Sunday, January 29, 2017

Market Street #556 - Plano, TX

Market Street in twilight


1929 Preston Road • Plano, TX

I'm still trying to get back into this whole Albertsons blogging thing (the two year anniversary of the merger is coming up and not much has happened, sadly) so we'll be switching gears. Maybe I should get into the habit of it being on not just AFB's off weeks but weeks where the recycling goes out the next day.

Our first United Supermarkets store on this blog (Albertsons Florida Blog has it so easy, all they do is cover old Albertsons, the Albertsons-turned-Safeway stores, and Save and Pack, while we cover Randalls/Tom Thumb, Safeway, Albertsons, AND United), this store is part of the United Division out of Lubbock and despite some streamlining, is still blissfully largely free from the mediocrity that plagues Albertsons and Safeway, it is not independent from it. On one hand, it frees up space that might've been slower-moving product but on the flipside loses competitive advantage and distinctiveness.

Sadly, no Market Street stores appear to have been built post-Safeway acquisition (at least the DFW area anyway), and they seem more focused on building the Tom Thumb name with a few urban stores ranging from "modest but not very large" to "very small" (former Fresh Market stores), though it does fit Tom Thumb's range anyway.

Always cool to see multiple logos in the cart collection.

This really is what Tom Thumb and Randalls are supposed to be like (well, Randalls was moving toward the whole "Wegmans of Texas" thing and I'm confident that in a better timeline, they'd be 100,000+ square feet now). Anyway, I was in town for the State Fair (never been before), and I actually originally wrote most of this (it's been edited to better fit the context for this website) as part of a longer document on what exactly I did there (that document was strictly for my own records and my friends--sorry, it will never be released on the Internet).

After the somewhat haphazard Dallas roads (like Houston's roads, they tend to have the "never seen a concerted effort in repaving the road in a few decades" appearance), I finally reached the Market Street supermarket. I was intrigued by it as it was owned by United Supermarkets, which was owned by Albertsons, which between its ownership of stores was hit or miss (to put it lightly), and Market Street was definitely a hit.

Do you like pumpkin spice flavored everything? If so, Market Street is the place for you!


It was clearly related to Albertsons and Randalls, but more like their better, more educated cousin. It was well staffed even for a Saturday evening (a common complaint for ALB/SWY stores is a lack of staffing). It didn't feel like a terribly large store, though it was really was one of the larger stores in the chain at 70,000 leasable square feet. I was happy to see that it was different enough from its contemporaries to make it worth visiting. I passed by two Tom Thumbs to see it, which was refreshing as in at least that part of Dallas, Tom Thumb had a far better hold on Dallas than Randalls does in Houston.

What it was not was particularly well-visible. Originally, it was a Wal-Mart with a Chick-fil-a and later a Black Eyed Pea in front of the store, but in 2006 it closed, replaced by an "upscale" Wal-Mart Supercenter prototype. By 2007, it was demolished, and by 2008, Market Street and new stores in the parking lot were under construction. The smaller footprint of Market Street puts it farther back than the old Wal-Mart it replaced. I measured in Google Earth...from the outermost southbound lane of Preston Road to the front entrance of the store, it's almost a quarter mile, though part of this is due to right of way in case they want to build an overpass over West Park Boulevard.

Like most modern grocery stores, the perishables are clustered to one side of the store, and even though it was a Saturday evening, the sushi bar and the bakery both had samples, and the wine department too. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of this part, because I wanted to see it in real life (plus not attract attention).

I grabbed a cart and perused the aisles. For one thing, it downplays the now-common Signature brand, which was a rebranded version of Safeway brand foods (which Albertsons officially rolled out with great fanfare earlier this year). The entire soda department didn't have a store brand in sight, and I was able to pass an entire aisle of soft drinks and others before I finally saw some Signature-branded cranberry grape juice. The other big difference that separated this store from the "mainstream" stores was that the HBA section was huge. It didn't have much in the way of general merchandise, but it had a large supply of hair colorings and even things like beard trimmers and hair dryers.

Between the "Healthy Living" and the big HBA section, this part of the store is huge. Most stores lump some dollar-store quality merchandise near their HBA section, but not Market Street!


Unfortunately, I had found out through RetailWatchers that they had recently gone through and excised a lot of the more upscale center-store items that skewed toward the Whole Foods style product mix, but it still felt good like a grocery store was supposed to be, much like a nicer H-E-B sans the warehouse atmosphere and general chaos.
A fire escape plan/floor plan in plain view.


The store also featured the Market Street "Dish" department which was supposed to stock gifts and dinnerware but instead had a strange assortment of Christmas stuff, all of which gave off a weird smell (like how Hobby Lobby smells).
Keep in mind that when I took this picture, it wasn't even Halloween yet.

I ended up buying an expensive bottle of cucumber and mint infused water, something that I would normally never buy, but ended up doing so since I was both thirsty and wanted some vegetables (again, I had gone to the state fair, there was nothing I ate that wasn't mostly saturated fat and/or sugar).

Turns out other Safeway/Albertsons stores stock this too nowadays.


One more view showing the corner entrance

So that was Market Street...a refreshing look into one of Albertsons/Safeway's finest banners. The two year anniversary of their merger is coming up tomorrow, and what has happened is a disappointment so far (though not a disaster, by any means!)

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Former Albertsons #2773 - Pearland, TX


7121 West Broadway Street • Pearland, TX

A large part of WHY I never ended up posting again was some computer-related issues and some burnout issues, but I'm back, and I'm trying to get stuff in my backlog sent out. The other very large part of why this blog did not become what I wanted it to become is my goal was to get a job in a different city than the one I grew up and went to school in, and that never happened, leading to a mish-mash of whatever I could get. I probably said something like this before, but yes, that is why this blog never worked the way I wanted. I really should post the other stores soon.

Like 2773, this store suffered from a bad location but at first glance, it was supposed to be in a very good location. Exciting things were happening in Pearland, Texas in the early 2000s as a wave of new development was building west of "Old Pearland" closer to 288. There was a Home Depot, a new Kroger, a huge new shopping center, and all manner of new homes. Albertsons must have thought it picked up a pretty sweet spot at Reid and Broadway to build a store and ride the wave of the future in an expanding suburb. After all a Kroger was to the west, and in addition to being the closest supermarket to Old Pearland, it should be better in the future, right? After all, Reid was going to expand north and maybe even connect with the Beltway (presumably to South Wayside Drive, which still is far from connecting to the rest of the 'hood). Wrong. Today, the center with Food Town seems to be in the middle of nowhere with an overdeveloped shopping center on a stub road to the north and to the south, a side road with some of the same rural homes on it that were there since the 1960s.

Pleasantly, the store still retains much of what other sites call "Blue & Green Awnings". It was one of the first store decor packages to use warehouse ceilings. The pharmacy is in the front part of the store, on the far left if you were looking at it from the front. You can see that there was once a much larger collection of health & beauty aids (at least I think that sign's from Albertsons, although the image got cut off), and that has been dramatically downscaled (unfortunately, this seems to have happened in "real" Albertsons stores as well). You can also see they kept the circular check-out stands, too.

Other than that, I got nothing. It was one of four Albertsons Houston stores sold to Grocers Supply Co., which leased them to Food Town. Once again, my camera kind of screws up lighting and contrast making the ceiling look really dark. Don't worry, I'll be upgrading my iPhone soon...


With that said, the question remains--will I get back to posting semi-regularly? Hopefully! Today happens to be the day that it's AFB's off week (which was my intention), and contrary to popular belief, I do have some partially finished posts that I am eager to show off. I'll try to get it at the Sunday two weeks from now.