor is spreading to more Safeway stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. It also has street names. The flooring is faux wood. The most recent Florida decor remodel in Walnut Creek, California had polished concrete floors. It looked ok except for a noticeable slope in the floors. It was uneven.

[ClownLoach]

The Pavilions decor is spreading to more Safeway stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. It also has street names. The flooring is faux wood. The most recent Florida decor remodel in Walnut Creek, California had polished concrete floors. It looked ok except for a noticeable slope in the floors. It was uneven.

Interesting. Have not seen the street names in conjunction with the Pavilions decor previously. Maybe they're updating it, although it was nice when introduced it is starting to show signs of age. If they intend to maintain a more upscale tier of stores it needs to be kept current
My issue is that the street names are obviously chosen by people who don't live in the area and do not understand the significance of most of the names. Therefore what are the most important street names to you as a resident might not be represented at all. The choices are probably what AI would generate.

[SoCalShopper1023]

My local Vons store (W. California Blvd in Pasadena) just recently got a remodel and received the “Modern” decor package, and honestly I’m not a fan of it at all.

For some reason it seems like Albertsons Cos. has an obsession with making all their stores as bright as possible, with all the extra rows of fluorescent light strips that they added to all the former Safeway owned stores a few years back.

With the Modern decor package having a lot of whites and light colors, plus the white aisle markers, it just causes it to reflect a lot of light. Making the store unbearably bright for my liking. I would’ve preferred if this store would’ve gotten the Colorful Lifestyle package instead, which is much easy on the eyes.

While I understand that the original Lifestyle format caused some stores to feel too dark, and outdated (towards the later years). I wish Albertsons Cos would thought of a different way to handle the lighting situation.

[Alpha8472]

The reason for the brightness is due to the switch to energy saving LED lighting. LED lighting is much brighter than older lighting technology.

The Walnut Creek Safeway built in 2016 was designed for LED lighting. It has a single row of LED lighting, which is more than enough. The older stores have 2 rows of light bulbs. Switching to a single row would have cost much more, but would have reduced the brightness to a more reasonable level.

The Safeway parking lot in Pleasant Hill, California replaced their LED lighting after complaints of dim parking lot lighting. It used to be a very dim parking lot. Now the parking lot is so bright that it is blinding. You enter from the street and are immediately blinded by parking lot lights shining in your eyes.

It was bad I almost could not see oncoming cars. The glare was so intense. The design of these lights is terrible. They should have covers over the lights. These old light poles were never designed for such bright lights.