Winco Silverdale, WA - Sears Conversion

[VibeGuy]

I have deep respect for Winco as an operator, and they’ve been pretty successful converting non-grocery locations to grocery use, but man, did they bungle this one.

Every Winco (almost every? Certainly all the ones built as something other than Waremart) uses the same basic traffic pattern - dedicated entry and exit doors, the entry doors take you past a cart area and then *poof* you’re in the power aisle that leads you to produce.

They’ve done the same thing here. Nothing earth shattering. But the kicker is that those main entry and exit doors face *into the mall* rather than out to the parking lot. Two of the three side entrances from the Sears configuration are maintained, but there’s corridors wrapping around to funnel shoppers to the mall entry. See the diagram below. The red lines lead to the closest parking spaces from the “mall” door, and the green lines to the closest from the side doors. On top of this apparently being one of the largest Winco builds yet, it leads to really, really long walk paths from the parking.

They haven’t done much with the extra space aside from gloriously wide aisles and a whopping 12 feet of sushi counter. Aside from adding service bakery and pizza it’s pretty much a standard Winco, but this layout is just awkward AF.

[veteran+]

Wow, that is bizarre!

I wonder if this was a landlord thing.................

[TW-Upstate NY]

So people have to push full carts of groceries through the mall?!? Oh that'll go over real well when the place is crowded.

[SamSpade]

I feel like this must have been some sort of demand from mall management. It must be interesting at night when the mall is closed 7/8 pm until reopening the next day at 11; WinCo shoppers must have to use one of those two side entrances you mentioned to enter/exit as the mall itself would be locked? (maybe only the side where BWW is located)

[VibeGuy]

Yes, after mall hours, the usual-type gate is drawn and everyone enters and exits through one of the side corridors.

[Brian Lutz]

Old department stores don't seem to lend themselves well to grocery stores, so it's not unusual to see compromises like this. The Walmart that used to be at Factoria Mall in Bellevue didn't have a mall entrance (the Target that's been at Factoria for years does have one but it's basically right next to the main outside entrance) and it took over a ~70k former Mervyn's which had entrances on all four sides. They closed off the mall entrance, the "back" entrance and one of the side entrances, used one existing as the front, then made an awkward little side entrance at the front of the store. That store apparently didn't do very well because they didn't renew their initial 10-year lease and closed it back in April.

To be honest I'm not sure what else they could do with this particular location without significantly changing the layout of the store, and it seems likely that mall management required the store to have a mall entrance, even if in practice most people are going to use the outside entrances anyway. I'd be interesting to see if they even put Winco cart returns near the mall doors (there's an access road separating the Sears/Winco parking from the mall parking on both sides of the store. Lots of "dead" parking behind the store too, which I'm guessing the mall owners will probably try to build on. I'm sure cart handling for this particular store is a real pain.

[storewanderer]

So people have to push their shopping carts through the mall to get to the parking lot? The malls floors will sure love this (unless they are cement).

How is WinCo getting carts into the store, do they have a special cart entrance directly from the parking lot (I don't see one...). So WinCo is going to push giant streams of carts through the mall? Wild. This is the chain that has its cart returns set up in a straight line so the cart retrieving employee can walk in a straight line across combining the carts from multiple cart returns walking "straight" the entire time, then push the carts into a cart only door that feeds into the customer area of the foyer.

Then they have to walk a long distance once outside to get over to where they parked?

There are so many problems with this arrangement. While it will bring extra foot traffic by a few stores in the mall, I am not sure how much good it will do them. It will also congest parking for people who want to go into those stores at that part of the mall, cause a lot of noise (those carts...) and ongoing chaos for the stores in those parts of the mall...

Then there are two somewhat small/mysterious "side doors" that WinCo is opening up overnight (low traffic time) when the mall is closed that people can enter/exit from (which look somewhat hidden)? If anything WinCo should have those doors open at all times. I did find a photo of one of those doors on Google Maps and I see it, and it does not appear to have a view from the store interior out into the lot. It looks like it could be unsafe in some locations (probably not a concern in this specific location).

Maybe this is some kind of a test but in the end I think everyone will realize WinCo needs a separate entrance for its traffic at all times, for the good of both the mall, the mall customers, WinCo, and WinCo customers.

[VibeGuy]

The mysterious side doors adjacent to the Buffalo Wild Wings on one side and the AT&T on the other are the cart access doors. They are very clearly blocked from human access.

The cart corral issue is particularly problematic given the oblique parking striping - you can’t do the Winco signature all-lined-up thing very easily.

[storewanderer]

The mysterious side doors adjacent to the Buffalo Wild Wings on one side and the AT&T on the other are the cart access doors. They are very clearly blocked from human access.

The cart corral issue is particularly problematic given the oblique parking striping - you can’t do the Winco signature all-lined-up thing very easily.

So those side doors for carts, are those the same doors customers would enter/exit through after mall hours?

WinCo must have really wanted this store to go with these odd entry/cart issues.

The larger WinCo in Reno at Northtowne is about 110k square feet and when they expanded into a former Office Max they basically just stretched the place and didn't add much in the way of new features or merchandise.

I sort of understand why they did the store the way they did (the other option would have been to move the entry to the back of Sears and then the back rooms/prep areas would have been over on the mall side, not sure where they would have unloaded trucks) but the entry/exit thing is really weird. Also completely inconsiderate of the climate there. Usual thing (like, older Fred Meyers with the T or L design with entries in each corner of the T or L; of the Costcos with those angled front entrances) in the Pacific Northwest is to position entrances in such a way that a lot of people from a lot of parking spots can easily get to the entry with minimal outside movement.

WinCo could have gone with L-shaped front end that would have fed customers either out to the parking lot (one side of it, but that is okay, when there is only one parking lot you won't get lost) or fed customers out to the mall.

[lake52]

The Winco at Country Club Mall in Sacramento is setup somewhat similarly. You can enter/exit at all times via the parking lot, however this door just leads to a funnel that brings you to the mall entrance.

The signage encourages customers to enter through the parking lot (through the funnel) and exit through the mall, however most people just utilize the funnel.