Well, hasn't this week been a busy week for Albertsons Florida! First, we hear the sad news about the closing of the Clearwater store, which broke on Monday. Now, thanks to a comment left on the blog by fellow supermarket blogger Pseudo3D of The Safeway and Albertsons in Texas Blog, we're finally hearing a bit of good news about Albertsons Florida! According to an article published in the Tampa Bay Business Journal this morning, Albertsons has announced plans to give the three remaining stores in Florida complete remodels! Honestly, this is the first news of Albertsons investing any kind of money into any of their Florida stores in almost 10 years. The last major remodels I can recall being done to any Albertsons store in Florida date back to 2004, unless you count the short lived Super Saver conversions in 2005 as remodels. Now matter how you look at it, it's been a very long time since these stores have seen any love from their parent company. Not only that, but these remodels will more than likely bring the current Albertsons interior to Florida for the first time, and a wider selection of fresh and prepared foods. Here's some photos of a recently opened Albertsons in Alamogordo, NM of what the new interiors will potentially look like, which you can see by clicking here. I guess time will tell just how extensive these remodels at the final three stores will be. All of it is supposed to be done by this coming fall, according to the article. I just hope all this talk about remodels isn't just a bunch of hype for nothing more than moving a few shelves around. Give these Florida stores the attention they deserve, Albertsons! Anyway, if you want to read the entire article referenced in this post, just click here. Ever since Monday I was beginning to wonder if Albertsons Florida would even make it into 2016. With the release of this most recent news, it seems like that may be achieved, but could these remodels possibly be the seeds of the great Albertsons Florida revival?... Well, that might be a bit of a stretch to think at this point, but they're not packing their bags just yet!
And as the news keeps coming in, I'll be sure to keep everybody informed.
Anyway, until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
In addition to saying that I answered your comment on my blog (got buried), and saying that the H of H photos are kind of out of date (I didn't click on the link, but if the one's I'm thinking of, it's from the Louisiana stores), with the "Quality Built" being more akin to what you'll be seeing, it's seeing Sidney Hopper's name as the person in charge of Albertsons Florida Division. In reality, there is no Albertsons Florida division anymore, but that means that they've switched divisions for the Florida stores, now under the control of the Houston division, which operates the Randalls stores in Houston and Austin (and the Dallas-based Tom Thumb, but I think that division will be/has been transferred). This means that the remaining 27xx stores in Louisiana go back to being in the Houston division of the company after a 13-year hiatus.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the Florida Albertsons remodels, I hope that they make it so it's a slight "palette swap", maybe to more Floridian colors.
The photos I linked to were actually from store in Texas somewhere, but I believe it was the older version of the interior. I was trying to locate photos of an actual Albertsons with the new interior and not one of the other divisions, which I couldn't find at first when I was rushing to get that post up. I just did another search and I just found some better photos, so I changed the link. I think the title of 'President of the Albertsons Florida Division' was more of a typo on the writer's end when it should have really said Houston. I'm curious to see what these remodels are going to look like as well. I'm trying to make plans to go the Altamonte store in the near future, although I don't know how far along the remodel will be by the time I get there.
DeleteThe interior at the Alamogordo store still looks a lot like the interior in the H of H photos, but with a few Quality Built elements.
DeleteOh yeah, there are definitely some variations. I think that a lot of these are based on previous designs, the Theme Park/Grocery Palace seems to have evolved from Florida stores, actually, I think 1998 or 1999 with the circular Meal Center sign and the "life-sized chef". And of course all of these have variations between each other, too.
ReplyDeleteAlbertsons does have a tendency to vary their interiors from time to time. And actually, the first Theme Park store was located somewhere in Texas and opened in 1999, except I don't know which store was the first. The second and third ones were in Florida, and many stores here ended up being built with that interior or got remodeled to it. There's even a store in South Orlando that's no longer an Albertsons that still has the full Theme Park interior, including spinning props, to this day, the last remaining example in the state.
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