New Ralphs/Kroger Interior

[brendenmoney]

I walked into the Brea Ralphs (#192) today, and I was caught off guard when I realized that the store was renovated to a new interior package called Reclaimed, which I believe was first being tested specifically at Ralphs stores in 2022, and has since been implemented at various stores in Kroger's store network. I'm curious if this is now the official default interior for all new Ralphs renovations. This would replace the Neighborhood interior, which for a while has been the default interior for all Ralphs renovations, with the exception of Fresh Fare stores, including #67 in Fullerton that was recently renovated to the Neighborhood interior.

The Brea Ralphs is now one of the numerous Ralphs I have seen with this interior, as I can additionally recall La Brea (#39), Century City (#156), Marina Del Rey (#279) and Villa Park (#68) all now have this interior. I at first thought this was a Fresh Fare specific decor package since the last three stores listed are all Fresh Fare stores, and is where I first have seen this interior, but since this is also appearing in traditional Ralphs locations, and I also since there is a new more upscale Fresh Fare interior that some Fresh Fare stores have received, there is a good chance overall that this may be a new interior decor package that Kroger is starting to roll out more widespread.

I definitely think this is a great new interior to roll out widespread, especially in California. It is much better than Albertsons Modern/Florida Safeway interior that Albertsons for some reason loves to renovate stores with in California. Modern is most likely now the current default interior in place of Colorful Lifestyle. Albertsons is certainly due for a new interior package, as both colorful lifestyle and the Modern interiors have been around in some way since 2016, but they may not make that decision until a decision on the merger takes place. The Heritage interior package is a great Albertsons interior, but the only California stores that have received this are Goleta and Lakeside.

I am very curious if anyone knows of other Ralphs locations this interior has been implemented in, and if they have more information on it?

[ClownLoach]

I walked into the Brea Ralphs (#192) today, and I was caught off guard when I realized that the store was renovated to a new interior package called Reclaimed, which I believe was first being tested specifically at Ralphs stores in 2022, and has since been implemented at various stores in Kroger's store network. I'm curious if this is now the official default interior for all new Ralphs renovations. This would replace the Neighborhood interior, which for a while has been the default interior for all Ralphs renovations, with the exception of Fresh Fare stores, including #67 in Fullerton that was recently renovated to the Neighborhood interior.

The Brea Ralphs is now one of the numerous Ralphs I have seen with this interior, as I can additionally recall La Brea (#39), Century City (#156), Marina Del Rey (#279) and Villa Park (#68) all now have this interior. I at first thought this was a Fresh Fare specific decor package since the last three stores listed are all Fresh Fare stores, and is where I first have seen this interior, but since this is also appearing in traditional Ralphs locations, and I also since there is a new more upscale Fresh Fare interior that some Fresh Fare stores have received, there is a good chance overall that this may be a new interior decor package that Kroger is starting to roll out more widespread.

I definitely think this is a great new interior to roll out widespread, especially in California. It is much better than Albertsons Modern/Florida Safeway interior that Albertsons for some reason loves to renovate stores with in California. Modern is most likely now the current default interior in place of Colorful Lifestyle. Albertsons is certainly due for a new interior package, as both colorful lifestyle and the Modern interiors have been around in some way since 2016, but they may not make that decision until a decision on the merger takes place. The Heritage interior package is a great Albertsons interior, but the only California stores that have received this are Goleta and Lakeside.

I am very curious if anyone knows of other Ralphs locations this interior has been implemented in, and if they have more information on it?

The first Ralphs that received this that I am aware of is Laguna Niguel in 2019. I call it "barn wood" decor and did not know there was an official name. It was also used recently on the remodel of the flagship Frys at Shea and Tatum in the Phoenix area.

Ralphs has basically devalued the Fresh Fare name and no longer appears to be changing signs to incorporate it into the exterior branding of the store. They have also effectively killed the merchandising that made it unique; these stores lost the equipment for in-house roasted deli meats, prepped in house deli foods, and scratch bakery years ago. Basically Fresh Fare has been dead for all intents and purposes under Kroger's more recent merchandising programs that add shelf-ready meats to fill space, dump tables for advertised goods, and other initiatives to reduce labor spent in perimeter departments. Ralphs has carefully blocked visibility with stick-on graphics into the meat cutting rooms in the few stores that have windows; I'm convinced they don't actually do any meat cutting anymore and receive pre-processed product that is basically unboxed and repackaged in store.

This same remodel was done in Foothill Ranch which did not receive any sign changes either. Curiously, it did get stick-on window graphics that introduced it as now being "Your Foothill Ranch Ralphs Fresh Fare."

Ralphs is running two different competing interiors on "Fresh Fare" and there doesn't seem to be any reason why one is used but not the other; there is a merchandising difference however. The barnwood decor format gets all of the organic and natural merchandise segregated from conventional in each aisle, while the other format I call Honeycomb decor maintains integrated merchandising of organic/natural and conventional.

I personally can't stand the barnwood decor as they are installing very dirty, recycled wood and screwing it onto the walls without applying sealants first like polyurethane. That wood dust that comes off is considered to be cancer causing by the State of California; I'm not going to have a debate about the accuracy of those claims but they do require signage as you'll see at every lumberyard and even garden centers.

The competing vision for Fresh Fare, the Honeycomb decor, is installed in La Jolla and San Clemente (Talega). I believe it is in some other stores in the LA market.

In my opinion, both Barnwood ("Reclaimed") and Honeycomb are inferior to the previous and still most common Fresh Fare decor which used different color walls and in most stores different textured woodwork behind the signs for each department. I call this Shutters decor as it appears to have white shutters to the side of the department signs, some with lamp fixtures attached.

I do think that the Fresh Fare "shutters" decor, Albertsons Colorful Lifestyle, and the short-lived newer Stater Bros decor all were too similar with their modern earth tone designs and sans-serif fonts. Some of the paint colors used in these stores translate directly across the different chains, especially that short-lived Stater Bros format before their newer 70s inspired one with big photo wallpaper which looks fantastic in person (but awful in pictures ironically). So that might be motivating these chains to differentiate their wall decor.

Personally if I was Ralphs I would stop playing with wall decor and start working on improving store cleanliness, facility conditions, and quality of fresh products. Floors held together with duct tape everywhere, roof leaks left unrepaired unless they drip onto flooring (if they drip over an aisle apparently Ralphs is fine with leaving buckets on top of fixtures), and shoddy repairs such as different size/color/texture linoleum being slapped down to patch holes in a store that would also carry the Fresh Fare banner if they still added it. I live closest to Ralphs and yet I have been able to consistently prove that any processed produce like bagged salads, deli products, and milk all spoil sooner when purchased at Ralphs versus Albertsons Cos. stores, Stater Bros, Winco, Costco or Sam's.

Ralphs operations are amongst the worst Kroger has to offer nationwide and I think the last thing they need is to disrupt things even more with sub-par paint and reset remodels. If you want to see what a real remodel entails, go see what Stater Bros. is doing in their projects (Temecula is currently underway but I'm sure you can find others). Those are true remodels that take most of a year and when completed the entire store is 100% new. They systematically demolish every perimeter department, relocate as needed and rebuild from scratch. They change out the drop ceiling, all lighting, shelves, they level the floors, replace all refrigeration, checkstands, even bring a helicopter and swap out all the air conditioning units. The customer gets a beautiful brand new store that is worth the disruption, instead of the same tired store with different paint on the walls as Kroger and Albertsons deliver today.

[veteran+]

AMEN!!

[storewanderer]

Personally if I was Ralphs I would stop playing with wall decor and start working on improving store cleanliness, facility conditions, and quality of fresh products. Floors held together with duct tape everywhere, roof leaks left unrepaired unless they drip onto flooring (if they drip over an aisle apparently Ralphs is fine with leaving buckets on top of fixtures), and shoddy repairs such as different size/color/texture linoleum being slapped down to patch holes in a store that would also carry the Fresh Fare banner if they still added it. I live closest to Ralphs and yet I have been able to consistently prove that any processed produce like bagged salads, deli products, and milk all spoil sooner when purchased at Ralphs versus Albertsons Cos. stores, Stater Bros, Winco, Costco or Sam's.

Ralphs operations are amongst the worst Kroger has to offer nationwide and I think the last thing they need is to disrupt things even more with sub-par paint and reset remodels. If you want to see what a real remodel entails, go see what Stater Bros. is doing in their projects (Temecula is currently underway but I'm sure you can find others). Those are true remodels that take most of a year and when completed the entire store is 100% new. They systematically demolish every perimeter department, relocate as needed and rebuild from scratch. They change out the drop ceiling, all lighting, shelves, they level the floors, replace all refrigeration, checkstands, even bring a helicopter and swap out all the air conditioning units. The customer gets a beautiful brand new store that is worth the disruption, instead of the same tired store with different paint on the walls as Kroger and Albertsons deliver today.

The challenges you describe at Ralphs seem to exist throughout Kroger. It is just some divisions are hiding it a lot better than others. King Soopers and Fred Meyer in my opinion are the two divisions doing the best job of not having a lot of stores with these maintenance issues/sloppy operations. Oh and Mariano's- great stores there, excellent condition and upkeep. Almost forget that is a Kroger until I go to the aisles and see Kroger items. Fry's deserves honorable mention but they have some pretty nasty older stores. Kroger banner is all over the place and so is Smiths.

What is ironic is in the early 00's Ralphs had the nicest looking stores. They were spotless clean and shiny at least in NorCal. I always wished Smiths would get like that- and by the 2010 era Smiths DID get like that and was like that for a few years... then they did the last batch of major layoffs at the division offices and early retirements to a lot of employees there and the CEO change and here we are...

I think Wal Mart does a far better job on doing "thorough" store remodels (especially the more recent batch of remodels) than these major chain grocers do. It isn't just Kroger/Albertsons who do these wall repaint remodels you describe- this is the entire industry doing this stuff; Save Mart, Raleys, Winn Dixie, Homeland, all kinds of these chains do this. Raleys will do some very major remodels from time to time but that isn't how they handle every remodel.

[arizonaguy]

The challenges you describe at Ralphs seem to exist throughout Kroger. It is just some divisions are hiding it a lot better than others. King Soopers and Fred Meyer in my opinion are the two divisions doing the best job of not having a lot of stores with these maintenance issues/sloppy operations. Oh and Mariano's- great stores there, excellent condition and upkeep. Almost forget that is a Kroger until I go to the aisles and see Kroger items. Fry's deserves honorable mention but they have some pretty nasty older stores. Kroger banner is all over the place and so is Smiths.

Fry's is a double edged sword. Staffing wise and operations wise I believe Fry's does very well. Their stores (especially the service departments) seem very well staffed and the quality of product seems fairly fresh. Older product at Fry's tends to get "manager's special" markdowns. Fry's stores typically do very high volumes though (grocery probably does higher volumes than anyone else in the market except WinCo) which masks some of the freshness issues as the product moves quickly.

Fry's has a significant number of older stores (mostly former Smitty's) that date back to the late 1960s - early 1980s that are in sorry state. The physical conditions of these stores is awful (many have leaking roofs, broken equipment, significant nasty smells, etc.). Even the newer stores suffer from maintenance issue (my closest store is a 2016 build that had a leaking roof).

Fry's essentially is two chains. The 25% of the store base that is newer with 85,000+ square foot stores with warehouse ceilings and a massive assortment of product seem to get a lot of love. The 75% of the stores with drop ceilings and a high variety of layouts (depending on original owner/operator) are mostly in poor or deteriorating shape. Even if these stores have a newer decor package the flooring and equipment generally hasn't been changed in years. I'd argue that the typical Albertsons or Safeway store is in far nicer physical condition than these older Fry's stores.

[rwsandiego]

...Fry's essentially is two chains. The 25% of the store base that is newer with 85,000+ square foot stores with warehouse ceilings and a massive assortment of product seem to get a lot of love. The 75% of the stores with drop ceilings and a high variety of layouts (depending on original owner/operator) are mostly in poor or deteriorating shape. Even if these stores have a newer decor package the flooring and equipment generally hasn't been changed in years. I'd argue that the typical Albertsons or Safeway store is in far nicer physical condition than these older Fry's stores.

Agree 100%, including that the Phoenix-area Safeway and Albertsons stores are nicer than most Fry's.

[SoCalShopper1023]

It’s interesting to come across this post because I was recently shopping at the La Cañada Ralphs (#55), and noticed this new decor package as well. This store seems to get a change of decor package every few years it seems. It must be a very well performing store.

I do prefer Kroger’s remodels and decor package over whatever the hell Albertsons seems to be doing. At least with Ralphs, Kroger knows how to address the lighting situation and have the light fixtures properly laid out and tucked underneath those rectangular covers.

Whereas the Albertsons model seems to be “add rows of light tubes everywhere, and anywhere and make the stores as bright as possible”, especially on the former Lifestyle stores. In every Vons/Pavilions store that I’ve been to, the ceilings look all mismatched with all the extra rows of lighting that they added vertically, horizontally, and diagonally.

As far as their decor packages, I’m not a fan of the Florida/Modern decor, but I do give them credit for trying something new and moving away from Lifestyle, but it just doesn’t go well with the lighting.

Then there’s Colorful Lifestyle, which I really liked the first iteration. But as of lately, all they seem to be doing is just painting over the existing lifestyle fixtures and calling it a remodel.

I do like their Pavilions decor package. I’ll give them credit for that.

But overall in my opinion, I feel like Kroger does a better job with their remodels even if their later iterations of decor packages seem a little “cheap”. My favorite decor package from Kroger is the one from the early - mid 2010s.

[storewanderer]

...Fry's essentially is two chains. The 25% of the store base that is newer with 85,000+ square foot stores with warehouse ceilings and a massive assortment of product seem to get a lot of love. The 75% of the stores with drop ceilings and a high variety of layouts (depending on original owner/operator) are mostly in poor or deteriorating shape. Even if these stores have a newer decor package the flooring and equipment generally hasn't been changed in years. I'd argue that the typical Albertsons or Safeway store is in far nicer physical condition than these older Fry's stores.

Agree 100%, including that the Phoenix-area Safeway and Albertsons stores are nicer than most Fry's.

Some of the stores with the Albertsons banner, particularly the ones that were early 00's stores that got nice thorough colorful lifestyle remodels, are quite nice. But those also tend to be closer to more modern Fry's stores. They were more modern and larger to begin with. These stores also seem to have pretty slow business so they look fantastic all the time.

The Safeway banner... Virtually every store has a drop ceiling, many still have their mid 90's era white floor tiles in center store with tan tiles around perimeter that were installed in the Lifestyle remodels. The stores that got "Modern" remodels mostly were done cheaply and were not through remodels and will not age well. They will be deteriorating in a couple years (already seeing it on the Modern remodels that NorCal has done cheaply; the first ones they did which were more thorough are holding up better). Only selective new refrigeration is put in during those cheap wall repaint style remodels and very little equipment is replaced. The way these stores are handled seems quite similar to how most of the older drop ceiling Fry's are handled, the Safeway units may look better now since the remodels are more recent, but they won't for long. They probably also look better since they have significantly less customer traffic and the customer traffic present isn't buying as much product (out of the store faster- less likely to use a cart- less wear on the store).

I do think both of these chains, especially Kroger, are due for some very major remodels in a lot of 80's and 90's era stores. As in, convert from drop ceiling to exposed ceiling. Demolish the old meat room, demolish the old dairy room, demolish the old bakery, rebuild everything... with new equipment, updated spacing, updated vents (especially this) everything.

[ClownLoach]

It’s interesting to come across this post because I was recently shopping at the La Cañada Ralphs (#55), and noticed this new decor package as well. This store seems to get a change of decor package every few years it seems. It must be a very well performing store.

I do prefer Kroger’s remodels and decor package over whatever the hell Albertsons seems to be doing. At least with Ralphs, Kroger knows how to address the lighting situation and have the light fixtures properly laid out and tucked underneath those rectangular covers.

Whereas the Albertsons model seems to be “add rows of light tubes everywhere, and anywhere and make the stores as bright as possible”, especially on the former Lifestyle stores. In every Vons/Pavilions store that I’ve been to, the ceilings look all mismatched with all the extra rows of lighting that they added vertically, horizontally, and diagonally.

As far as their decor packages, I’m not a fan of the Florida/Modern decor, but I do give them credit for trying something new and moving away from Lifestyle, but it just doesn’t go well with the lighting.

Then there’s Colorful Lifestyle, which I really liked the first iteration. But as of lately, all they seem to be doing is just painting over the existing lifestyle fixtures and calling it a remodel.

I do like their Pavilions decor package. I’ll give them credit for that.

But overall in my opinion, I feel like Kroger does a better job with their remodels even if their later iterations of decor packages seem a little “cheap”. My favorite decor package from Kroger is the one from the early - mid 2010s.

The only thing Kroger did well was getting balanced lighting into their stores. The rest is cheap, cheap, and cheaper.

The reality is that, with very rare exceptions, Kroger and Albertsons companies have done very few true remodels over the past couple decades. It took observations of several recent Stater Bros projects to recognize this. Kroger and Albertsons don't remove and replace sheetrock anymore, don't really change the physical building at all anymore.

[storewanderer]

The only thing Kroger did well was getting balanced lighting into their stores. The rest is cheap, cheap, and cheaper.

The reality is that, with very rare exceptions, Kroger and Albertsons companies have done very few true remodels over the past couple decades. It took observations of several recent Stater Bros projects to recognize this. Kroger and Albertsons don't remove and replace sheetrock anymore, don't really change the physical building at all anymore.

Kroger also seems to like to switch out displays frequently. I can't even count how many different sets of produce fixtures I've seen in Smiths. I like some of their fixtures better than others. As I mentioned previously they just replaced the bakery self serve bulk cases in all of the Smiths in my area.

Safeway did pretty heavy work with the Lifestyle remodels to their better stores (the rural and not better stores got cheaper jobs) and I think Albertsons is trying to get by on the guts of those remodels.

When Save Mart started its remodel program in 2017 it did these heavy Stater type remodels you are talking about the first couple of times. The two stores they did were Oakdale and Ceres. I think Ceres they took an old Rite Aid space over next to their store and used part of their old store and the entire Rite Aid to build out a very nice new in every way store. Oakdale I am not sure what they did but again it is an as good as new store in every way. Then when they did more remodels it got cheaper- turned into a wall repaint and cheap refloor (cover old floor with those hard wood looking strips) project BUT they do replace all refrigeration that is visible to the customer (sometimes they do that some months before the remodel). They don't replace much of any equipment, don't even re-tile behind the service counters, and don't touch the bathrooms.