Grand Union #756 / Kash n' Karry #211 (Pre-Delhaize) / Kash n' Karry #1708 (Delhaize) / Sweetbay Supermarket #1708 / Winn-Dixie #2404 / Future Aldi #2404
5805 Manatee Avenue West, Bradenton, FL - Palma Sola Square
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| Today's post is a presentation of Manatee County retail |
After a little dose of Albertsons, let's return to more of the big news to sweep the Floridian grocery scene in 2024: the Winn-Dixie to Aldi conversions. Having spent the last post looking at one of the former Albertsons stores in Bradenton, it only makes sense to take the short drive down the road to visit the town's "chosen" Winn-Dixie store (not like this selection should be considered an honor of any kind). The Bradenton Winn-Dixie that was selected for conversion to an Aldi wasn't just any plain old 1990's Winn-Dixie Marketplace either - this store has quite the storied past, having seen a number of brands operate out of this building since it was first constructed in the late 1970's. To this day, this building retains a rare prototype that was supposed to shape the future of one of those past chains too, but ended up being a short-lived design due to a major sellout of the brand (where have we heard that story before?). Quite a bit to talk about, so let's start at the very beginning, which takes us back to 1977:
On January 25, 1977, the original supermarket anchor to Palma Sola Square - Grand Union - opened for business. The second Grand Union in Bradenton (following the opening of the city's first Grand Union on 14th Street West in 1975) was dubbed the "supermarket with more", as it offered "a complete bakery, wine shop, old world deli, meat and produce departments, including a garden shop plus a complete home and health shop." Outside of the lack of a full-service pharmacy counter, Grand Union was very much trying to follow the big trend in the 1970's of having a "one-stop" grocery store with a full suite of service departments and a little extra general merchandise thrown in too. From reading the ad, the "garden shop" mentioned wasn't so much a true garden shop like Albertsons tried to run at some stores in Texas and the Southwest in the early 2000's, but instead a slightly enlarged floral department with some live plants thrown in.
The article above continues the explanation of the new store's features, as well as its "one-stop" shopping design. Store manager Edward Southall explained this store as "more of a family center than a supermarket. We are aiming to be a one-stop store where shoppers can take care of almost all their needs - food, drugs, household goods, health and beauty aids." With Skaggs-Albertsons arriving in Bradenton two years prior, the chain's revolutionary "food and drug superstore" concept seemed to be keeping the Floridian competition on edge, with Grand Union, as well as Publix and A&P, creating their own versions of a one-stop shopping superstore to combat the threat from Skaggs-Albertsons.
However, while Grand Union was touting all of these robust department selections, one-stop shopping, meats, an in-house bakery, and products like "magazines and paperback books, woolen goods, photo supplies, smoking accessories, and toys", this new Grand Union was only 28,000 square feet - half the size of a Skaggs-Albertsons and most of the competition's attempts at a one-stop shopping destination. Grand Union was packing a lot into a tiny space, although the grand opening ads and the article make this store seem like it was double the size. The article above features a few interior photos of the new Grand Union store, including a look at the much-praised in-store bakery department, but not much else as far as detail about the store's interior layout or design though.
By the early 1980's, Grand Union had begun its grand national decline, with noticeable troubles beginning to appear in Grand Union's outer markets like Texas and Florida. As a last-ditch effort to prop up some of the Florida stores, Grand Union chose the Sarasota-Bradenton market to debut the company's new "food markets" feature, which included the addition of new service departments such as "The Taste Place" (a selection of imported and gourmet foods), "The Wine Corner", and "The Cook's Harvest" (a bulk foods department), in addition to expansions of existing service meat, deli, and bakery departments. The "food markets" put a large emphasis on service departments, which Grand Union was using to differentiate themselves from the competition (in an era where most supermarkets had limited or bare-bones service departments). However, while these service features sounded nice, it just wasn't enough, as by December 1983...
…Grand Union announced that it would be closing its remaining 43 stores in Florida. While many of those 43 stores closed outright, 9 of those were purchased by Kash n' Karry, including this particular store on Manatee Avenue West in Bradenton. Kash n' Karry's purchase of those 9 stores followed the chain's purchase of 6 other Grand Union stores in late 1983 in Pasco and Pinellas Counties, bolstering Kash n' Karry's presence in their greater Tampa Bay homeland.
The Manatee Avenue West Grand Union closed in January 1984, with the new Kash n' Karry opening roughly a month later on February 5, 1984 following a light remodel. According to an executive from Kash n' Karry in relation to the conversions, he stated that "the changeover from Grand Union to Kash n' Karry will not affect the selection shoppers find on the shelves. The cheese shop, bakery, and deli will remain at the Manatee Avenue store".
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| 23 cents a pound for "tasty" bananas at Kash n' Karry in 1984, in case anyone is keeping track |
Besides a likely decor swap that took place in the month-long changeover, Kash n' Karry ran this store mostly as-is from the Grand Union days, although heavily touting themselves as the "lowest priced guy in town". While under the ownership of Lucky Stores of California (as can be seen under Kash n' Karry's logo in the ad above), Kash n' Karry was heavily promoted as a discount brand, much like its parent store Lucky (as "Lucky means low prices") and its sibling brand Eagle Food Centers (which operated in the upper Midwest, alongside a small presence around Houston)
In 1988, Lucky Stores was sold to the American Stores company, who immediately sold off Kash n' Karry via a leveraged buyout after completing the sale. Debt-ridden by the leveraged buyout, Kash n' Karry began to reinvent itself in the 1990's with nicer, showier stores, much like this one. While Kash n' Karry did a good job of modernizing its stores in the early 1990's, the company's debt problems continued to plague any additional progress at modernization as the sales volume created by the new stores wasn't enough to keep those programs afloat, especially as the growth of Walmart and Publix continued to eat away at Kash n' Karry's sales going into the late 1990's. As such, Kash n' Karry was sold to Food Lion (and in turn Delhaize America) in December 1996. Even with sales declining and a sale in the works, Kash n' Karry had been preparing a new flagship store design to close out the 1990's with, an even showier design compared to what the company had been using in the earlier part of the decade to invigorate sales. Making its debut on January 28, 1997 right here on Manatee Avenue West in Bradenton, Kash n' Karry's new store prototype was designed to make a grand impression:
""Over $3 million was spent during the 6 month long renovation of this project," explained [Ron] Dennis [president of Kash n' Karry]. "This store has an expanded produce department that includes over 400 items and we have implemented a brand new contemporary decor package. The store also features a sushi bar and our new Kash n' Karry Food Court." The food court wasn't just your typical supermarket fare like sub sandwiches and fried chicken either - Kash n' Karry was promoting food court items such as "raspberry salmon, chicken cordon bleu, and spinach quiche". In addition to all that fancy food, the remodeled store would also include Joffery's Bean Coffee Shop and an attached liquor store. To fit all of that stuff into this old Grand Union building, Kash n' Karry built a large addition to the right side of the store, the addition including the entirety of the "grand aisle", with the original Grand Union building becoming home to the grocery aisles and the pharmacy counter.
Like we've seen a number of times in the past, while Kash n' Karry had grand plans for this new flagship store design, due to the sale to Food Lion, only 3 stores of this design were ever opened. Those 3 stores included two expansions of existing Kash n' Karrys into this design (Bradenton and Gunn Highway in Tampa), along with a lone newbuild in Valrico. That was all Kash n' Karry was able to push through into the construction phase by the time Food Lion came along, with both expansions and the lone new store opening at various points in 1997. Delhaize truncated the previous ownership's new flagship design to those measly few, opting for a go-forward design of their own for Kash n' Karry, which complemented some of Delhaize's own creative takes on what the Kash n' Karry of the future should look like.
From January 1997 until early 2006, this store sported its rare prototype design until ultimately converting into a Sweetbay Supermarket as part of Delahize's phase-out and reimagining of the Kash n' Karry brand (you can see this store as a Sweetbay here). While the layout of the prototype design remained, the original decor was stripped out and the fancy features like the food court were trimmed back to feature Sweetbay's fairly typical selection of rotisserie chicken and sandwiches. With Sweetbay failing to win over Floridian shoppers (much like many of its predecessor's prototypes), this store was one of the 72 remaining Sweetbay locations sold to BI-LO Holdings (predecessor to Southeastern Grocers, parent company of Winn-Dixie) in 2013. In 2014 this store officially took on the Winn-Dixie name, while still keeping many of its Sweetbay characteristics (and decor). That's the state we'll be seeing this store in as we take our tour.
Winn-Dixie would eventually remodel this store to a decor of their own in early 2023, when it took on the current Winn Win deesign. While the results of the remodel in the grand aisle were interesting (as you can see in that linked video clip), the refresh still looked pretty good, although it was mostly for nothing in the end (like a good chunk of Winn-Dixie's recent remodels have since amounted to). In July 2024, following the sale of Southeastern Grocers to Aldi, it was discovered that Aldi had pulled a permit to convert this store into yet another location for the German discount brand. That event is what brings us to tour this store today, as it is one of the approximately 65 known Winn-Dixie and Harvey's locations that will become an Aldi by 2025. We've lost a number of unique or significant Winn-Dixies as part of this conversion process, and this was certainly one of them, even though most of what made this building special was Kash n' Karry's doing and not Winn-Dixie's!
Before we head inside, let's take a quick look to the right of the grand entryway toward the attached liquor store. Interestingly enough, it's been reported that following the conversion of some of these Winn-Dixies with attached liquor stores, Aldi will let the liquor stores remain open as stand-alone Winn-Dixie Liquor locations. I don't know if this particular location will be one of the ones to keep the liquor store going following the conversion, but a number of the other converting Sweet-Dixie stores with attached liquor stores are keeping theirs following the conversion (which will be strange to see).
While we could spend more time drinking away our sorrows over all the Winn-Dixies we're losing to Aldi conversions, let's head inside and see what makes this store interesting. The main entrance under the curved facade takes us into the store's "grand aisle", with the photo above looking from the cart return toward the grand aisle entryway. As we turn our attention to the other direction, things get much more grand than this:
Now that's what I call a grand aisle! A grand aisle tacked onto the side of an old Grand Union too - you can't get much more grand than that! Every service department except for the pharmacy was moved into this addition following the store's 1997 expansion, with the central produce department acting as the centerpiece to the service departments surrounding it.
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| Bananas have gone up to 69 cents a pound these days |
While it looks like it was designed to house a skylight, the peaked ceiling over produce was always just that - a peaked ceiling created to make this area seem larger and more open. The design of Kash n' Karry's store seems pretty reminiscent to what a late 1990's A&P would have looked like, especially with the peaked ceiling over the similarly designed grand aisle. As we continue our tour, this store begins to feel very similar to that linked former A&P in a lot of ways, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was supposed to be a ripoff of A&P's design, as supermarkets are no strangers to copying someone else's store design!
Stepping inside, you are greeted by the produce department, which occupies the front part of the grand aisle near the entrance.
Upon my visit in 2021, this store was still sporting its Sweetbay decor. While I have no qualms over Sweetbay's decor in terms of design (as it was quite nice), by the early 2020's, I was seeing a lot of examples of this decor looking a bit rough in places. This store was still one of the better examples of this decor, however, that 'd' in "Produce Market" was barely hanging in there! As this decor began to approach 15 or more years old, a lot of the letters have become prone to falling off, with those missing parts detracting from the overall design of this decor.
On the opposite side of the grand aisle is a wall that separates the 1997 addition from the rest of the grocery aisles, behind which is the produce stockroom. To provide access to the rest of the store, small cut-throughs to the grocery aisles were located next to the entrance and all the way in the back by the meat counter. With all the extra wall space over here, Sweetbay managed to squeeze in a second "Produce Market" sign, this one in much better shape than the one across from it!
While all the wall decor we're seeing today is Sweetbay's, there is still one remnant from Kash n' Karry present throughout the building: the floor tiles. The light orange tiles with the diamond pattern ran throughout the store, and remain one of the last clues we have to what the prototype Kash n' Karry decor looked like. As we saw in the grand reopening advertisement for this store from 1997, Kash n' Karry's president mentioned this store debuted "a brand new contemporary decor package". Having been designed prior to the Delhaize buyout, and due to all the orange I see, I'd have to imagine the new decor was somehow based off of Kash n' Karry's early 1990's orange decor, maybe a more modern twist to that? After the opening of these 3 prototypes, Delhaize began using their new purple and teal decor for all new stores, leaving these 3 stores as an anomaly of what could have been had Kash n' Karry not been sold.
Turning our attention to the right wall, we find the "Neighborhood Deli", complete with a ghosted version of Sweetbay's logo behind the department name. I'm actually surprised Delhaize wasn't harder on Winn-Dixie for removing all instances of Sweetbay's logo, as that logo is still used by Sweetbay's sister store Hannaford. While the deli received some minor modifications during the Sweetbay remodel outside of the decor (like the addition of the brown vent, home to Sweetbay's "Fire Works Roastery" - a more common sight in Sweetbay's newbuild stores), another Kash n' Karry remnant remained behind the counter too - the orange and white wall tiles.
Continuing toward the back of the grand aisle, next to the deli is the "Bake Shop". It's a nicely presented bakery too - all the fixtures are from Sweetbay, and Winn-Dixie did a good job of repurposing them for their own use. The pendant lights over the bakery counter are a nice touch too.
The Seafood Market is located in the back right corner of the grand aisle, and consists of a row of freezer doors. I think Sweetbay toned down the Seafood department in this store from what Kash n' Karry originally described in 1997 as "an expansive Seafood Department now called Pelican Coast, which features a wide selection of seafood". I wouldn't be surprised if there was full-service counter here pre-Sweetbay, or at least in the years following the expansion.
The meat service counter is located next to the seafood corner, complete with Winn-Dixie's replica Sweetbay decor "The Beef People" sign.
Here's a nice overview of the grand aisle from in front of the meat counter, looking back toward the entrance. Toward the back of the grand aisle, following produce, the center sales floor switches to a cooler of pre-packaged deli meats.
From the meat counter, we'll turn 90 degrees to the right from that last vantage point for a look toward the grocery aisles in the original Grand Union structure.
In the transition area between meats and the grocery aisles, we find the wine department. Since most Sweetbay stores usually kept wine in a center store grocery aisle, it wasn't common to see Wine get a wall sign like we see here. The Wine sign is mounted to the island which contains the produce stockroom, and also serves as the transition between the original Grand Union building and Kash n' Karry's grand aisle addition.
From Wine, here's a look back into the addition, where we see the bakery looking back at us.
I guess there's no use wine-ing anymore about all the Winn-Dixies that are to become Aldis, as the damage has already been done.
Following the meat coolers on the back wall of the transition area, the back wall changes into dairy coolers as we enter the original supermarket space.
Aisle 1 runs along the back of the produce stockroom, with some stock photo collages on the wall from Sweetbay to break up all the blank space.
Moving along to aisle 3, we find more of Winn-Dixie's famous stocking of excess cases of water on the floor in front of the shelves.
Even with the large addition in 1997, the original supermarket space wasn't modified all too much from its original feel. All of Grand Union's windows across the front of the store were preserved, and I believe the varying ceiling heights were also a Grand Union remnant, as ceilings like that were a common aspect of 1970's and 1980's supermarket design. Off in the distance is the pharmacy, a space most likely home to a different service department like the deli or bakery prior to the addition (I don't think this store featured a pharmacy until the expansion happened). The remaining original service departments were most likely along the right side wall that was ripped out for the 1997 addition.
Aisle 4 is the breakfast aisle, and that stockroom door in the distance serves as the transition between the meat and dairy departments.
Returning to the back wall, here's a look across the back of the original Grand Union space. The lower ceiling across the back is another likely Grand Union remnant, with the original meat coolers (and possibly dairy coolers as well) in this part of the store under the lower ceiling. With meat moving into the addition, the back was was now entirely home to dairy.
While Aldi is baking up a plan for converting this store, for now, here in aisle 5 you can find everything you need to bake a cake.
Diapers and saltine crackers in aisle 7 - another combination to add to the list of strange supermarket aisle pairings!
Moving further toward the left side of the store, here's another look toward the pharmacy before we dip back into the grocery aisles:
Pairing seasonal merchandise and greeting cards makes a lot of sense for one stop holiday shopping here in aisle 8, where you can get your chocolate bunny and Easter card all in the same aisle!
At the back wall once again, we can see both dairy signs from this vantage point (although not at the best angles for either).
When I visited this store in 2021, the empty paper plate shelf to the right was just a fluke. These days, sights like that are usually a much more grim sign of an impending Aldi conversion, especially if there are a lot of empty patches like that throughout the store.
Pet supplies and air filters found their homes in aisle 11...
…while next door in America's favorite grocery aisle, we're back to (human) food products, with chips and soda found here.
The last two aisles, numbers 13 and 14, are home to frozen foods (although half of aisle 13 is dedicated to beer). Sweetbay's frozen food banners mark the transition between the grocery aisles and the coolers, running down the center of aisles 12 and 13 (although considering the banners aren't beer related, it probably would have made more sense to place those between aisles 13 and 14 instead).
Here's a final look across the back of the store, as seen from frozen foods.
While dairy ends in the corner at the stockroom doors, Sweetbay still managed to install a giant "Fresh Dairy" sign on a trellis in the corner.
The style of dairy sign we see here was another one typically reserved for the new-build Sweetbay stores, and comes across as quite large in this store with its low drop ceiling. "I" spy another letter that wants to fall off from that sign too.
Frozen foods finds its wall sign along the left wall above the freezers. While the wall sign is from Sweetbay, the category markers above the coolers are Winn-Dixie's, and are the style that Winn-Dixie has been using since the Down Down decor era.
In the front left corner of the store was the pharmacy, tucked back into a little alcove that was most likely home to a different service department during the Grand Union and early Kash n' Karry days. The pharmacy at this store remained open until late 2023, when it closed with all of the remaining Winn-Dixie pharmacies as part of the finalization of the sale to Aldi.
Health and beauty products were also housed in this alcove in front of the pharmacy counter, with the photo above showcasing the (slightly washed out by the bright lighting) signage for this department.
The health and beauty sign was mounted to the front wall, after which the wall transitions back to its original wall of windows from Grand Union as we return to the front end:
I'm not really sure what I was going for with this particular photo, but it does give us a nice close-up of the windows and all the light those bring into the front of the store.
As we return to the front end, I managed to capture a glimpse at one of the health and beauty category markers to my right, which are of the original Sweetbay style.
Thank you for shopping your neighborhood Grand Kash n' Sweet-Dixie, which will sadly be no more in mere months as Aldi prepares to rip this building apart and strip it of everything that made it unique.
Back outside on the front walkway, here's a look across Grand Union's original facade, including the window wall, some painted-over brickwork, and some fluorescent lights above that look old (even if they aren't from the Grand Union days). I also wouldn't be surprised if the exit doors on this part of the store are original too, as those also looked really old!
Kash n' Karry dressed up the facade of the original supermarket building during their 1997 remodel, but minus some of that decorative stucco from the 1990's, the original Grand Union probably didn't look too different from what we see here, with the original facade likely resembling this.
A few days before this post was published, job postings for the Aldi that will be replacing this Winn-Dixie went live, meaning this store has roughly 60 days left in it as a Winn-Dixie if the pattern holds. That being said, the closure should happen sometime in mid-late December 2024, with Aldi opening sometime in mid-2025. While the clock is now ticking on the West Manatee Winn-Dixie, if you happen to be keeping tabs on any of your local Winn-Dixie stores, I do know that if you notice your local store filling up bins and carts with non-food and drug items (like toys, kitchen gadgets, etc.) and marking them 50% off, and notice greeting cards move to a 25% off sale, you've just found the first signs of the conversion process beginning (which usually begin about 60 days out from closure, so all of that should now be happening here at West Manatee). Even though we've well exceeded the 50 stores Aldi claimed would be announced for conversions by the end of 2024, more still seem to be trickling out, so we'll keep you informed of any additional conversions that come up over on the MFR page. It's certainly a shame to see Winn-Dixie gutted like this, especially after the turnaround they seemed to be having the last few years. If this was going to be Winn-Dixie's fate, what was even the point of all these recent remodels, new stores, and the false hope of a bright future ahead? Might as well have just sold the company to Aldi in 2018 following the last bankruptcy and called it done then, and saved a bunch of money in the process. I wish I had answers, but corporate greed is quite the beast, isn't it?
Anyway, while I wish I could be a little more cheerful about Winn-Dixie's future, it seems like the sale to Aldi was nothing more than a bizarre corporate cash-out to line the pockets of a few at the top at the expense of the company's many frontline employees, who will soon be out of a job as these stores close. Not to end this post on such a sour note, but it's just a shame to see this is what Winn-Dixie has now come to, especially when not too long ago it seemed like Winn-Dixie was going to enter 2025, it's centennial year, on such a high. Have I ever mentioned before that the Floridian grocery scene has never made much sense?!
Next time, for something a little brighter (not that touring former supermarkets reeks of optimism!), we'll go back to the trials and tribulation of a supermarket chain already long gone from Florida - Albertsons - and hear yet another convoluted tale from that chain's past in the Sunshine State. Be sure to come back in two weeks for that!
So until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
