Thrifty Drug Stores heavily used terrazzo floors in their stores in the 70's and into the 80's. At this point most of those have been covered up with tiles. A lot of grocery and drug stores used terrazzo in the 50's and 60's because the maintenance costs are very low and it lasts forever. It starte...

After the Haggen debacle it is now a Gelson's, but apparently struggling. It was one of the locations they quickly opened as a Gelsons and later remodeled / downsized. Still Gelson's, but still doesn't feel like a "real" newer Gelson's, like Manhattan Beach, which was built as Gelson's from the beg...

I wonder what the story there was. I also wonder what "Advantage" was. The ASC discount format developed in the early or mid 90's (self bagging) was called Price Advantage then sued by Price Club and briefly changed to Food Price Advantage before finally changing to Super Saver by the mid 90's. I w...

The Vons/Albertsons/Pavilions monopoly in San Diego is amazing. I don't know how that ever got passed regulators. BTW the remodel on that Pavilions looks awful thanks to the awful cement floors and mismatched ceiling tiles: https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x80dc062ff0472695%3A0x95703c417e3f573c...

Interesting. Looks like they're using split aisles. I don't think I've seen that in an Albertsons or Safeway before. No indication outside of an opening date? Albertsons used split aisles in the late 80's and early 90's. Which seems to be the store layout pattern they are following these days. I'm ...

Looks like all construction is done and they will open very soon. I'm not a big fan of the look of the exterior, but what you can see from street of the inside, it looks nice. Pavilions.png Interesting. Looks like they're using split aisles. I don't think I've seen that in an Albertsons or Safeway ...

Funny you mention this chain. I stumbled upon one of their stores for the first time last week and liked it. It's set up similar to a Chipotle except they make the tortillas fresh in front of customers and have a little more choices of protein.

The commercial is pretty funny.

I'm also curious about what happened to Koo Koo Roo. I used to go to the one on Larchmont & Beverly in L.A. and it was really good.

I can attest to this. When I worked at Pavilions in Weho in the early 2000's, service was considered "world class" by corporate. We we literally had service classes every few weeks or so to make sure we kept that "world class" service. We were required to help customers even out of our departments....

As for the Sherman Oaks store I would be very surprised if it did not open as a Pavilions. I was expecting that to be a flagship store for the SoCal Division... would assume they have been working on the interior already... and it is being done in the Pavilions interior... From the street it looked...