Good Things Come in Small Supermarkets, but Aldi Isn't What I Meant!

Kash n' Karry #848 (Pre-Delhaize) / Kash n' Karry #1761 (Delhaize-era) / Sweetbay #1761 / Winn-Dixie #2444 / Future Aldi #2XX

1023 N. Tamiami Trail, Ruskin, FL

Today's post is a presentation of Hillsborough County retail

     While Winn-Dixie is on track to lose 220 stores to Aldi, which is sad enough, it's especially sad to see some of the unique Winn-Dixie stores that have/will have succumbed to Aldi's wrath. For example, we've lost the semi-flagship Swann Avenue Winn-Dixie in Tampa, two stores Winn-Dixie opened in 2022 (Westlake and St. Johns), and we're on track to losing the famous Publix Gourmet Winn-Dixie in Lake Mary as well. I also have been told on good accord that by 2027, we'll be losing a number of other special and unique Winn-Dixies such as the New Orleans flagship, a store that has survived since 1956, and the last preserved round Kash n' Karry (I'm particularly upset about that last one, as those round stores were so strange!). While the store we'll be touring today doesn't look like anything special from the exterior, I'd like to nominate this one to the list of rare and unique Winn-Dixies we'll be losing to Aldi's wrath, as it was quite impressive how this store managed to slip by without getting any major modifications since it was built in 1974.

     More specifically, the original tenant of this building, Kash n' Karry, opened on April 6, 1974 as the first major chain supermarket to open in the once small farming village of Ruskin, located in southern Hillsborough County. The Ruskin store was the 36th location for the chain, which at the time had stores as far north as Ocala, south to Sarasota, and east to Winter Haven. However, Hillsborough County was Kash n' Karry's home, with the Ruskin store closing another local gap for the chain.

     At only 23,800 square feet of salesfloor space, this new Kash n' Karry packed a lot into it. Not only did this store have a complete set of service departments including fresh deli, bakery, and meats, it also featured an in-store Kare Drugs department with a full service prescription pharmacy. Until I started researching this store, I didn't realize Kash n' Karry operated pharmacies back in the early 1970's, even beating Albertsons with the one-stop food and pharmacy combo stores in Florida! (Albertsons made its Floridian debut later in 1974, however, Albertsons' stores were twice the size of this Kash n' Karry). On the outside, this store featured Kash n' Karry's new modern mansard type roof design, a design trend that was all the rage in the 1970's.

      Outside of a decor swap or two, this store remained as-is until 2006, at which point it was included in Kash n' Karry's chainwide rebranding to Sweetbay Supermarket.

Photo courtesy of Google Streetview

      Even during the Sweetbay conversion, this store only got a new sign and yet another decor swap - that was it. Kash n' Karry's lack of interest through the years in doing any major work to this store is what made it so interesting to me, as Kash n' Karry was really big on heavy remodeling, expansions, and relocations of its older stores during the 1990's and into the early 2000's. During that time, the company was trying very hard to refresh its image both under independent ownership and into the Delhaize-era to better compete with growing rivals like Publix and Walmart. If a store like this one wasn't relocated or closed in the 1990's, it was usually expanded and renovated to look similar to this, including the usual curved stucco facade update when the Sweetbay conversion happened. None of that happened here though - no expansions (even though this store was built with plenty of room for one, plus space for a shopping center that never came to be), no facade modifications, nothing. What we see is the original 1970's mansard facade too, and inside is the original 1970's Kash n' Karry layout.

Photo courtesy of Google Streetview

     

     All of that originality carried over into the Winn-Dixie era too, although Winn-Dixie was pretty famous for not doing much to these former Sweetbay stores after taking them over in 2014.

     While this store did get a remodel by Winn-Dixie in late 2017 to the Down Down decor, nothing else was altered, continuing this store's streak of remodels over the prior 43 years that involved nothing more than a can of paint and some new signs. Sadly, after staying in practically unaltered, original form for over 50 years now (which is super impressive for a supermarket, as most stores of that age, especially ones part of a large chain, experience some kind of major remodel or expansion in that time), the streak will come to an end in 2025. The Winn-Dixie we see here was one of the 220 unlucky stores that remained in Aldi's hands following the sale of Southeastern Grocers' remaining assets to C&S Wholesale in early 2025, and I highly doubt Aldi's remodel to this building (for which a permit was pulled in February 2025) will be as gentle as all the others to this building have been over the last half century. I was hoping this Winn-Dixie would be safe from Aldi's hands, especially since Aldi took the much newer Apollo Beach Sweet-Dixie 2.5 miles north of here at Mira Bay Village, but alas, a 2.5 mile coverage gap was too much for Aldi.

     With how much the Ruskin area has grown over the last 50 years, I'm surprised Kash n' Karry never bothered to expand, or do anything but a decor swap, to this store. I'm even more surprised the curved stucco wasn't installed for Sweetbay's sign during that conversion either! Until the newbuild Sweetbay in Apollo Beach I just mentioned opened in 2008, this was the only Kash n' Karry/Sweetbay store serving the Ruskin/Sun City Center area too, a decently populated part of Hillsborough County going into in the 1990's and 2000's (although there was a Food Lion about a mile north of here, which closed outright around 2001, meaning it never converted to the Kash n' Karry brand like the other Food Lions in the area did). Unless this was just an abnormally slow store, I really don't know why it's remained so original for so long. However, at least until Aldi begins its remodel, this store remains a very interesting glimpse into what a Kash n' Karry was like in the 1970's. Now that we've had plenty of time to admire that original facade (which looks pretty good in Down Down red, I'd say), let's head inside and see what the interior is all about:

     Entering through the right side doors, we find a small vestibule where the carts are stored (and over on the left side is a clone of what we see here, just flipped the other way). As typical of most Down Down remodels, Winn-Dixie included a historic store photo collage on the welcome sign, a compellation of some random photos from the company's archives.

     Stepping out of the vestibule, here's a look across the store's front wall, with the service desk located in the cut-out off to the left in the distance. We'll see this area again later in the post, but for now, let's turn around and get ourselves a better look at the salesfloor:

     The front right corner of the store is home to the combined deli/bakery department, the photo above looking at the "Bakery" part of said combo. Like many supermarkets with a combined deli/bakery space, the bakery takes a backseat to the deli offerings as far as space goes. However, this store does still have a small selection of baked-in house breads, along with a few tables and displays of other baked goods.

     Panning the camera a little more to the left, here's a better overview of how the deli/bakery space angles outward from the corner into the sales floor. The deli's hot bar takes up most of the space along the long angled stretch under the "Kitchen" sign, with the sliced cold cuts located closer to the left wall.

     Also to note since I mentioned the signs - the size of them had to be scaled down down to fit on this store's narrow wall spaces. While Down Down's wall signs were intentionally designed to be large for easy viewing across the store, that concept was lost in this store due to its cozy, low 1970's ceilings. Even Sweetbay just barely managed to make their usual signage work in this place!

     From produce, here's a final overview of the deli/bakery department. Officially, I took this photo in aisle 1, home to the PB&J supplies (the recipe for which comprises the aisle 1 sign), conveniently located close enough to the produce department that I only have to reach over if I want to turn my PB&J experience into an Elvis special!

     For a relatively small store, the produce department felt quite large in comparison, taking up the length of the right side of the store. The grand opening snippets even bragged about this store's "large" produce department too, although I wouldn't be surprised if a grocery aisle was eliminated at some point in a later remodel to make the produce department "large" for more modern standards.

     Wading through a sea of fruits, vegetables, and fall squash, I see the seafood counter lurking in the back right corner.

     Even for a small store, it still managed to maintain a tiny service seafood counter back here too, most of which ended up getting blocked by the price sign for those watermelons. Thankfully, the price of watermelons has come down a bit since the above photo was taken too, with Winn-Dixie's regular price on those being $6.99 as of last week (with Aldi's regular price being $6.95, for comparison). Being Memorial Day weekend this weekend, Winn-Dixie has the whole watermelons on sale this week for $3.99, the best deal I've seen around for a whole seedless melon so far this year.

     Seafood and watermelons behind us, we'll skip back over to the front of the store for this look across the grocery aisles and check lanes. From here, it's pretty easy to tell this store has a few different ceiling heights going on.

     The ceiling tapers upward slightly over the majority of the center grocery aisles, another common design trend from 1970's and 1980's supermarkets. The higher ceilings over the grocery aisles make the store feel much bigger than it is, which is probably what the designers were intending.

     Due to the differing ceiling heights, you may have noticed that aisle 1 (located in the lower ceiling portion of the store) only had 3 placards on its sign, while the rest of the aisles in the higher ceiling side have all had four. While that was purely done due to the ceiling heights here, there were many variants to the Down Down aisle markers depending on when a remodel happened, including choice of fonts and number of placards present. Even with all that variation out there, this was the only time I'd seen a Down Down Winn-Dixie use both the 3-placard and 4-placard aisle signs under the same roof - usually it was one size or the other in a store!

     Returning to the back wall, the prepackaged meats turn into lunch meats, which are then followed by the dairy department as we near the left wall.

     If you're curious about what this store was like during the Sweetbay days, Google Maps actually has a decent number of photos of this store taken in 2016 and early 2017 showing it with the Sweetbay decor. For such an old store, the Sweetbay decor didn't look too bad in here, and interestingly, I think Down Down suits this store pretty well too. While Down Down is pretty famous for having rather blank walls, with this store being so small, it crams the department names closer together to neutralize that a bit. The shorter walls for the signs also help keep the overwhelmingly blank feel at bay too.

     Getting closer to the left side of the store, we find some non-food items here in aisle 11, specifically paper products and kitchen gadgets.

     Aisle 13, the last numbered aisle in this store, is home to beer and wine.

     Following beer and wine, we find two more aisles, the unnumbered aisles 14 and 15. These two aisles are home to frozen foods, with aisle 14 marking our transition from the higher ceiling back to the lower one in the last aisle:

     Unnumbered aisle 15 is home to the remainder of frozen foods, as well as the remainder of the dairy department. Along the length of this aisle were a row of old vents protruding from the ceiling, which must be a relic from the Kash n' Karry days, as they don't look very new!

     Lastly, arriving in the front left corner of the building, we find the pharmacy counter. In addition to the pharmacy, the aisles in front of the counter house the store's selection of health and beauty products.

     From its origins as Kare Drugs in the 1970's, through the days of The Medicine Shoppe at Kash n' Karry and Sweetbay Pharmacy, this store's pharmacy ran for an impressive 49 years before it was shut down by Winn-Dixie in late 2023 when the company's remaining pharmacies were closed in preparation for the sale to Aldi. 

     The above photo taken from health & beauty looking across the front end does a nice job of showcasing the raised ceiling over the check lanes. While there wasn't an accompanying overhead catwalk, this design looks very similar to the front end of an early 1980's Albertsons.

     While Florida is home to some rather large species of spiders, those are just Halloween decorations you see hanging on the check lane light posts! No need to call the health department today! Anyway, looking through the check lanes, our final interior photo shows us the customer service desk as well as a portion of the "Thank you for shopping at your Ruskin Winn-Dixie" sign, which was painted directly onto the slant where the ceiling raises up.

     I was really happy to have discovered this store clicking around on Google Maps, as it answered some questions for me relating to Kash n' Karry's really old store layouts (something that will come in handy in the future when we tour a really interesting former Kash n' Karry of a similar vintage). I thought this was a quaint store overall, and for being 50 years old, still seemed like a well-cared for building. Since Winn-Dixie has only been in here since 2014, most of the credit for the upkeep landed on Kash n' Karry and Sweetbay, but even as a Winn-Dixie it seems like the proper maintenance was being done. In a year or so this store will certainly feel much different, as a modern Aldi isn't really a place I can describe as "quaint", much like I would describe this store today.

     Before we leave Ruskin, I thought I'd share a quick photo of this Winn-Dixie's lone outparcel building, a Kentucky Fried Coin Wash. Officially called "Laundry Depot" these days, I thought a Laundromat was an interesting conversion for an old KFC. I wonder if you wash your clothes in here, if they come out with an embedded fried chicken odor?

     While on the topic of old fast food places, as you wait for your clothes to finish up in the spin cycle at the Kentucky Fried Coin Wash, you can step outside and get a look at Uncle Joe's New York Diner Hut across the street. There's no question this building used to be a Pizza Hut!

     It's a shame that after so long, this nice little grocery store is going to get butchered up to become another Aldi, especially since Aldi is already opening a new store in another former Sweet-Dixie just up the road. However, the wrath of Aldi still has two more years to work its way through Winn-Dixie, and if you want to stay on top of what stores are safe and which ones will soon be chopped in half, be sure to keep a lookout on the My Florida Retail post covering the conversions. While it won't be long before we see another Winn-Dixie on the blog, we have another former Albertsons store to cover next time, so be sure to come back in two weeks for that!

So until the next post,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger