Albertsons Florida - Celebrating 40 Years of Serving The Sunshine State

     It was 40 years ago today that Albertsons opened their first store in Florida, located at 2170 Gulf-To-Bay Boulevard in Clearwater. Albertsons Florida has definitely had an interesting run here over the last 40 years. The first two decades of Albertsons Florida were looking bright, with expansion throughout the state. The third decade started to see some change, and much more pressure from their competitors, including a few minor scale backs and trip-ups for Albertsons Florida. The fourth decade was, well, I think we all know what happened to Albertsons Florida over the last decade. However, let's use today to look at some of the positives from Albertsons Florida's past. 

     Amazingly, that original Albertsons Florida store in Clearwater survives until this day, even after all the scaling back Albertsons has done over the last decade in Florida. Later this year, the Altamonte Springs store will also turn 40. I guess Albertsons knew what they were doing when they were picking out those first few sites, since two of the four original Albertsons stores from 1974 remain into the final four. 

    This year also marked Albertsons 75th year in business. To celebrate, they had their customers send in their stories about their first memories of Albertsons, their experiences with Joe Albertson, and their experiences over the years with Albertsons in general (you can read more about that here). So I figured why not do the same here, but with a Florida twist? What were some of your stories of Albertsons Florida over the last 40 years? Feel free share them in the comments section of this post. If you would like to read some of the "Joe Stories" that Albertsons has been collecting over the last few months, you can check some of them out here (although the website they dedicated to this seems to have been taken down). 

     As for what the next decade of Albertsons Florida has in store, who knows what will happen. I've always felt that their keeping of those four stores meant something, like they're not quite done with Florida yet. They didn't completely leave the state yet, with those four stores surviving the last two years practically isolated from the rest of the chain, so who knows what the next few years has in store. 

So Until Next Time,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger