Winn-Dixie #2342
3120 North Woodland Blvd., DeLand, FL - Brandywine Shopping Village
DeLand, the county seat of Volusia County and home to Stetson University, is a historic city with a charming downtown and a number of attractions to keep visitors entertained. The Stetson Mansion is typically considered DeLand's most famous tourist attraction, a Gilded Age estate constructed by the famous hat maker (and the university's namesake) John B. Stetson. The Blue Springs, located just south of town, is another popular destination famous for its clear waters and the many manatees that call it home. While those places I just mentioned have been famous DeLand-area attractions for years, a new destination in DeLand has been drawing fans from Florida and beyond - its Winn-Dixie - specifically, the Winn-Dixie on the north side of town on North Woodland Blvd. Over the last year, it seems like everyone with an interest in Floridian supermarkets has paid a visit to the North DeLand Winn-Dixie. Why? You probably already know why if you're reading this post, but for anyone who may not be aware or is new to the blog, this lowly Winn-Dixie in a rather sad looking shopping center on the edge of DeLand is the very last store in the chain still sporting the 1990's Marketplace decor. As recently as the early 2020's, Marketplace was still a decently common decor package throughout the Winn-Dixie chain, even though the package was over 25 years old at the time. However, the Winn Win remodels of 2021-2023 wiped out a good number of the remaining Marketplace holdouts, followed by Aldi's antics taking out even more stragglers. Finally, the store closures leading up to the restructuring of Southeastern Grocers as The Winn-Dixie Company knocked out all the other remaining Marketplace stores but this one. As of mid-2026, the Marketplace makes its last stand in DeLand. Being the decor package that Winn-Dixie carried through its last great expansion and peak, many people strongly associate the Marketplace decor package with the chain to this day. Its widespread use ingrained itself with Winn-Dixie, even as the chain debuted at least 8 different widespread decor packages since Marketplace was officially retired in the early 2000's. As such, it's quite the moment that we're down to the last Marketplace store, especially since it seemed like Marketplace was the decor that would never die! With all the attention this store has been getting, it's time we spend a little time learning more about it, so let's get ready to relive what it was like "while you're at the Marketplace":
Out on the northern fringes of town, the early 1980's brought about a new condominium development at the intersection of US 17 (North Woodland Blvd, the main north/south road through DeLand) and SR 15A, the DeLand Bypass. Wedged within a triangle created by the intersection of those two roads, the new Brandywine Village Condominiums (as the development would be called) would feature numerous amenities like a community pool and clubhouse to lure potential buyers. In addition to that, another one of the development's selling points was a brand-new Winn-Dixie anchored shopping center at the northern tip of the development to bring a convenient shopping option to residents.
The developers of the Brandywine Village Condominiums were the direct financiers for the new shopping center, wanting the grocery-anchored strip to be a major selling point for the new condominiums being built behind it. Construction on the shopping center began in early 1982, shortly after the first of the condominiums began selling.
The Brandywine Shopping Village was originally projected to open in September 1982, however, work on the two anchor stores (Winn-Dixie and Eckerd Drugs) was progressing ahead of schedule. As such, the builder felt that Winn-Dixie and Eckerd would be able to open a few months before the rest of the center.
The builder's prediction came true, and the Brandywine Village Winn-Dixie held its grand opening on July 15, 1982. The neighboring Eckerd Drug Store opened the same day as well.
The new store wasn't anything too out of the ordinary architecturally for a Winn-Dixie built in the early 1980's, and looked like many of its counterparts constructed around the same time.
Not the best quality pictures in the world, but the local paper did take a few photos inside the new Winn-Dixie on its grand opening day, showcasing some of the store's first patrons making their purchases.
Mrs. Bertha M. Corbett was the first shopper to ever enter Winn-Dixie #2342 on the morning of July 15, 1982, and she certainly got quite a bit of attention for taking that honor!
The new Winn-Dixie on North Woodland Blvd. was DeLand's 4th location for the chain, and the largest and most modern at the time. The new store on the north end of town rounded out a complete compass of stores in DeLand, joining existing stores on the west, east, and south sides of town (the south one was demolished shortly before GSV became a thing, unfortunately). With one shiny new store in town and 3 very outdated small ones, Winn-Dixie eventually went through and built replacements for each of the other three stores in town throughout the 1980's and early 1990's, only the west store's replacement surviving into the modern day. Still, it's quite impressive a town the size of DeLand retains two Winn-Dixie stores post-Aldi, although the other store on West New York Avenue has received much more love in recent years compared to the North Woodland store. Anyway, in addition to bragging about this being DeLand's most modern Winn-Dixie in 1982, we also get a nice interior photo of the store showcasing its original 1980's decor - the only other decor package this store ever had besides Marketplace.
The North Woodland Winn-Dixie was expanded out the north side into a few smaller storefronts during its 1990's Marketplace remodel, the Winn-Dixie store directly abutting the Eckerd space post-expansion. Unlike many other Winn-Dixie stores that received Marketplace-era expansions, this one's exterior wasn't touched following the expansion, retaining its 1980's style exterior architecture and side-facing entry doors - a set-up that remains to this day.
While this store was a showplace following its opening in 1982, it seems like this store has slowly fallen behind as the years progressed, especially as the adjoining shopping center began to show increasing vacancies and Winn-Dixie began to cut back on store upgrades following the 2005 bankruptcy. To give you an idea about how much this shopping center has fallen from grace since its time as a marketing high-point for the community behind it, the 2013 article above explains Winn-Dixie's fight against an adult entertainment establishment wanting to open up a few doors down in the strip from the supermarket. The second part of the article also gives us the reason Winn-Dixie seems to have kept this store open virtually untouched all these years as well - in discussing how Winn-Dixie's lease prohibits adult entertainment venues from opening in the adjacent strip, it was also revealed that Winn-Dixie was (and possibly still is) only paying $10,400/month in rent for this store, an amount agreed to in the original 1982 lease. That's super cheap rent for a commercial supermarket space these days, and I think the deal on rent is what keeps this otherwise sleepy supermarket open.
While it appears Winn-Dixie won the case against the adult entertainment establishment and prevented that from opening, it appears not much else has had any interest in opening in this strip either. Other than the Winn-Dixie, a bar, a liquor store, and one or two other small businesses occupy the remaining spaces in the Brandywine Village Center. Everything else is empty. Even in the years since this store opened, this area still remains a semi-rural community on the edge of town and isn't a bustling place. The cheap rent and semi-captive audience Winn-Dixie has out here probably helps keep this store open even if it's not the hopping supermarket in town, although the sad looking shopping center this store is in really doesn't help draw many shoppers other than the locals and the retail tourists.
The store's exterior signage was updated in the early 2000's to the italic font design, but otherwise the architecture is still original to 1982.
While the adjoining strips of stores aren't looking all that great, the Winn-Dixie itself is still pretty presentable for its age, and most I've spoken with who've visited this store agree that a good description of it is "old but clean" - a term I'd use to describe the interior as well. Interestingly, I just revisited one of the handful of remaining Post-Bankruptcy stores the other day and that store was in much worse shape than this 90's Marketplace, so I have to give some credit to the Marketplace decor for its structural durability over Post-Bankruptcy. Not sure which combination is worse - outdated but presentable or more modern but falling apart? I personally feel the former scenario over the latter.
I like the brick accents this store and its adjoining shopping center received, and the matching brick paver sidewalks were a nice touch as well. Anyway, after all that background stuff, it's about time we take in the Marketplace, right? So here we go:
Well, we'll get to the Marketplace in a minute, as upon entering the store we're greeted with a Purple/Maroon-era "Welcome" sign from the early 2000's. Still a vintage piece in its own right (and I can't believe I just called something from the early 2000's "vintage"), but coming up next, here's a little bit of the actual Marketplace to get everyone excited:
Looking across the check lanes toward the right side wall, a little bit of the Marketplace wall decor comes into view. However, before we get back to the Marketplace, I spy two things in the photo above that appear to predate the Marketplace:
We'll talk about those vintage check lanes a little later, but right now I want to turn everybody's attention to another interesting relic within the store's vestibule - these wood-style floors. Being that much of this store's original 1980's flooring was preserved during the Marketplace remodel, I can only imagine this wood-grain tile is original as well, especially since the Marketplace decor never used wood flooring. I'm not sure what this wood tile would have represented originally though, as I've never seen this tile before in any Winn-Dixie I've been to - maybe a photo counter or something like that?
Leaving the mystery of the vestibule behind us, the Wall of (America's Best) Values can be seen to my right, lining the front wall next to the vestibule as we make our way toward produce.
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I feel like "America's Best Values" was a less common phrasing for this wall - I seem to remember seeing "Wall of Special Values" more often in other Marketplace stores.
Produce is located in the front right corner of the building, the common placement of this department in most Winn-Dixie stores.
Other than straightening out the produce displays from the prior angled arrangement, the produce department doesn't look all too different between my 2019 and 2026 visits.
The vast majority of the photos you'll be seeing in today's post will be from my 2019 visit, with a few from my 2026 revisit sprinkled in. While there were a few small changes that happened between my 2019 and 2026 visits, the overall aesthetic of this store didn't change all that dramatically in the 7 year gap between my two trips, hence why I took so few photos the second time around. In addition to my photos, blog contributor Horizontal Horizons sent me some additional photos of this store taken in 2024 - those are the photos you've seen/will see captioned as "HH" throughout the post, and will serve as additional updates to my coverage.
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One fixture that was here during Horizontal Horizon's 2024 visit that wasn't during either of mine was the Winn Win-era tomato cart. These tomato carts (or more accurately, "tomato tables", but I like the phrase "tomato cart" better) were sent out chain-wide following Winn Win's big rollout in 2021, regardless of decor. In more recent times these displays have mostly disappeared, probably because the branding on the little canopy no longer fits with Winn-Dixie's promo scheme.
The diamond-shaped signs are one of the distinctive features of the Marketplace decor, and sadly, there are more of these in the wild now with a Pig logo in place of the W✓D variant!
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Horizontal Horizons got some additional close-ups of this and a few of the other diamond signs throughout the store, which we'll be seeing as we continue our tour.
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In addition to the close-ups, here's a super close-up of the produce sign.
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Horizontal Horizons also managed to capture some wide-angle photos of this store's interior too, such as this one showing almost the entirety of the produce department.
Looking down the store's right side wall, beyond produce the wall becomes home to a random assortment of promo items, with a sizeable greeting card department occupying the remainder of aisle 1 as well as the entirety of aisle 2.
The first 2 grocery aisles were shorter than the rest in order to accommodate this large floral counter, complete with a hanging sign and a number of potted plants too.
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By the mid-2020's, the formal floral counter (as well as its matching sign and overhead lighting) was removed, with floral significantly shrunken into a small cooler along the wall. The space where the original floral counter used to be has become home to yet more displays of promo items.
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In addition to the display tables, the removal of the floral counter also allowed space for pallet drops of soda and beer, the classic supermarket space fillers.
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Moving away from produce, here's a look toward the store's back right corner and aisle 1. On the right edge of the above photo you can see the new floral cooler and a small display of flowers next to that.
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Going down aisle 1, the "Wall of Values" has since become home to the "Wall of Beer".
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The beer you see here is in addition to the main beer section, located on the other side of the store between dairy and the bakery counter.
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Even though the value now comes from whatever beer sales are going on in a particular week, here's a close-up of the "Wall of Values" diamond on the right side wall.
Here's an overview of aisle 1 in its entirety, looking into the back right corner of the building. While I didn't get a photo of it, I did notice during my 2026 visit that this store had a rack of produce seconds in this corner next to the stockroom door, something I've never seen in a Winn-Dixie before. I'm all for reducing food waste so I was happy to see that rack, and I wish more supermarkets would do such a thing - it's usually only the ethnic stores and farmer's market type places where I see produce seconds marked down in such a way.
Turning the corner, here's a look across this store's back wall. Pre-packaged luncheon meats start us off here in the back right corner, followed by the main meat coolers and then the meat and seafood service counter toward the left side of the store. Compared to most other Winn-Dixie Marketplace stores, it's quite unusual to have the meat and seafood service counter on the left side of the building, as Winn-Dixie always seemed to keep that department toward the back right corner from the Marketplace era through the 2010's. In this store, Winn-Dixie simply never bothered to move the counter from its original 1980's location into the new expansion area, leaving the odd layout here today.
Aisle 2 was entirely home to greeting cards. This store was on the larger side following its expansion in the 1990's, so greeting cards must have been a way to fill some extra space in this store, as an aisle and a half of cards is a bit of overkill in a supermarket! The tall card racks with over lit shelves just look like something from the 1990's too. If (and hopefully when) this store remodels to Centennial, I can see all these cards reduced to a smaller display elsewhere in the store, with beer and wine expanded/relocated into this area for a full-sized department like we saw in one of the recently converted Harvey's stores.
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Leaving the card aisle, here's one final overview of the produce department.
Wine was located in aisle 3, but it appears I totally neglected to photograph that aisle during both of my visits! Oh well, we did see a little bit of the wine department in the photo of the floral counter a few pictures back, and you can see its aisle marker from over here in aisle 4 as well.
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The wine aisle also didn't appear to be on Horizontal Horizon's radar either, although we can see a close-up of its aisle marker above. Looking at the aisle marker, it makes me wonder, are wine coolers still a thing? I feel like they were a common sight in the early 2000's (especially the Bartles & Jaymes ones), but they're not something you hear much about anymore.
Wine coolers aside, returning to the back wall, we see quite a bit of vintage Winn-Dixie appearing before us. Looking at the floor, that orange stripe we see running down the center of the aisle hails from the store's opening in 1982, with an assortment of vintage 1990's promo signs on the wall above what appear to be the original meat (not wine) coolers too. Above is one of my 2026 photos as well, so you can see how all the new Winn-Dixie Company branding juxtaposes with the vintage decor!
These low-rise meat coolers were a staple of 1980's Winn-Dixie stores. When this store remodeled to Marketplace in the mid-1990's, instead of replacing these coolers with the common taller 1990's variant, the originals were left in place, with a few new signs installed on the wall above the cooler to fill up the wall space.
The signs themselves were quite interesting in their own right, and if this store were to ever remodel, I would love to have that "Winn-Dixie - America's Supermarket" sign! Much like the coolers, the wood paneling behind them is also original to 1982. Speaking of potential remodels, I wonder if Winn-Dixie would spring for replacing these 40+ year old coolers with the modern tall ones if a remodel ever does come to this store. So far, none of The Winn-Dixie Company's remodels of existing stores appear to have involved replacing any coolers, although every store remodeled since The Winn-Dixie Company rebranding has had some amount of work done to it since the late 2000's. The new stores do appear to be getting new (or at least taken from a store Aldi closed) coolers, which is a good sign at least.
This store will end up being a huge project if it ever does remodel, and I wonder if its low volume and the sheer amount of work it needs are part of the reason this store didn't even make the cut for a Winn Win remodel when those were sweeping through many of the remaining Marketplace stores in the chain. As fun as it is to see such an outdated supermarket like this (gotta love those diamond-shaped signs advertising Winn-Dixie's beef!), having a holdout like this makes the rest of the chain look bad, and the last thing Winn-Dixie needs is more tarnish to its image for having old stores. Hopefully this store gets the work it deserves though, as it must be making some kind of profit to have survived for this long.
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So until a remodel does happen, we can enjoy these many vintage signs on display here in the meat department - one of the highlights of this store.
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I love this sign!
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Marketplace promo signage and modern promo signage "meats" here.
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If this doesn't scream 1990's Winn-Dixie branding, I don't know what else would!
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The banner asks: Isn't that what you'd expect from The Beef People? Probably not the best question to ask in a photo that looks like it could have been taken in 1995!
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Being chock full of vintage signs, you can see why Horizontal Horizons went a bit crazy with pictures of this area!
Here's one final look toward the back right corner of the building, where the meat and seafood service counter would have normally been located in most Marketplace stores.
Moving along to aisle 5, we find the selection of sodas. To the left are the name brands and to my right was all of Winn-Dixie's own Chek branded products. Chek has an impressive selection for an off-brand soda - almost half an aisle's worth of facings - especially when you consider Publix's own store brand of soda barely fills one section of shelving all together! For those of you that live near one, how do Kroger and Albertsons' selection of store brand sodas compare to Chek in terms of selection? 15 years ago I remember Albertsons had a decent selection of store brand sodas, but nothing crazy like this, and I don't have much experience with Kroger-branded stores to compare them.
Returning to the front of the store, here's a preview of the front as we look across the front of the building toward the bakery in the front left corner.
Jumping ahead to 2026, we have some Easter balloons on full display next to the seasonal merchandise. While it's hard to tell in pictures, a visit to this store makes it quite apparent this store is pretty slow. Both times I was here it was very quiet, and this store is one of the few Winn-Dixie stores that closes at 9pm instead of 10pm like the vast majority of the rest of the chain, another indicator it's on the slower end in terms of sales.
These poles in aisle 6 indicate where the original supermarket building ends and where the expansion begins. Much of what we've seen so far was located in the 1990's expansion space, with the rest of our tour moving us into the original 1982 building.
While the poles in aisle 6 were one clue we moved into the original supermarket space, moving over to aisle 7, a more obvious relic from this store's 1982 opening appears before us - the original brown stripe floor tiles. As I mentioned before, Winn-Dixie barely touched the floors in most of the original supermarket space, leaving us with a number of 1980's remnants like this.
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Since I talked over the last aisle marker close-up with a speech about wine coolers, I'll use this opportunity to point out the detail in this one. I always liked how these Purple/Maroon aisle markers subtly incorporated the Winn-Dixie logo into the background - a clever way to slip in some branding.
Considering how cheap this store's Marketplace remodel was in the 1990's, I have to wonder if this was a slow store for most of its life, more so a product of its location on the outskirts of town than a product of Winn-Dixie's image problems from the last 25 years.
The customer service sign and the "poultry" category marker behind it both hail from Winn-Dixie's Purple/Maroon decor, as do the aisle markers and the check lanes lights. All those signs were installed in the early 2000's when this store got a "Marketplace Refresh", a remodel that really didn't change a whole lot to this store outside of some signage updates, new wall paint, and maybe a few shelves getting moved around.
Entering aisle 11, one of Winn-Dixie's 1980's store hallmarks appears before us - the large round air diffusers. The 1980's-era diffusers compliment the flooring quite well!
During my 2026 visit to this store, by the check lanes were a few displays of random clearance items - seen above - most of which were either household or hardware related. I got excited when I saw these clearance racks, and not just because the lightbulbs and scented candles were marked 50% off! I thought this purge was a sign of a remodel to come, as many times a Winn-Dixie will have a large reset before a remodel begins. As of August 2026 there are still no concrete signs (such as a permit) for a remodel at this store, so all this clearance merchandise must have been a product of a spring reset and not any larger plans. Oh well, at least I still managed to get some tire tube patches for half off!
The front halves of aisle 12 and 13 comprise a double-wide aisle that was home to the store's seasonal department, stocked with Halloween treats during my 2019 visit. In the time since my 2019 visit the remainder of the shelves between these two aisles were removed, with these aisles becoming home to a double-wide paper products aisle. When these aisles were reset, seasonal was moved up to the front of the store next to the check lanes, where we saw the Easter balloons a few photos back.
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The "Pork and Poultry" sign takes center stage in the above photo, but do you notice anything strange about the product featured under that diamond sign next door?
A meaty selection of dairy products I see under the "dairy products" sign! Dairy isn't anywhere near this sign actually - dairy is located along the left side wall and in the back left corner. I guess some things never got updated in the refresh! One thing the refresh did do was paint over all the old rose/teal diamond emblems on the upper wall, two of which can also be seen above covered in white paint. As we saw before, some of the diamonds in the meat department managed to survive the refresh though. In addition to what we saw captured by Horizontal Horizons in this post, Rejoice Retail also got some nice close-up shots of many of the other department signs in his post as well, which you can check out on his new blog here.
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I really feel like these close-up photos of the back wall make this store feel old, with the outdated signage and original 1980's coolers and floor tile visible.
Health and beauty is located in aisles 14 and 15, with aisle 14 pictured above.
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I thought this was a unique perspective of the grocery aisles captured by Horizontal Horizons, looking above the top of the grocery aisles back toward the right side of the store. Horizontal Horizons is either really tall, or held the phone up high to get this shot!
Following health and beauty, aisle 16 is home to breakfast staples.
The topper over the bread shelves to my left makes it seem like those shelves should have been lit at one time, but that topper could have always been for decoration only. Anyway, the tall shelves in these older Winn-Dixie stores do feel cavernous at times!
From the left side of the store, here's another look down the back wall at everything we've seen so far, which has been all of the various meat offerings.
Turning the other way, here's our first glimpse of the meat and seafood service counter.
I guess calling this a "service" counter is a bit of a stretch, since it's just a self-serve cooler in front of a window looking into the prep area, but if there was a full-service meat and seafood counter in this store, it would have been here. From the looks of things (and how old those coolers appear), I think this store has always had a self-serve counter, at least throughout its time in the Marketplace era, another testament to this store's lower-volume status.
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I'm glad I got to visit this store in 2019, as at the time, the seafood department's neon sign was still lit (the last operational one in the store). As you can see in Horizontal Horizon's 2024 photo above, the neon finally went out (either on its own or at management's call), leaving us this dim scene. Not helping any is the broken cooler, which was mostly devoid of product and appeared to be leaking.
Skipping ahead yet again to 2026, you'll notice Winn-Dixie actually replaced that seemingly original open-front cooler with a newer glass-door cooler, making that cooler one of the newest fixtures in the building. My guess is that "new" cooler was brought over from a store that closed, as Winn-Dixie certainly had a glut of decently new coolers to pick from out of the stores Aldi took.
Back to 2019, things were looking much brighter in the seafood department!
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| HH Those stacked orange tiles under the seafood counter are intriguing - I wonder if those are a remnant of the pre-Marketplace service counter that was removed. |
Even in the other Marketplace holdouts that made it into the 2020's, most of their neon signs looked like this too by the time they closed or remodeled. I can almost guarantee you Winn-Dixie hasn't serviced these neon signs in years, so once they die, they're left like this until the store either closes or remodels.
Next to the seafood counter was the hallway leading to the restrooms and stockroom, with more early 2000's signage visible here.
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Approaching the left side of the building, we find ourselves in the frozen foods department, all decked out in its Marketplace glory.
The frozen foods department in these Marketplace stores are quite famous for their 1990's vibe, especially with the famous floor tile pattern over here.
The only thing not from the Marketplace era in the frozen foods department during my 2019 visit were the category markers, those being of the Down Down/Winn Win/Centennial style. Every store received these updated category markers in recent years for frozen foods, although other departments (like meats, which we saw earlier) retained their older-style category signs. And going to the other end of the spectrum, I believe the coolers (at least the ones with doors to my left) are original to 1982, as the only other times I've seen those doors with the faux-woodgrain pattern were in other remodeled 1980's stores.
Thankfully, by 2026 someone fixed the dangling "Novelties" category sign, but as you'll also notice, the hanging "Frozen Foods" diamond signs were completely removed as well. I guess it's a good sign this store has been receiving minor "updates" over the last few years, but it still doesn't make up for the full modernization effort this store really needs.
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Horizontal Horizon's camera was able to capture these nice panoramic and wide angle shots my old phone certainly couldn't have done, and that I'm too lazy to figure out on my new phone!
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The placement of the old frozen foods hanging signs was a bit strange. Instead of centering them, the one closer to the deli counter was hung between aisles 18 and 19, and the one closer to the back of the store was placed between aisles 19 and 20. I wonder if there were two more of these signs originally to even out the placement, of if they were always off-kilter like this.
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I wonder what prompted the eventual removal of these hanging signs between 2024 and 2026. The removal of the floral sign was due to the total removal of that counter from the store, but nothing else changed here in frozen foods. Maybe the manager thought removing these signs would make the store feel more modern, or maybe a museum somewhere wanted them?
The addition area, the front end, and frozen foods are the only places in this store where you'll find the decor's complimentary matching floor tiles, with frozen food's very distinctive 1990's tile pattern on full display here.
The dairy department in this store begins to the left of the seafood counter, and wraps around onto the left wall before ending just short of the deli/bakery to give the beer some space. Pictured above is the dairy signage on the back wall, signage that actually aligns with the correct product this time!
Maxing out at 20 aisles, this is a rather wide store. Most of Winn-Dixie's stores with the highest aisle counts are 1980's stores expanded into Marketplaces in the 1990's, the largest of which has one aisle more than this with a total count of 21 (tying Publix's current record for highest aisle number in a modern store too). Marketplace newbuilds were a little deeper than these 1980's stores, which is why those would typically max out around 15-16 aisles on average.
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| HH The descriptor of "hot beer" on the aisle sign doesn't sound as nice as "cold beer" would! |
Looking up aisle 20, here we see the remainder of the dairy department, followed by beer the closer you get to the front of the store near the bakery counter.
Even following its Marketplace remodel, this store retained its original combined deli/bakery arrangement in the front left corner of the building - 1990's decor thrown onto the 1980's layout here. The light blue tiles in front of the deli/bakery showcase those department's original colors, creating yet another juxtaposition of old and even older decor elements.
The main deli sign is located on the front wall, the neon burnt out by 2019. Like most 1980's Winn-Dixie builds, the bakery takes a backseat to the deli in this arrangement, with the bakery relegated to a sub-category sign on the side wall and a few display tables of thaw and serve baked goods in front of the deli counter. I believe this store did have an oven for store-made breads, but otherwise, the bakery here was very tiny and majority pre-pack.
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As such, the "bakery counter" was pretty sad in this store, and comprised of a cooler with a few pre-made cakes in it.
Between the deli/bakery and the service desk is the Winn-Dixie reading center, a rarer element of the Marketplace decor to find signage for (as usually books and magazines were placed in a grocery aisle rather than against the wall like this). The Reading Center takes the place where a pharmacy would have been in this store, and I have to guess that this store either never had a pharmacy, or the pharmacy closed a very long time ago. I'm leaning toward this store never having had a pharmacy, as the pharmacy license database didn't turn up any records of this store having one as far back as 1997 (when their online records begin). The adjoining Eckerd next door (which survived long enough to become a CVS) may have also prevented Winn-Dixie from ever having a pharmacy too, that, or this store was just too slow to ever warrant a pharmacy to begin with, hence all the magazines and paperback novels instead.
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| HH I wonder if you could buy a copy of "Because of Winn-Dixie" here? |
The reading center itself is a nice little display of lighted shelves for the magazines, with a little alcove for the paperback novels. While a reading center was probably a good place for some impulse sales in the 1990's when it was first installed, Winn-Dixie's latest remodels suggest this area would become home to a relocated seasonal department or promo area more in-line with modern tastes.
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Customer service is located on the wall next to the reading center. From this angle, you can better see how the reading center would have been where a pharmacy would have been located.
Turning around, here's another 2026 photo showing the new graphics with the Marketplace decor - the only store in the chain where you'll ever see this combination.
Finishing things up with a look at the front end, we see 6 of the store's 7 total check lanes in the photo above.
Bringing our attention back to the customer service desk, here's what it looks like when it's not decorated for 4th of July weekend. With the flag banner removed, we can see the counter is of an older style, however, its age is less obvious than that of the remaining check lanes:
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I spy something very 1980's here!
I'd have to take a guess that these wood-paneled check lanes are also original to 1982, as wood paneling was all the rage in the 1980's, and Winn-Dixie's 1980's decor used wood panel accents all over the place too. If this store ever remodels, it really will be interesting to see what fixtures get replaced and which don't, as this store didn't get updated fixtures in the 2000's that could be easily reskinned/repainted like all the other stores to have received Centennial so far.
Based on how the Marketplace-era floor tiles end under those BOGO bins to my left, this store would have most likely had 8 or 9 check lanes originally. Still, having 7 lanes remaining as of 2026 is a pretty impressive amount, although I wonder how often this store ever has all of them going at once!
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Horizontal Horizons captured a few additional angles of the ancient check lane counters, which we'll use to wrap up our front end coverage.
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During Horizontal Horizon's visit, it appears 3 out of the 7 lanes were open, which is pretty good! I think there were 2 or 3 lanes open on my last visit as well, so maybe this store does pick up from time to time.
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Even though I always felt Winn-Dixie's claim of being "America's Supermarket" was a bit lofty even at the chain's peak in the late 1990's, especially for a chain that really didn't have much presence outside of the southeast even then, it's a really sad statement to see now knowing that only 5 of Winn-Dixie's stores are located outside of Florida. Anyway, the classic "Thank you for shopping at America's Supermarket" sign can be seen here above the vestibule, serving as our last look at the Marketplace...for now.
We entered the store through the left side doors, so we'll depart out the right side ones now, pictured above.
The right side doors take you out in front of the former Eckerd/CVS space next door, the entrance to which is just down this walkway a little bit.
Opening the same day as the Winn-Dixie in 1982, this Eckerd remained an in-line tenant at Brandywine Shopping Village until 2004, when all of Eckerd's stores in Florida were sold to CVS. CVS remained at this location until ca. 2012, when this location closed outright, probably due to low sales. The next closest CVS is a former freestanding Eckerd location 4 miles south of here, although you'd have to drive by a Walgreens, Walmart, and Publix with pharmacies to get to it.
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A CVS labelscar is still visible on this overhead sign, over a decade after CVS closed.
The old drugstore space sat empty for many years after CVS closed. Since that was the case, I took a few pictures through the front doors during my 2019 visit for a glimpse inside, and we find the usual 1980's Eckerd designs, just with CVS's signature gray carpet on the floors.
In case you needed any more proof of who installed the carpet, here it is! When Eckerd was here the store would have used white tiles, which you can see poking out from the carpet where the shelves were removed.
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Sometime in the early 2020's a fitness studio took over the former CVS, as seen in Horizontal Horizon's photo above. The studio redid the floors, but never put up a sign on the front, making this space still look abandoned even while it was open! When I visited in 2026 there was a for lease sign hanging from the front of the old CVS, leading me to believe the fitness studio closed sometime between Horizontal Horizon's visit and mine.
From CVS, here's a look back toward Winn-Dixie's entrance.
The new "For Lease" sign installed come 2026, the old CVS space, like much of the rest of the center, waits for a new tenant to arrive.
The north wing of the shopping center, extending to the right of the former CVS, isn't exactly the bustling place come mid-2026 either. The hair salon immediately next to the old CVS, the nail salon, and an insurance office comprise the only active businesses on this end of the center. Looking at Google Street View, that's been the tenant lineup of this end of the plaza for nearly a decade, following the closure of a pizza place to the right of the nail salon around that time. Otherwise, all those other spaces have been empty for at least 15 years.
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From this angle looking toward the south end of the plaza, the Winn-Dixie looks like it could use a good pressure washing!
The south wing of the shopping center (to the left of the Winn-Dixie) isn't faring much better, with only 3 operational businesses over here too - a liquor store, a Chinese takeout restaurant, and a nightclub (a PG rated one, the nightclub in the space where Winn-Dixie successfully chased out that adult entertainment establishment in 2013). Looking back to 2015 on Google Streetview, this was the same tenant line-up back then, the rest of the storefronts having been chronically vacant for years.
Even though this store's location, age, and sales volume seem to be against it, this store has managed to remain open for 44 years and survive so many closure rounds and all the turbulence that has plagued Winn-Dixie over that time span. It will take a lot to bring this store up to Winn-Dixie's modern standards, and I hope corporate will finally give this store the remodel it's needed for so long. As mentioned before, still nothing concrete about a remodel coming to this store, but this will be one to keep an eye on. Unlike some of the other recent Winn-Dixie closures where landlords were playing games to get Winn-Dixie out for a "better" tenant, I think the landlord here would beg Winn-Dixie to stay if they tried to close this store outright, as Winn-Dixie closing would be the death blow to this entire strip. The location isn't really enticing to anything else, and I think this plaza would just rot away for years if Winn-Dixie were to ever leave. Hopefully that won't be the case, but it will be interesting to see just how much longer the Marketplace hangs in there for.
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| The plaza's blown-out road sign facing US 17 really isn't adding any to the shopping center's curb appeal either - photo taken in 2026 |
Whether you're in DeLand to visit a museum dedicated to a famous hatter or the unofficial museum of 1990's Floridian supermarkets, there's certainly plenty of history in this town! While the outside of the shopping center is looking a bit rough, I will have to say for such an old Winn-Dixie, this was one of the cleaner and better kept ones out there in terms of interior maintenance. Some of the other Marketplace stragglers that made it into the 2020's were looking a bid sad before they either remodeled or closed. Anyway, thank you Horizontal Horizons for sharing those photos of this store with me, and be sure to keep an eye on My Florida Retail for any updates on this Winn-Dixie, where we're keeping track of chain's remodels and new stores here.
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Even though this is the last Marketplace store left in the chain, I have plenty of other albums of Winn-Dixie stores still sporting this decor, so this is not the last we'll see of the Marketplace decor on the blog - I have plenty of Marketplace photos to keep us entertained for a while! From the Marketplace we're off to some more Albertsons coverage next time, when the second half of the year on AFB resumes in two weeks!
See everyone then, and until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
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