AFB Update: A Rutherfordton Aldi

Food Lion #2162 / Winn-Dixie #112 / Aldi #182

181 Blackford Way, St. Augustine, FL - Shores Village

Today's post is a presentation of St. Johns County retail

     This past March, we toured the St. Augustine Shores Winn-Dixie, one of the few new stores Winn-Dixie opened during its short-lived revival period from 2020-2023. Opening in 2021, this Winn-Dixie took over a short-lived former Food Lion store that had been sitting vacant since that chain pulled out of Florida in 2012. Sadly, the sale of Southeastern Grocers to Aldi in 2023 would end up spelling doom to this store, and the majority of the other new stores Winn-Dixie opened in the early 2020's. As such, this Winn-Dixie lasted just a tiny bit longer than the ill-fated Food Lion that came before it, with Winn-Dixie getting 4 years out of this building compared to Food Lion's 3 years. Still, seeing these 2020's-era Winn-Dixie stores fall into Aldi's grip was a complete waste to me, as these stores were built out just to be mutilated into an Aldi. While I can go on and on about some of the stores Aldi took and why they shouldn't have been taken, what's done has been done at this point. While I would have liked to see this store continue on as a Winn-Dixie, I have to admit, I was a bit intrigued to see just what Aldi would do to one of these Rutherfordton-era Food Lion newbuilds. As such, I decided to stop by here again following this store's reopening as an Aldi, giving us today's update post.

     If you would like a full recap on this store and its history as a Food Lion and Winn-Dixie, be sure to check out my original post from this past March by clicking that link. Just to get us back up to speed from where we left off, this store closed as a Winn-Dixie on August 17, 2025, and reopened as an Aldi on May 21, 2026 following a 9 month conversion process - one of the timelier conversions out there, as many of the conversions have been pushing closer to the 1 year mark to complete (and very, very few have followed the original 6-month turnaround timeframe Aldi was promoting when all these conversions first started).

     Looking at the exterior of the building post-conversion, Aldi didn't change too much architecturally. The entire Food Lion design was preserved here, with Aldi's modifications limited to moving, adding, and closing in some doors.

     The front doors and windows under the Aldi sign are all new, installed to match Aldi's specifications. Winn-Dixie reused the original exterior doors left over from Food Lion, even following Winn-Dixie's own reconfiguration of the vestibule interior during their own conversion. However, no stranger to being thrifty, Aldi didn't throw away the old doors - we'll see those again a little later, as those were reused to serve as the main access into the space Aldi doesn't use here.

     Aldi occupies this building's left side, leaving a small sliver of space on the right side (home to both Food Lion's and Winn-Dixie's "grand aisle") left over for sublease. With Aldi taking the left side of the building, they were able to reuse Food Lion's main entryway area, reopening the old vestibule to serve as a large cartwell in a similar vein to Food Lion (Winn-Dixie shrank the vestibule to leave a smaller cartwell, with the remaining space serving as an exit hall). The window at the end of the cartwell was home to an exit door during both the Food Lion and Winn-Dixie days, which Aldi closed in since they consolidated all entry and exit through the main door at the front.

     With the way Food Lion designed this building, Aldi ended up with a "double vestibule" of sorts. The original Food Lion vestibule is where the carts were stored, with the traditional Aldi vestibule located in the opening to my left, where the entrance and exit doors are located.

     Walking through the entrance door, you're brought into Aldi's produce department. The wall to my right is the partition that split that building in half, along which we see Aldi's produce coolers followed by baked goods.

     Moving further along the right wall, the baked goods come into full view to my right, with the "deli" now coming into view along the back wall.

     Even though Aldi is prototyping a new decor package that debuted in September 2025, I've yet to see it appear anywhere else outside of the original prototype that opened in a converted Winn-Dixie in Aventura, in addition to Aldi's new Midtown Manhattan flagship store that opened in June 2026. Outside of those two, all new Aldi stores so far have continued to use the decor we see in here, which has been in use since 2024 or so.

     For comparison, this photo was taken from roughly the same area as the one above when Winn-Dixie was open. Aldi completely transformed this space to feel like every other Aldi out there, which has been the case with pretty much every one of these Winn-Dixie conversions so far. Overall, I've only come across one conversion so far that's ended with somewhat unorthodox results compared to a typical Aldi, and that was only because Aldi's entire salesfloor had to be turned sideways to fit inside that old Winn-Dixie.

     Here's a quick look across the store's front end, looking toward the frozen food wall.

     Aldi Finds are located in the center grocery aisle, roughly in the area that once housed Winn-Dixie's health and beauty department. When Winn-Dixie was here, this is a rough idea of what this same scene would have looked like.

     When it comes to Winn-Dixie's newest stores (both pre- and post-Aldi), Winn-Dixie seems split on using either plain concrete floors or using a faux hardwood tile, the choice seeming to depend on how much work goes into a building (with concrete for total newbuilds or heavy conversions, and the faux wood tiles for lighter conversions and remodels). Food Lion would have had a tile floor throughout here, with Winn-Dixie ripping that out for the exposed concrete. Even when Winn-Dixie was here, the concrete was quite nice in most places, so they put some decent effort into the floors here before opening. Modern Aldi stores use exposed concrete as well, so Aldi just carried over the floors Winn-Dixie left behind in here. Aldi doesn't seem to have messed up the floors in here all that much either, outside of one really bad looking patch we'll see in a little bit.

     The store's self checkouts can be seen from the end of this grocery aisle. Aldi is still pretty split on if a new store will open with self-checkout or not, as I'm still seeing both options play out even with the most recent openings.

     Entering the store's last aisle, we find frozen foods in the alcove to my left. Past the alcove is dairy and meats, located in the back left corner of the building.

     A much, much different look back here when you compare the current look to how Winn-Dixie had this corner set up!

     Here's one final look across this store's back wall, looking from meat back toward the cheeses.

     Turning around, here's our full look at the frozen food alcove, featuring the usual Aldi set-up with full freezers along the wall, followed by coffin coolers with sliding top doors in front.

     Here's one final look toward the coffin coolers and the main salesfloor as we being to wrap things up in here.

     Back at the front end, it's time for the good news and the bad news - the bad news being that the floor under the registers doesn't look all that great, which seemed to be a problem even Winn-Dixie had up here. Something from Food Lion must have been ripped out up here, leaving all these floor scars along the front end. Anyway, flooring issues aside, now for the good news - at least Aldi kept all of Food Lion's old windows, all of which can be seen in the photo above.

     Back outside, that completes our look at the new St. Augustine Shores Aldi. While we're done with the main Aldi part of the building, let's take a moment to look at the space Aldi didn't use:

     This little slice of the right side of the building currently sits vacant, awaiting a new tenant that will probably be hard to come by for this sleepy shopping center on the edge of town, not really near much other retail. Considering this building sat empty for 9 years between Food Lion's closure and Winn-Dixie's opening, I don't have high hopes this piece of the building will become anything anytime soon, but who knows, maybe I'll be wrong and either Dollar Tree or Planet Fitness will find it tempting. While a supermarket anchor works in these neighborhood-oriented properties, trying to find a subtenant like this can be a challenge in a retail-sparse area.

     Previously, the wall we're looking at here contained 4 of those 6-pane windows. Post-conversion, the two windows furthest to the left were removed to make way for the new doorway, with the main store's old entrance door recycled for the main entrance into the leftover space.

     The door and windows were covered over, so no peeks inside this time. However, just imagine a scene like this inside, with some Winn Win remnants still clinging to the walls.

     While Aldi reconfigured the interior to their liking, I am happy they left the original Food Lion exterior mostly in-tact, as well as all the windows. As strange as they are to see in Florida considering their rarity here, I really like this Food Lion exterior style - there's quite a bit of detail and accent on these building, and the brick is a much classier look than the plain stucco boxes you normally see across the state. Even though the general design is over 20 years old now, Food Lion still uses a very similar exterior for their new stores today.

     Around the corner from the vestibule, here's a look down the remainder of the walkway along the front of the Aldi store. The door we see in the distance was carved out by Aldi, and is used by the store's employees for bringing pick-up orders outside. The windows we see here are the ones behind Aldi's check lanes, and were carried over from Food Lion.

     Approaching the corner of the Aldi building, we do see one final vestige of Winn-Dixie coming into view - a sign advertising the Winn-Dixie liquor store - which remained open following the closure of its parent store next door.

     Being in the strip of stores off to the side of the building and out of Aldi's way, this liquor store was allowed to stay as an orphan. I don't know how much of a consolation it was that Winn-Dixie got to keep a number of these orphaned liquor stores next to some of the stores Aldi took, but hopefully these are doing well enough to bring some extra money into Winn-Dixie.

     So there you have it - a Rutherfordton Aldi. If you were disappointed that you never got to see what a Winn-Dixie in an old Rutherfordton Food Lion looked like before this store closed, fear not - there's now a second one of these Floridian supermarket anomalies out there. Following the discontinuation of the Harvey's brand earlier this year, the new Lake City Winn-Dixie occupies an identical building to this one, and one that still has the original Food Lion layout almost completely in-tact too (Winn-Dixie rebuilt the interior of this one before moving in). Since I've never been to the Lake City Harvey's (or Winn-Dixie), I had to settle for bringing you all this Aldi instead, but hopefully seeing this store come full circle was intriguing enough. Being that today's post was only short update, I decided it would be a good time for another AFB/MFR double shot. Unlike other times in the past when the two posts were related, today they aren't - I just thought the subject was interesting for the place we'll be touring on MFR, and there may or may not be a slight Winn-Dixie connection in it to tie everything together too. Be sure to jump over to MFR to check out the Manufacturer's Outlet Center in Fort Pierce, and come back in two weeks for more right here on AFB!

So until the next post,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger