2863 Ambassador Caffery Parkway • Lafayette, LA
For the first time in this blog's history, we have a living Albertsons that's not being closed down. Unfortunately, it's not in Texas, but that's okay, since this Albertsons was part of the original Houston division, and, thanks to the Safeway acquisition, has returned to that status.
So, where is this one? Lafayette, Louisiana, a city I visited on October 30th, 2015, by coincidence, exactly a year since I saw an Albertsons in person last, though last time I didn't go in because I was on a school-related trip. Sadly, this store trip had to be truncated slightly because I was also on someone else's clock (and a low phone battery), so I didn't get to explore it and see all the perishables department. Heck, I don't even remember seeing the seafood, meats, or bakery departments all that well, because I mostly breezed over them (or they could've been small, who knows).
If you can make it out, note the "Albertsons Market" aisle markers. The "Albertsons Market" name was in the ads and even on the wall, but never outside. Since purchasing back New Albertsons and re-assigning the Albertsons Market name to United-operated Albertsons stores, the use of this name has decreased considerably.
The décor was updated to the current décor standards engineered under Cerberus ownership, called "Quality Built" by Acme Style Blog because of the fact that the décor (in the ACME division) pays homage to the historic brand, which previous décor packages have not. In reality, this décor packages achieves the goal of being modern yet colorful, something the Lifestyle stores never did (it was kind of trend-setting for 2005, admittedly, but definitely not a long term décor choice, especially at the pace they remodeled at).
I'm guessing that due to the relatively late build date (sometime between 1999 and 2003) and the high ceilings, that this décor started out as "Theme Park" (also, another Acme Style name) and was redone when a remodeling binge was done on the Louisiana stores. It also had a similar floorplan to
the Port St. Lucie store, except flipped left-to-right, so you walked in on the RIGHT side of the store, the deli was right there, and then the produce going toward the back of the store, and so on. However, the arrangement of other things (the stores in the front, like the "sports shop") was different, and it didn't have a large area in the middle of the store for a pharmacy and dry cleaning (which may have been original features later taken out).
This is the first thing that I noticed that confirmed that yes, Safeway brands are here!
The store didn't seem particularly huge, but it felt very open. The produce section had plenty of room to go around, but I wasn't sure if it just felt spacious because of the open space (and lack of crowds) or lack of merchandise. Other notes included the fact that there's signage with the Albertsons logo inside an outline of Louisiana advertising Louisiana made products.
I blurred out the milk price here because Louisiana milk is expensive due to local state laws (even Walmart's is shockingly high), but the focus is on Good Day milk. It's distributed by SuperValu and on its way out in favor of the Pantry Essentials brand, but it used to be the cheaper milk brand for Albertsons (and on the big gallon tubs of ice cream), with the logo largely as I had remembered it which, based on the last time I really remember going into a non-closing Albertsons, was about a decade ago.
Louisiana has one of the loosest liquor laws in the country, so the liquor store (detached in many Albertsons) essentially acts as its own department, not a separate store. Shoppers went in and out freely (I had to wait a few seconds before taking the picture), and I could've (if I wanted to) had the relatively rare pleasure of getting a bottle of Jack Daniels and toilet paper on the same shopping trip.
Another thing that I sadly didn't get a picture of was the hot foods and salad bars. Both were basically stuck in the middle of the deli area (titled Fresh Deli instead of ACME's Corner Deli, even though it was in the corner), which also had a self-serve soda fountain and a small area with containers of Community Coffee (the soda had prices, I considered the coffee, but didn't see the price...or cups). The salad bar looked okay at first glance, though I tend to stay away from that sort of thing, and the wings bar looked okay (but I'm used to it being behind the counter), but included boudin balls (basically
boudin blanc sausage, but instead battered and deep fried instead of being in a casing). There was also fried chicken.
There was a garden department at one time, but I didn't investigate it too closely because it was closed and if it had an entrance, it would've been through the liquor department. There was a labelscar on the old garden department but I couldn't make it out. Either the liquor store was added later in a former indoor garden center department (unlikely), the garden center was accessed through the liquor store, or the garden center was never intended to be accessed from the inside. [2016 UPDATE: The liquor store was originally a Lawn & Garden center, and there was a door between the inside portion (liquor store) and outside (abandoned garden area).]
Although I didn't get a full view of the store, I did get the ad for that store. As the photos near the milk show, I came right at the time when Essential Everyday is being pushed out, and Safeway brands rolling in. This means that the store is getting a totally different distributor, going from the SuperValu warehouse in Indianola, Mississippi, to the Randalls warehouse in Houston, Texas. This also means that the distance is substantially closer (by about two hours).
In-store made tortilla chips? Wow! I don't think I saw this store have a tortilleria, though (but again, I barely checked out the perishables departments) and I don't think even H-E-B makes their own tortilla chips in-house.
This was confusing. I had read earlier that it was the Albertsons fried chicken recipe being rolled out to Safeway in the West Coast, but now it's the Signature brand. I guess that unless they flip-flopped on the name, Signature is being used on the old Albertsons brand. [2016 UPDATE: I can confirm it is indeed the Albertsons recipe.]
Check it out, guys, a real Albertsons brand!
I guess this store does okay (and by extension, Louisiana stores) because there's not a lot of competition. Down the road I saw a Winn-Dixie Marketplace with original 1980s signage intact (unknown on the inside, since again, I didn't have time) and a billboard for Super 1 Foods, a warehouse style store owned by Brookshire's. And speaking of competition, there's a reminder of a certain ACME competitor...
First of all, I thought Good Day was long dead and buried. I haven't seen that brand in a good decade. I remember the Good Day brick shaped containers of ice cream very well, as we used to buy them all the time. The Florida stores just carried milk under the Albertsons brand (I don't remember Good Day milk, but it could have been there. Florida's milk is somewhat cheap compared to most places, as there's no outside control over milk prices here). Between 2012 and 2015 I don't know what happened, but now it's all Lucerne brand.
ReplyDeleteFrom the looks of the alcove with the picture of Louisiana in it, I agree that this store most likely opened with Theme Park (although if the opening was toward the later part of that spectrum you mention, there's a small chance it could have been Industrial Circus, but I'm pretty sure those stores had a slightly modified layout). The FL stores usually had the beer and wine in the middle of the store, but since the liquor store can open into the interior, it probably made the most sense to move those items over to that area (which would have been the pet department, so it was an easy swap).
Glad you got to experience a live Albertsons for the first time in a while, even though it was a rushed experience. I rushed through Altamonte the first time I went there, so I slowed it down when I went back in December. Maybe you'll get another chance, either at this store again, or a different one.
And also, this store's store number changed from #2775 to just #775 in case you were keeping track.
Based on the lighting and the layout, I guessed Theme Park, though I saw no flooring that would instantly ID it as a "full" theme park. I only put 2003 in case it opened in 2002 (the Bryan store opened around the time the Houston stores were shutting down).
DeleteAs for milk prices, why I blurred it out is to stop first impressions that Albertsons was expensive, but it's the fact that Louisiana forbids out of state milk to be sold, and forces a certain price increase on milk, resulting in nonsense like a $3-a-gallon sale to be illegal, so milk averages between $4 and $6.19 a gallon (really).
The fact that they had "fresh" stuff going on like the tortilla chips and all gives rise to the hope that maybe they can compete in Texas again.
This store has always been somewhat interesting to me in that it shouldn't have been built. There was already a ton of competing retail nearby. Walmart is less than a mile away, and was a Supercenter when this one was built in 2002. Winn Dixie was built in its current location in 1997. Super Kmart was still in business when this one opened, and there is a very popular local store just 2 blocks away.
DeleteIt was what you refer to as the Theme Park store. The pharmacy was moved out of the floating island during the LLC remodel into what was a video area. The liquor area was actually built as the short lived Garden Center that so many of this era's stores were opened with.
The location has never been overly popular in the grand scheme of Lafayette because of the location. It was the fifth store here. The first, on Johnston, was built in the late 70's as a Skaggs Albertsons. The second was further down Ambassador built in the early 90's. Third was at the Northgate Mall, built in 1996, which closed in 2013. Fourth was in Broussard in 1999.
The Winn Dixie up the road is mostly original, save for the Bakery, which was moved into the Deli in 2003. It sports the original decor package inside and out.
Milk laws in Louisiana are specific. You can't sell milk for less that 6% over competitor's costs. No sales are allowed. We have several obscure laws here that protect business. Florists have to be licensed using a test administered by their future competition; if they don't want more competition, nobody passes that test date. TV repairmen had to be licensed until a few years ago.
Thanks for clearing up some things and confirming it was very similar to 4466 except being flipped. The Garden Center, though, was still mostly intact (though shuttered) next to the liquor store. So either the liquor store was built in only half of the garden center and/or both co-existed at some point.
DeleteIf I had more time and was alone, the Winn-Dixie Marketplace is definitely one I'd love to see, and photos would be great.
Although question, if this store "shouldn't have been built", why is it still open today? Seems like Albertsons had plenty of time to kill the "bad stores", either in 2002 during the downfall of the Houston division (and many store locations did indeed suck, as we'll see in an upcoming post), the 2006 closures, or the other closures that happened in the LLC era (2007-2013).
The Bryan store was also a 2002 opening, and survived up until 2006, where it sat vacant until 2013 when Walmart Neighborhood Market. Even it couldn't make a go of it, it's closing as part of the closure wave they announced.