Former Albertsons #4410 - Kissimmee, FL (Downtown) - How Does Its New Life "Compare"?

Albertsons #4410 / Sedano's #39 / Burlington & Compare Foods of Kissimmee

1100 N. John Young Parkway, Kissimmee, FL - Kissimmee Square (formerly Town Corral Shopping Center)

Today's post is a presentation of Osceola County retail

     Back in December 2023, we revisited the Downtown Kissimmee Albertsons in one of the most interesting and mesmerizing posts I've ever written, where we got to see this store during the fixture auction of the Sedano's Supermarket which occupied this building from 2009-2021. From the backrooms, to walled-off spaces, to an exclusive tour of the upper-level mezzanine, I don't think I'll ever be able to beat that post in terms of content! However, after seeing the store in that state, I thought it would only be best to bring old #4410's tale to a close, as we'll see why that fixture auction occurred in the first place today. As I mentioned at the end of the auction tour, following Sedano's closure, the landlord wanted to prep this building for a remodel as part of a rebranding for this older shopping center. Debuting the new name of "Kissimmee Square", the former Alberdano's was announced to be re-tenanted by Burlington and Compare Foods, with the old Albertsons Liquor store becoming home to Hibbett Sports. As you'd imagine from such an announcement, the building was mangled up pretty good during that conversion process, bringing an end to what was one of the best preserved Superstore-era Albertsons buildings left in Florida. However, much to my surprise, not all was lost here, and we'll use today for a quick look at what remains from Albertsons in this building's new form.

     From a quick glance of the exterior, you can tell just about all of the original Albertsons architecture was wiped away in the conversion process, which didn't give me much hope about finding any Albertsons remnants in either of the new tenant spaces. From passing by here during the conversion process, they did a pretty thorough gut and rebuild of the place, so, at least on the Burlington side, I was going into this with pretty low expectations (although when does anyone go into a Burlington with high expectations in general?). Compare Foods seemed like a bit of a wildcard, as I wasn't really sure how much money that chain was willing to throw into this remodel.

     The Kissimmee Square Burlington is the 6th location for the chain in town (7th if you count the Poinciana store, which uses a Kissimmee address), a rather high concentration of Burlingtons if you ask me for a town of 80,000 (and if you think that's a lot, don't get me started on Kissimmee's 9 Ross Dress for Less Stores - and that's excluding the 3 dd's Discounts too!). Kissimmee must really like off-price clothing stores, I suppose! Anyway, the Kissimmee Square Burlington held its grand opening on March 8, 2024, the first of the 3 new tenants to open in the former Albertsons space.

     Hibbett Sports was the second tenant to open in the former Albertsons building, opening a week after Burlington on March 16, 2024. Like the Burlington next door, Hibbett completely gutted and rebuilt the old liquor store space.

     I didn't go inside the Hibbett store, but I did pop into Burlington while I was here, so we'll briefly take a look in there before moving over to the much more interesting Compare Foods side of the building:

     I feel like Burlington's new stores shrink by some degree every year. This location is only about 20,000 square feet, which I think is even smaller than the average TJMaxx these days. With Burlington chasing after spaces that small these days, I can only imagine what their lingering 80,000 square foot stores look like now in terms of stock. Anyway, after stepping inside, the store's salesfloor is set up in a loop, with the pathway straight in front of you (the one above) leading you to housewares, toys, and women's clothing. The path loops around in the back before coming up the other side of the building toward men's clothes.

     More housewares line the back of the store, but not much else from Albertsons, except one thing...

     Tile scars from the old Blue and Gray Market floor pattern exist throughout the store, the only thing I noticed in here remaining from the Albertsons days. Burlington occupies the entire walled-off space from Sedano's linked to in that photo, so yes, can you believe that picture was taken from basically the same spot just 4 years prior?

     Coming up the other side of Burlington's race track loop, we find mens' clothing along the store's left side wall, with the check lanes located under the Burlington logo seen ahead on the front wall.

     The second level mezzanine was wiped away from existence on this side of the building, and considering how Burlington essentially rebuilt the facade, there's not even a clue it was ever here.

     I had a funny feeling most of my readers probably weren't interested in a long drawn-out tour of a Burlington store (especially one with hardly any traces of a former Albertsons in it), so I just made my quick run around the perimeter of that store before moving next door to Compare Foods.

     Compare Foods was a bit of a surprise to see show up here, as the original Compare Foods chain is primarily located around New York City, Long Island, Southern New England, and New Jersey, with a few isolated stores in North Carolina too. This Kissimmee store is the first (and from what I can tell, only) location for Compare Foods in Florida, and appears to operate totally independent of the main NYC-based chain (as you may have seen, the Kissimmee store doesn't show on the main chain's locator linked before - it has its own independent website with a totally different formatting). I'd have to guess someone purchased the naming rights to Compare Foods for Florida and built their own store around the name recognition from former New Yorkers now living in the area. With all the new Hispanic grocery chains popping up around Orlando of late (include a few other NYC-area transplant chains), it will be interesting if Compare expands any more in Florida or if they'll end up being a one-store operation (or sell out to one of the bigger operators locally, like Key Foods or Presidente Markets).

     Compare Foods was the final of the 3 tenants to open in the former Albertsons building, not opening until December 19, 2025. Compare did a pretty thorough job remodeling this side of the building, but I'll save the best Albertsons remnant for last.

     Compare Foods occupies the side of the building that once housed Albertsons' deli, bakery, and produce departments, all of those departments basically occupying the same locations today, just modernized and cleaned up quite a bit. The "Delicatessen" in this store was primary acting as the hot foods lunch counter, typical of Floridian Hispanic grocers who put more emphasis on hot foods over cold cuts. Tables were set up in front of the deli and bakery for those wishing to eat in-store as well.

     The large, elaborate produce department extends down the remainder of the right side wall beyond the deli/bakery corner. I have to say, the decor, the displays, and the presentation of everything all look very nice!

     Back in 2015, this is what we'd be looking at from this same vantage point.

     Turning the corner onto the back wall, we find the meat and seafood coolers as well as the service butcher counter. Unlike many Hispanic grocers in Florida, which have large service meat counters, Compare's service counter was quite small, but the selection of pre-packaged meats more than made up for the small service counter.

You could probably argue this decor embodies quite a bit of Sweetbay 2.0 in it too.

     I have to say, I really like the decor in this place. One of the things that intrigued me the most about Compare Foods after I noticed it opened was the decor, because doesn't their decor look like an upscale variant of Albertsons/Safeway's Colorful Lifestyle decor? The fonts are a little different, but the concept is basically the same, just with Compare using a nicer, less blank background for the signage.

     Now that we've seen most of this store's perimeter, it's off to the grocery aisles for the final portion of this post.

     You can faintly see the scars from Albertsons' old floor tiles in the above photo, but the scars were not as apparent in here as they were over in Burlington. Compare appears to have paid for a much nicer floor treatment than Burlington did.

     Due to this store's small size, the lack of salesfloor space was made up for through the use of taller shelves like these.

     Seafood is located in the back left corner of the building, before the new partition wall separating Compare from Burlington.

     Frozen Foods occupy aisle 8 and half of aisle 9, with dairy occupying the left wall in aisle 9. It appears I forgot to get a picture of aisle 9 to show the dairy wall, but it wasn't anything too exciting. Wine was also located in the front left corner next to the check lanes, its signage visible in the distance here.

     This center cut-though aisle runs the entire width of the store, similarly to how Albertsons' grocery aisles were set up.

     Compare's front end included 7 staffed check lanes in addition to a bank of self-checkouts closest to the doors.

     And if you haven't seen it in the background of some of the other pictures already, unlike on the Burlington side of the building, Albertsons original mezzanine level did survive Compare's remodel, (just with a portion of the right side cut off, where the employee restrooms and part of the old breakroom were). Seeing how the building was split the way it was, that leads me to question if Compare reconfigured the mezzanine to take into account losing a portion of it or if there's a chopped off mostly original layout up there? I guess the mezzanine will always leave us with more questions than answers! Anyway, with the original mezzanine (partially?) left in place, the service desk appears to have not been altered much either, leaving us a semi-original front end courtesy of Albertsons!

     Looking at Compare's facade, it appears they just modified Albertsons' old right side vestibule by moving the doors to the front of the building and upgrading the facade to match Burlington's. Even with a few construction tricks, Compare wasn't completely able to erase as much from Albertsons as they wanted us to think!

     Over the last decade-plus we've seen this building a number of ways, and while the most recent renovations took much of the originality away, at least everything wasn't taken away from this building's past. Still, it's new form doesn't quite "compare" to what was here before, but I will say that Compare was a rather nice store overall and their remodel turned out quite well in the end. As for Burlington, it's a Burlington, and I didn't notice a large mess in this particular location as many others on the internet find in their local Burlington stores, so I'll give them that. Today's post will seemingly complete the tale of former Albertsons #4410, a building that's seen a lot of change just in the time this blog has been around!

Anyway, until the next post,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger