Winn-Dixie #2238
4855 East Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, St. Cloud, FL - St. Cloud Plaza
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| This post is a presentation of Osceola County retail |
After being beaten, broken, and battered over the last two years, a ray of light for a new beginning may be coming to Winn-Dixie. Down to just over 160 stores between the Winn-Dixie and Harvey's brands following Aldi's pillaging and a few isolated outright closures by the new management team, inklings of a comeback are starting to quietly break from Southeastern Grocers. After all the turbulence from the Aldi sale and questions about what would happen to the remaining Winn-Dixie and Harvey's stores, the company, shrunken by 60% from its pre-Aldi store count, is beginning to fight again. Internal memos were released in August 2025 stating that 5 stores would be receiving full remodels by January 2026, the first of which would be finished by November 2025. We'll talk about that news in more detail throughout this post, as this store in St. Cloud will be playing a pivotal role in the rebirth of SEG, being the store chosen for the first thorough post-Aldi remodel. While I will be covering that remodel progress as best as I can as the fall progresses, we'll spend a moment today to see what this store was like before the 2025 remodel. The majority of the photos in this post were taken in 2020, although we'll finish with a short set from early 2025, where some changes occurred that seemed to hint this store was coming up for a remodel once the chain was freed from the clutches of Aldi. Before we get into the more exciting news of late, let's get a feel of this store and what it looked like for the majority of the last 20 years:
Currently the last remaining Winn-Dixie in both St. Cloud and Osceola County (following the conversion of the second St. Cloud Winn-Dixie to Aldi in late 2024), this store also serves as the last outpost for the chain in a good swath of the southern suburbs of Orlando, a region where Winn-Dixie has been in a large decline ever since the chain's 2005 bankruptcy. South Orlando, Kissimmee, and St. Cloud are all areas that have become increasingly Hispanic in recent times, so I don't know if Winn-Dixie's decline has anything to do with failing to adapt to serving the needs of that demographic of if other factors in the area pushed the chain out over the years. While this store is a bit on its own these days, Winn-Dixie's origins in St. Cloud date back to at least the 1940's, with a lone store in the middle of town at Southland Plaza.
That 1940's store, which dated back to the days when the chain was still called Winn & Lovett, lasted all the way until 1997 when the store we'll be touring today opened on the far eastern edge of St. Cloud. Many residents in the heart of St. Cloud, who were elderly or otherwise walked to that store, were upset when they heard the new store on the edge of town was to replace the older in-town location.
For a while Winn-Dixie debated letting the older store and the new Marketplace co-exist, as there was a 2 mile buffer between the two stores. However, being a very old store that couldn't have been any larger than 20,000 square feet, the downtown store was extremely outdated in an era when Winn-Dixie was pushing for modern 45,000-50,000 square foot deluxe Marketplace stores. Therefore, Winn-Dixie ultimately decided to close the downtown store in favor of the new Marketplace, with the downtown store closing on January 29, 1997 and the new store opening the next day on January 30, 1997.
To appease the downtown residents, Winn-Dixie coordinated with the local bus system to create a route that connected the old store with the new one, running on Tuesdays and Fridays. Even that didn't seem to appease the critics of the closure decision, although it was quite generous of Winn-Dixie to sponsor such a move with the local bus system.
Upon its opening on January 30, 1997, the new East St. Cloud Winn-Dixie was a pretty typical Marketplace store for the time with features such as a Deli cafe, a pharmacy, and a full florist. This new Marketplace store would join an older Winn-Dixie Marketplace that opened in 1990 on the western side of St. Cloud at Oaks Shopping Center, and would eventually be complimented by one final Winn-Dixie on the southern side of St. Cloud in 2003. The store on the western side of town closed in the 2005 bankruptcy and, ironically, is today split between an Aldi and Staples. The other two stores in town held out as all the other Osceola County Winn-Dixie stores closed one by one (and pre-Aldi, neighboring Kissimmee was the largest city in Florida that lacked a Winn-Dixie following the closure of Kissimmee's last two stores in 2018), although the southern St. Cloud store eventually ceded to Aldi in 2024. Thankfully, Aldi had just built a new store of their own less than a mile away from the East St. Cloud Winn-Dixie in 2020, sparing this store from the fate of conversion.
Located at the busy intersection of East Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway (aka US 192) and Narcoossee Road, this Winn-Dixie was the first major retail development in Eastern St. Cloud, an area that has ballooned in population over the last 20 years as development of the Orlando suburbs grows to the east and southeast. That said, this is a pretty busy store, and I'm glad to see this location was spared in the Aldi bloodbath (as the last thing we need is an Aldi across the street from an existing Aldi!). This Winn-Dixie received its first major remodel in 2006 when it was remodeled from its original Marketplace decor to the Post-Bankruptcy decor. Being a 2006 remodel, this was among the first stores in the chain to receive the then-new Post-Bankruptcy look, and as such, the decor had some quirks to it compared to later remodels. Being a pioneer for Post-Bankruptcy, it seems fitting this store was also chosen to be the first store remodeled post-Aldi, which must be a sign this store has (and has always) done well.
Like many stores in their Post-Bankruptcy remodels, a new set of sliding doors was installed off to the right of the original concave entryway, a feature that was visible in the first few exterior photos of this store at the beginning of the post. The new doors served as the store's main entrance, leading shoppers directly into the produce department. The original entryway (visible above) was reconfigured with a new set of sliding doors to serve as the exit, being located in front of the check lanes and service desk.
Stepping inside, here's a look at the store's 2006-era entryway. Stepping through those doors, there was a small wall to your right with a sign welcoming you to your "neighborhood" Winn-Dixie (later Post-Bankruptcy remodels would swap "neighborhood" with the actual city name), with a cart corral located adjacent.
Turning to the right after entering, you were immediately taken into the produce department, located in the front right corner of the store.
If you're thinking something looks a little odd about the wall decor, you'd be right, as here is what the more mainstream version of Post-Bankruptcy looked like. Comparing to that linked photo, you'll notice a few things: a) the font for the department signs is smaller, b) the decorative blocks on each side of the department signs are smaller too, and also are painted the same color as the wall instead of white, and c) the decorative rectangles to fill the blank spaces on the walls are missing too. Certainly seems like this was an early prototype of Post-Bankruptcy considering all the differences.
Produce had two walls signs for that department, one on the front wall and one on the side wall, with a large expanse of empty green space to the side of each. A spotlight trellis was also installed over the produce displays, another touch from the 2006 remodel to replace the old pink light bars that most likely hung here previously.
Spinning around from produce, the back right corner of the store is home to the deli and bakery departments, with the deli being the first department to greet us about halfway down the right side wall. Also, not to be forgotten, the floral department was located back here too, in an island visible to my left (although it lacked any signage of its own by this time, although it may have had a sign back in the early days of this remodel).
This store received one of the more intense Post-Bankruptcy remodels, as the departments were completely rearranged in here. In the remodel, the bakery was moved from the front left corner back here, with the deli moving from the back wall (where the bakery is now) around the corner to the current location. That reconfiguration was a pretty common one for Winn-Dixie in the early-mid 2000's as a way to save money on staffing, with some stores receiving the consolidation as part of a "Marketplace refresh", while many early Post-Bankruptcy remodels (like this one) continued the trend. As time went on, Winn-Dixie eventually gave up on the department reconfigurations (which were expensive), with Post-Bankruptcy remodels eventually becoming more cosmetic affairs come the later part of the 2000's (similar to what we've seen in the most recent remodel waves too). From what I've seen at this store following my first remodel visit, we for sure won't be seeing any walls coming down, but hopefully we still see some good effort and polish like we did in the Winn Win remodels from 2020-2023.
The main cold cut cases for the deli are located on the angle, with hot food cases following those as we continue down the deli department toward the bakery.
The signage for the bakery is rather lackluster in this early version of Post-Bankruptcy, with only the word "bakery" on the wall and no other embellishments like we'd see in later versions.
Even though Winn-Dixie combined the deli and bakery counters to save money in the 2000's, the combined deli/bakery departments from this era were much larger compared to the ones from the 1980's era, where the bakery was essentially an afterthought. Here, both departments were given ample space for their own displays and equipment without having to cut back on selection.
Turning the corner from the bakery, we find a combined meat & seafood counter. What's interesting about this is that typically Post-Bankruptcy stores give meat and seafood its own signage, with seafood painted blue over the service counter and meats in red further down the back wall. Combined, both departments get a yellow background, something I don't remember seeing in any other Winn-Dixie store.
Skipping back up front for a moment, here's a taste of what the front end looks like. The registers are in the distance, with the BOGO displays taking up the space where additional check lanes would have been housed following this store's opening in 1997.
Back in the grocery aisles, the first signed aisle was this one containing sodas and waters, aisle number 1. Hopefully all those wet floor signs were just from an accident with one of the beverages in this aisle spilling, and not from a larger issue with the roof!
Next door in aisle 2, we find the snack foods and candy.
Also to note, looking at the aisle markers, the numbers and placards used a completely different font than we're used to seeing - see here for comparison. Only the category sign between the two numbers used the font more associated with these signs.
Pet food appeared to be placed rather early on in aisle 5. Typically, most grocery stores place pet supplies closer to the opposite end of the store with the other non-food items like health and beauty and paper goods, so this placement came across as strange to me. However, this placement would be corrected in the time leading up to the recent remodel, when a full-store reset got pet supplies moved to the other side of the store where I'd expect to find this stuff in most grocery stores.
Returning to the back wall, there isn't much signage back here to go with anything! With meat and seafood getting combined, we find a blue area with two decorative pieces further down the wall, with lunchmeats, the only other wall sign back here, down in the corner in the yellow area (although obstructed by that lightbar in the image above).
Frozen foods occupy an aisle and a half in the center of the store, with what would have been aisle 6 being the half-aisle of frozen, with the other half of the aisle dedicated to seasonal goods. Like we'd see in a store with Marketplace decor, frozen foods in this store remained unnumbered aisles until the pre-remodel reset, with numbering picking up again with aisle 6 on the other side of the freezers.
While this aisle didn't receive a number, it did get this "Celebration Center" sign. This sign seemed like something more appropriate for the greeting card/party supply aisle than seasonal, which may have been located to my left at one time prior to this aisle being switched over the seasonal goods. Either way, this sign would eventually be removed by 2024.
All the upright freezers we see here were probably installed new in 2006, replacing the original double-wide aisle of frozen foods and the coffin case that was one here.
It appears the blue painted area was meant to represent the frozen meats, looking at how it aligns with those freezers. It's strange how the decor designers opted to install the two decorative flower pieces above the coolers instead of a sign of some kind, as those flowers don't really have any relation to frozen meats!
Having left frozen foods, the numbered aisle 6 in this store contained more non-foods such as light bulbs, hardware, and cleaning supplies.
Getting closer toward the left side of the store, here's our first glimpse at the old pharmacy counter on the front wall, just past the front end and the service desk.
Other than the department sign itself, the pharmacy didn't get any other embellishments decor-wise. Also interesting, the pharmacy was painted green in this store, when in most other cases the pharmacy was painted blue.
The more appropriate "Celebration Center" aisle was aisle 8, home to greeting cards, party supplies, books, and office supplies.
Entering the back left corner of the store, here's a good look at the "lunchmeat" sign I mentioned earlier, also on a yellow backdrop like the combined meat & seafood signage.
Being on the side of the store with the pharmacy, the next few grocery aisles were home to health and beauty supplies, as well as the baby products like we see here.
Looking across the back wall from the left side of the store, we can also admire the ca. 2006 flooring pattern too. As part of the Post-Bankruptcy remodel, the entire floor was replaced with the subdued white tiles we see above, the sea of white broken up with the few gray accents. The Post-Bankruptcy tile pattern actually doesn't look too bad and wasn't in bad shape, so even if Winn-Dixie doesn't replace the floors in here during the 2025 remodel, they still look more modern than this would.
The last aisle, which was also unnumbered, was a double-wide aisle home to dairy against the wall, and the PB&J supplies opposite.
Dairy received a tan treatment in this store instead of its typical Post-Bankruptcy yellow, probably because meat & seafood stole the yellow color in this store.
An alcove in the front right corner of the store is home to wine & beer, with a very large selection of these products may I add! This alcove space was originally home to the bakery pre-2006, and when that department moved to the other side of the building, its former space was carved out for this alcohol alcove.
The wine was arranged on short shelves in the middle of the alcove, with the beer wrapping around in the coolers along the perimeter. The entire alcove also had specially designed category markers too, which was a nice touch.
The alcove kept its original contours from the bakery days, not really doing a good job of hiding what was over here originally! I have seen some other Post-Bankruptcy remodels where the entire lower ceiling from the bakery was ripped out to make this alcove feel more spacious and more like part of the main salesfloor, so this was one of the few places in the 2006 remodel where Winn-Dixie cheapened out a bit.
Back at the front end, we find 6 staffed lanes. While some Post-Bankruptcy stores did receive self-checkouts, this one appears to have never had those (although self-checkout was included as part of the 2025 remodel, and I got to use them in my most recent visit to this store about a week after they became operational).
Customer Service is located at the end of the check lanes, abutting the pharmacy counter.
Other than the updated signage, the service desk appears to have remained mostly original from when this store opened in 1997. It sounds like the front end will be receiving a decent amount of work in 2025, so it will be interesting to see what Winn-Dixie does up here.
Back outside, here's a nice look at the front of the store, with the exit doors in the foreground and the entrance off in the distance to the right.
While that wraps up my 2020 photos, we'll finish this post with one final express tour of the St. Cloud Winn-Dixie, coming from early 2025 after I had made an interesting discovery about this store:
Shortly after the remains of Southeastern Grocers were spun off from Aldi in early 2025, I popped into this store again, intrigued by a comment from January 2025 by a user named Sean B. on Google. The comment stated as follows:
My W/D @ 192 & Narcoosie [sic] has gotten a splendid do-over this year. It'll take a while for me to learn where the items I usually shop for are located... for instance the Bread has moved from one end of the building over to the complete other side where the deli and bakery is, which makes sense. I also have no worries about this one turning into an Aldi's because there's already one of those half a mile away!!
"Splendid do-over" you say, Sean? Per his comment, that do-over would have occurred just before Christmas 2024, peak time of Aldi ownership. While SEG was doing some store improvement work during that period (with reported new floors, new exterior doors, new aisle markers, etc in some stores), a "do-over" seemed intriguing. Was remodeling about to start up again at that time? Was something brewing at corporate? Anyway, after seeing that comment, I had to investigate, and I stopped in to see just what that "do-over" was all about:
Approaching the store from the outside, the only major change to note was the removal of the exterior "Pharmacy" sign, a product of the pharmacy's closure in late 2023 following the sale to Aldi. Other than the now awkwardly placed signage following the removal of the "Pharmacy" part outside, stepping inside, things appeared a bit anti-climactic at first, that is until you look a little closer at the photo above and notice something has indeed changed...
While the Winn Win-era tomato cart was indeed new, every Winn-Dixie store got that in the early 2020's, regardless of age or remodel status. Even though the walls of this store were still graced by the aging Post-Bankruptcy decor in early 2025, there was indeed a change that came from the stated "do-over" - notice the aisle markers are new.
This store must have had a pretty intense reset in late 2024. While most stores move around product from time to time as new products come in and old ones are discontinued, items in this store actually changed place (such as Sean's statement about bread moving to the other side of the store, and my observation of pet food moving a number of aisles over too). With all that swapping happening, corporate had this store yank down the original Post-Bankruptcy aisle markers and swap them out with new Winn Win-era ones. I had seen something like this happen before pre-Aldi, where the aisles were shuffled around and new aisle markers were installed less than a year before a full remodel happened. Therefore, this aisle reset appeared to be a sign of something bigger to come...
As part of the reset, a new double-wide soda aisle was created, making this part of the store seem much roomier compared to the single aisle we saw before where soda used to be stored.
Seeing this minor "do-over", as well as knowing this store had to be safe from any of Aldi's meddling due to its proximity to the existing Aldi across the street, all signs seemed to suggest this store was a good candidate for a potential remodel once SEG figured out its plan for the future. Turns out that hunch came true a few months later, when remodeling kicked off in September 2025.
Winn Win aisle markers and the Post-Bankruptcy wall decor don't clash as badly as you'd think. When the new aisle markers were installed, all the previously unnumbered aisles (such as frozen foods, the grand aisle, and the dairy aisle) all gained numbers. As such, the grand aisle became aisle 1, frozen foods became aisles 7 and 8, and dairy became aisle 15.
In the new aisle 7, frozen foods gained some modern Down Down/Winn Win-era category markers, and the "Celebration Center" sign was removed when the new aisle markers were installed.
Once rumors of Winn-Dixie resuming remodels began to pick up in August 2025, word from the comments of the MFR conversion post and the Sing Oil Blogger seemed to suggest remodeling was going to begin in Central Florida, although the specific location info remained a bit murky. As mentioned earlier in this post, 5 stores are going to be remodeled by early 2026, although one store was supposed to kick all that off with a remodel beginning a bit earlier than the rest and completing its remodel by November 2025. By all accounts St. Cloud appears to be the kickoff store, and the 2024 reset was the clue it was chosen to lead SEG into the future.
News of remodels beginning again, as well as some rumblings of new stores to come in 2026, is really the sign I needed to believe that SEG's new owners are in this for the long haul and aren't looking to dump the remaining stores like some critics have mentioned thus far (due to C&S's track record from owning stores in the past). There is still a little bit of contention on the fate of SEG's stores outside of Florida, as rumors have mentioned that SEG seems to be positioning themselves to focus solely on Florida going forward, but for that part we will have to wait and see what happens. Overall though, considering all the stores Aldi took, there aren't many go-forward stores left with a decor older than Down Down, so it wouldn't be too hard to finally get all of those stragglers up to modern spec now.
As for what decor this store will be getting following the remodel, signs right now seem to suggest something new is coming (even though the promo posters in-store show Winn Win examples). We'll see a glimpse of that potential new look at the end of this post, but what we're about to see seems to suggest Winn Winn is dead and Winn Win 2.0 will never make it beyond two stores. While bringing Winn Win back to life would have been a "win" for consistency, the debut of a new decor does show Winn-Dixie is ready to look away from its troubled past and look ahead to a brighter future (even if a few small elements, like the aisle markers and tile backsplashes, are a direct carry over from Winn Win).
Following the pharmacy's closure in late 2023, its signage was removed and the counter was blocked off by shelves of assorted promotional goods and sale items. I wonder how the remodel will handle this space, if it will be given a useful purpose (such as being opened up into the salesfloor), or if it will just become permanently sealed off and hidden in a more seamless fashion. While some Winn-Dixies creatively used the former pharmacy boxes to install new liquor stores in the Winn Win era (a great idea), sadly, this store will not be adding a liquor store in the 2025 remodel, as an existing independent liquor store currently operates a few doors down in the attached shopping center.
Our final early 2025 photo looks from the old pharmacy counter toward the check lanes, with one final contrast of old and new.
That completes my pre-remodel coverage of this store, and hopefully later this year or early next year we'll get to tour this store in its new form and see what a post-Aldi Winn-Dixie remodel will entail. I'm sure you all have lots of questions about what Winn-Dixie's future will be like, and your Southeastern retail bloggers will be here to provide you with answers! I'm certainly intrigued to see what the final product of this remodel will look like, but for now, here's a quick sneak preview of what we're in for as of my most recent visit a few days ago:
Sadly the new decor isn't completely installed just yet as of the time of this posting, but the paint scheme gives us an idea of what to expect in a few weeks. As of the current state of things, it appears the new decor will be something along the lines of the Green Interior color scheme but with a Winn Win influence, going off the wall color and its black trim, in addition to the standard issue Winn Win aisle markers and tile backsplash in the deli. This new decor, which I'm going to call "Centennial" (being it debuted in Winn-Dixie's centennial year and is marking a point of rebirth for the chain) looks promising, and once the remodel is finished I'll be sure to head back over here to see what the Centennial decor is all about!
So until the next post,
AFB
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