A Publix Rodeo at the Town Corral

Publix #136 (the first) / Food World #721 / Publix #282 (the first)

1202 Bermuda Avenue (now John Young Parkway) -

Town Corral Shopping Center - Kissimmee, FL

Today's post is a presentation of Osceola County retail

     Howdy y'all, it's time for us to wrangle up some former Publix stores down at the ol' Town Corral! After recently finishing my posting series to celebrate the 10th anniversary of AFB, I want to dive just a little bit deeper into a former supermarket located next door to one of the former Albertsons stores I profiled during the celebration series. Located just steps away from former Albertsons #4410, another former supermarket hides within the walls of Kissimmee's Town Corral Shopping Center, that being a former Publix. I had originally thought about including today's photos as part of my post where we toured the auction of the former Albertsons a few hundred feet away, but that post was pretty long as it was, so I figured I could pull out this portion for a separate MFR feature of its own. While my tour of the former Albertsons in its abandoned state proved to be quite the interesting experience, the former Publix proved to be pretty interesting too. It wasn't to the level of that old Albertsons (which will certainly be hard to beat), but for a building that hasn't housed a supermarket since the late 1980's, I was quite impressed with what relics could still be found on the premises. We'll get to see those relics in just a moment, but first, here's a quick recap of this shopping center's history:

     Town Corral Shopping Center was originally constructed in 1967, with the center's grand opening celebrations happening that May. The original section of Town Corral Shopping center was the long strip facing Bermuda Avenue (now John Young Parkway), containing anchor stores TG&Y, Publix, and Eckerd Drugs. The new shopping center was one of Kissimmee's earliest, located just north of downtown in the city's original retail strip along US 192/Vine Street. Bermuda Avenue/John Young Parkway and US 192 comprise Kissimmee's primary north-south and east-west arterials, so this was a prime location for the construction of a new shopping center. A few years after the center's original construction, a Zayre Discount Store was added as a 4th anchor to the plaza, built at the plaza's south side facing US 192. The Zayre building was demolished in the early 1990's after Ames, who purchased Zayre in 1988, pulled out of Florida in 1990 and vacated the building. The demolition of the former Zayre made room for the construction of the new Albertsons in 1993, with Albertsons' parking lot taking the place of the former Zayre building.

     A while back I happened to come across an old Kissimmee-area newspaper at an estate sale. After flipping though it, I came across an ad featuring a photograph of the original Town Corral Shopping Center as it looked in 1971. The photograph gives us a nice overview of the entire shopping center pre-Zayre, as the photographer would have been standing where the Zayre building was later constructed to take this photo. All 3 of the center's original anchors are visible above, with Publix's distinctive Wing facade standing out from the rest of the building.

     For completeness, here's the rest of the ad the photograph came from, which lists the name of the plaza's other tenants at the time, in addition to TG&Y, Publix, and Eckerd. Town Corral was never a large shopping center, but it had a fairly well-rounded collection of tenants in its early days.

      That same newspaper also contained the Publix ad above, listing all the specials one could find at the Town Corral Publix on the week of October 1, 1971. The Town Corral Publix was Kissimmee's first Publix store, and the town's only namesake Publix until the opening of store #228 at Mill Creek Mall in 1980. However, prior to the opening of store #228 on Kissimmee's eastern side, Publix had felt they'd outgrown the tiny Wing Store at Town Corral. After 11 years at Town Corral, Publix made the decision to move store #136 one mile to the west in 1978, relocating to a much larger building next door to Kissimmee's new Kmart. Following Publix's move, the company didn't abandon Town Corral completely - after a brief conversion period, Publix transformed their old space at Town Corral into one of the company's Food World stores in early 1979.

Photo courtesy of the Publix Archives

     I've mentioned Food World in passing a few times, and eventually I'll have a post on AFB with a more in-depth discussion into Food World at some point, but for now let me give everyone a brief explanation of the chain today. Launched in 1970, Food World was Publix's "discount" grocery concept. Discount banners were a popular new concept for supermarket chains in the 1970's, a time when other chains like Jewel (Jewel-T), Food Fair (Pantry Pride), and A&P (WEO) were experimenting with similar concepts due to the economic turmoil at the time. Food World began as a store a little more bare-bones than the typical Publix, featuring discounted prices, a blue color scheme, and did not issue trading stamps like the regular Publix stores of the time. Food World stores were rounded out by the brand's famous rotating globe that graced the exterior of all of Food World's stores. The photo above is of an unknown Food World location, but the famous globe can be seen rotating proudly over the facade.

     Kissimmee's Food World was one of the last few Food World stores to be opened by Publix with its 1979 opening date. The last new Food World opened in 1980, and the concept began its retirement in the mid-1980's. Publix also opened some interesting Food World prototypes in the late 1970's that were quite grandiose and not really something you would expect out of a discount format store, but I don't want to get too deep into the quirks of Food World today - I have another tour where that discussion will be much more appropriate!

     Kissimmee's Food World store, location #721, operated for 6 years until it was converted back into a regular Publix on March 23, 1985, the same day the 6 other remaining Orlando-area Food World stores converted back to the parent brand. The reborn Town Corral Publix, the original store #282, lasted until May 17, 1989. The following day, store #378 at South John Young Parkway and Pleasant Hill Road opened to replace #282. With its close proximity right between the relocated #136 and #228 at Mill Creek Mall, the late 1980's incarnation of the Town Corral Publix was a bit redundant (in addition to being in a small and outdated building), so I'm not surprised Publix chose to relocate this location 3 miles to the south to a part of town without a Publix of its own. Much like this location, the other 6 of the converted Orlando-area Food World stores didn't last very long, and were gone by the turn of the 1990's (either closing outright or being replaced by a modern Publix nearby).

*Thanks to the Sing Oil Blogger and duckman66 for clarification on the history of store #282 above

     The turn of the 1990's was a rough period for Town Corral, with the closure of Publix, TG&Y, and Ames all happening within close succession. The arrival of Albertsons in 1993 brought a little bit of life back to the shopping center, with the construction of the Albertsons completely transforming the southern end of Town Corral where the vacant Zayre and TG&Y stores were located. While the old Zayre and the majority of the TG&Y building were demolished to make room for the new Albertsons, the old Publix and Eckerd spaces survive to this day. Today, the former Publix is divided between Once Upon A Child, Dollar General, and Chamberlin's Natural Foods, with an Aaron's Rent-to-Own store occupying the former Eckerd.

    The last two photos show the former Publix space as it looked in 2015 and 2023. In the time between me taking those two photos, Chamberlin's and Dollar General updated their logos, and Once Upon A Child took over the former La Familia Pawn Shop.

     Stepping onto the plaza's front walkway, we see Publix's original windows and marble trim still survive today. I noticed these original remnants hanging around during my original visit to Town Corral in 2015, but it took me until early 2023 to investigate this building further...

     …and by investigate further, I was specifically intrigued by the Dollar General space. I'm not super sure about the lineage of this building's tenants between Publix's 1989 closure and the early 2000's, but I do know Dollar General opened in this space in April 2001, 12 years following Publix's departure. There's a chance this space, the former center slice of the Publix building, sat empty between Publix's closure and Dollar General's opening, because...

    ...it still feels a lot like Publix in here! While the Once Upon a Child and Chamberlain's spaces were pretty well rebuilt, Dollar General didn't to much to their sliver of the old Publix building. The original 1960's Wing Store striped terrazzo still shines strong in here to this day, contrasting quite a bit with Dollar General's bright yellow walls.

     The terrazzo surviving is one thing (and pretty easy for any new tenant to preserve), but even better yet is the store's back wall - it still features some of Publix's original wall texturing 34 years later! Being the middle slice of the old Publix, the back wall was the only portion where any of Publix's original decor would have survived (as the front wall is all windows) - wouldn't it have been interesting if Dollar General had taken either the left or right sides of the building after seeing this? Publix (and Food World's) meat department would have been back here, that linked photo showing what this store would have looked like back in its early Wing Store days. Most likely the meat coolers or a service counter would have been located in the area where the terrazzo switches to the white vinyl, and the paneling above was probably some kind of remnant from Food World's decor (as I doubt the 1985 rebrand was super thorough outside of some new paint and hanging signs).

     Seeing the original terrazzo exposed was exciting enough for me, but the paneling on the back wall was a fun bonus! I wish I had thought to pop into this Dollar General during my original visit, but better late than never I suppose. Unfortunately, in true Dollar General style, the back aisle of the store was jam-packed with pallets of merchandise waiting to be put out that I couldn't navigate around, so I wasn't able to see much more of what was back there while I was in here. Oh well, at least we have the original Wing Store terrazzo to entertain us through the rest of the store!

     With the publication of this post coinciding with the post-Christmas clearance shopping season, I guess it's fitting to display some of this store's clearance merchandise left over from the 2022 season. I visited this store well into January too, so the Christmas clearance that was left had been sitting around for a little while by this point too. I'm not surprised Twinkie-flavored candy canes were sitting around that long though - those just seem weird!

     This Dollar General isn't very wide, but it goes back pretty far. The entire store was 5-6 aisles wide, but each aisle was broken into 3 segments, with two sets of center dividing aisles in the store.

     Here's a look down the store's left side wall, with Chamberlin's Natural Foods on the other side of that partition. Chamberlin's tiled over the original Publix terrazzo in their sliver of the former Publix building, with Once Upon a Child opting for faux wood flooring to cover the old terrazzo in their portion.

     Our final interior photo showcases the change in direction of the terrazzo stripes, which would happen in the center of the salesfloor in these older Publix stores. Dollar General's shelving blocks most of the transition, although the V-shaped change in direction did pop out through one of the center cut-through aisles.

     Since the original Publix relocated to a new building in 1978 after only 11 years here, this store was never expanded, with Food World and the 2nd incarnation of Publix all occupying the original approx. 25,000 square foot Wing Store space. While the size of the building hasn't changed, the facade certainly has, although I'm not sure when the building's facade was redone to bring it to its current look. The current facade may have been added as part of a remodel that coincided with the construction of the new Albertsons store in 1993, after Publix closed, but I'm not sure if that was the case or if Food World/Publix Part 2 was responsible for the new facade.

     To complete our look at the remaining relics of retail past here at Town Corral, here's a look at the center's former Eckerd store. Eckerd remained at Town Corral until 1999, when the company constructed a new freestanding store across the street. Aaron's Rent to Own currently occupies the former Eckerd space at Town Corral, with Eckerd's oval still lingering behind Aaron's logo in my 2015 photo. Unfortunately, Aaron's updated the facade recently, which resulted in the loss of the oval.

     With this short look at the rest of the Town Corral Shopping Center, I'm glad to have tied up my few remaining loose ends at this shopping center. I know my posting to MFR is sporadic at best, as I tend to put most of my efforts into writing posts for AFB to keep that schedule on track, but I just wanted to remind everyone that I haven't forgotten about this blog! I have plenty for to write for MFR in the future, it's just a matter of me finding the time to do just that between AFB posts. Anyway, AFB will return in the new year on January 21st, and hopefully you'll be seeing more from me here on MFR before long!

Anyway, I wish everyone a Happy New Year, and until the next post,

AFB

Pop(Shelf) Goes The Dollar General

Publix #124 / Dollar General Market + Popshelf #9859

239 Crockett Boulevard, Merritt Island, FL - Merritt Crossings

     Casually roaming around Merritt Island on my day off, I had to make a quick pit stop to drop off something at the post office, which is located right behind this plaza on Crockett Boulevard. After turning onto Crockett from Courtenay Parkway, I happened to glance over at the Dollar General Market and noticed it had new signage on the front. While new signage is one thing, what really caught my attention was that in addition to the DG Market sign, a sign for "Popshelf" had gone up as well. For those of you who aren't familiar, Popshelf is a new line of stores launched by Dollar General in October 2020 (which I'll explain in more detail in just a moment). Seeing Popshelf in person for the first time, I was quite intrigued, so after taking care of things at the post office, I had to pull in here to check the place out...

     While most of us are familiar with what Dollar General is (and how ubiquitous their stores are), Popshelf is still a bit rare, as the concept is just now nearing its first full year in business. Dollar General created Popshelf to be a more fun and upscale version of a dollar store, with a focus on home goods and having a strong appeal to middle-income suburban women. So in the words of Dollar General on what exactly Popshelf is: "This new store [Popshelf] aims to engage customers with a fun, affordable and stress-free shopping experience where they can find on-trend seasonal and home décor, health and beauty must-haves, home cleaning supplies, party goods, entertaining needs and much more— with approximately 95 percent of items priced at $5 or less!" I think Dollar General summarized what Popshelf is quite well in that statement, although in the words of AFB, I would describe Popshelf as being "Five Below's mother". Popshelf stores give off the same vibe as Five Below and follow a similar pricing model,  however Five Below focuses on appealing to kids and teenagers, while Popshelf is going after adults.

     Popshelf was developed as its own stand alone concept, so there are Popshelf stores out there that run solely on their own, and more stand-alone Popshelf stores are planned to open nationwide in the coming years. However, in August 2021, Dollar General announced that the company would start putting Popshelf "stores-within-a-store" inside select Dollar General Market locations. Dollar General Market is the company's largest store prototype, as these stores run full grocery departments in addition to carrying all the standard Dollar General merchandise. Considering their size, Dollar General was able to squeeze a Popshelf into about half the existing Dollar General Market space, infilling the remainder of the salesfloor with the full grocery department and items a normal Popshelf store wouldn't carry. That description might make this concept sound strange at first, but once we head inside, you'll see the concept actually works well.

     While the store's remodel was 100% complete at the time of my visit, there were still signs placed next to the entrance mentioning the remodel. While the remodel wasn't super intensive (as the salesfloor space remained the same size, and heavy construction was limited), Dollar General put a lot more effort into this remodel than I'd have thought. All the aisles on the salesfloor were rearranged, new decor was added, and some new flooring was installed around the perimeter of the Popshelf department. The remodel made this place look really nice, and I'd have to say this is the nicest Dollar General I've been to now.

     Stepping inside, we enter into the grocery department. The grocery department occupies the right side of the building, the same as it had prior to the remodel. As we'll see in a little bit, the entire center salesfloor behind me was converted into the new Popshelf store-within-a-store, the remaining Dollar General merchandise lining the far left side of the building beyond Popshelf.

     The produce department here actually looks quite classy with its new woodgrain decor and accents (wow, I never imagined I'd be using the word "classy" in a post about Dollar General!) We can see the produce department's prior decor here, from my original tour of this store posted to flickr a long time ago (but now resides in this MFR post). The prior produce decor looked pretty decent for something created by Dollar General (whose traditional stores don't have much decor to begin with), although the new decor definitely has a more upscale vibe than the prior look.

     From produce, here's a look toward the store's front end, which we'll see more of toward the end of this post.

     From produce, here's a look at the store's refrigerated and frozen food cases, which line the right side wall. The coolers also wrap around to the back wall, where the dairy department is located.

     New paint and signage came along with the remodel, continuing the gray and woodgrain theming we saw in the produce department. The new decor is much more sedate than its predecessor, but not so sparse that it looks super cheap. The fact the signs are 3-D and mounted onto the faux woodgrain background helps give the new look some substance.

     Beer and wine was moved into aisles 1 and 2 as part of the remodel, the new cooler to my left installed for the chilled beer and sodas.

     Dollar General Market's old grocery aisle setup had a much stronger warehouse/Save-A-Lot vibe, but with some rearranging and new signage, feel much classier now.

     At aisle 4 on the grocery side of the store, the grocery aisles switch from being parallel with the store's front wall to perpendicular. This is a big change from the old layout, where the grocery aisles ran parallel to the front wall all the way to the back of the store. Also from this vantage point, we get our first glimpse at Popshelf, which we'll be touring in more detail momentarily...

     As you'd expect from Dollar General, the "deli" department is nothing more than a fancy name for the store's pre-packaged meat selection. This photo looks into the store's back right corner, where dairy is also located.

     The main aisle seen here separates the grocery department from Popshelf, as seen looking toward the front of the store. That soda pallet actually blocks most of our view of the new Popshelf department, so therefore, what Popshelf looks like will have to wait until the next photo:

     And there you have it: Popshelf. In a testament to how successful Dollar General expects Popshelf to be, half of this store's salesfloor went to the new concept, with all the "normal" Dollar General merchandise pushed to the two far sides of the building. In order to give Popshelf so much floor space, Popshelf's core departments (housewares and other home items, toys, office & crafts, seasonal, and party supplies) essentially replaced the standard Dollar General versions of those same departments, allowing this store to offer Popshelf, yet still provide Dollar General's complete merchandise selection.

     As you probably noticed in the previous photo, the Popshelf section of the store has its own vibe, with a unique layout and lower-than-normal shelving. Popshelf also has its own decor on the back wall, and fancier displays than your typical Dollar General. The photo above shows some of the fancier merchandising done for Popshelf, showing off some of the newly-arrived fall decor to shoppers entering the store.

     Here's some more examples of the different tables and shelves used by Popshelf. To further Dollar General's quest to give Popshelf its own feel within this larger Dollar General store, a faux-wood flooring was installed around the perimeter of Popshelf's space, designating its bounds.

     The back wall showcases a small glimpse of Popshelf's decor, which uses a predominantly purple and white color scheme. Unfortunately, since only a small portion of the Popshelf space abuts a wall, the only three Popshelf departments got signage of their own: crafts, party, and home.

     While there were still traditional Dollar General Market baskets to use by the front doors, the Popshelf department got its own stacks of custom branded baskets, some of which can be seen here. I just wonder how much longer it will be before one of the store's normal DG Market baskets ends up getting discarded in this stack?

     From the front of the Popshelf department, here's a look toward the back of the building and the small section of Popshelf decor. Popshelf's area is filled with a lot of short aisles than run in all kinds of crazy directions, so it's a bit maze-like in here (which I believe was done to add to Popshelf's treasure hunt concept, as when wandering through the maze, you never know what you'll find).

     Here's another look across the Popshelf department, looking into the department's seasonal and home goods zones. Before Popshelf was installed, the center of the store just had long traditional aisles filling up this space, like this one. Removing all those tall shelves makes the store feel bigger, as you don't have all the shelves blocking your view across the store. 

     Toward the back of the Popshelf department are toys and party supplies, with crafts and office supplies along the back wall.

     Here's our overview of Popshelf's back wall, which prior to the remodel, was home to much-less-classy-looking warehouse steel shelves holding paper products (which I don't have a comparison photo of, as it appears my original tour of this store was a bit light on photos - I think I was more into hunting down Publix relics during that photo blitz than actually photographing a DG Market back then).

     What remained of Dollar General's paper department got condensed into the store's back left corner, situated upon normal shelves instead of the big warehouse counterparts from before. Also note the department signs on this side of the store (the "general merchandise" side, I guess you can call it), lacks the wood-grain back panels from the store's grocery side.

     Turning to the left, here's a look down the aisle that separates Popshelf from the general merchandise aisles. So essentially, whatever a typical Popshelf store wouldn't carry (such as clothes, hardware/automotive, and baby products, for example) is located to my right.

     From the left side wall, here's a look toward the front of the building.

     Thanks to Popshelf's low shelves, a photo across the store like this was made possible. Before the remodel, the results weren't as great.

     The general merchandise side of the store had an entire aisle dedicated to $1 Deals, in which I found this interesting product. I always find it intriguing going to various closeout/dollar stores and seeing well known brands putting their name on products completely unrelated to what they usually sell - for example, the Hostess Wax Paper seen here (which was in addition to the Hostess Plastic Wrap on the shelf above). I guess if you can't finish your Twinkie, this is the perfect stuff to wrap it in for later.

     Moving further toward the front of the store, Health and Beauty products occupy the front left corner, which was previously home to a large clothing department. Clothing was a department that got cut in size quite a bit here following the remodel, with that department now occupying a single standard aisle of mostly socks and underwear that we saw two photos back.

     Officially, the new beauty department falls under Popshelf, as this new setup uses Popshelf's color scheme, lower shelving, and branding. To add to Popshelf's more "upscale" image, some round pendant lights were added over the beauty section, making it stand out from the rest of the store. Two images down you can see the new pendant lights from a more drawn back perspective, and I think the more upscale look these lights give off will be more apparent then.

     Looking across the front of the store, we find ourselves taking a look at the front end. The front end couldn't escape the remodel either, and was reconfigured to add a bank of 4 self-checkout lanes at the far end by the doors, with four regular lanes stationed next to those.

     Here's one last look at the salesfloor, looking back toward the beauty department (which is easily identifiable from the sight of those new lights).

     While Dollar General has been using self-checkouts for a while, per this article, this was my first time ever seeing self-checkouts in person at Dollar General. The self-checkouts were laid out nicely here, but considering how cramped the front ends are at most standard Dollar General stores, I can only imagine how these things are getting shoved in elsewhere.

     So there you have it folks - our first look at a Popshelf store. While this particular Popshelf was integrated into an existing Dollar General Market, a standalone Popshelf location offers exactly what we just saw in its little department here. The only difference with the standalone Popshelf stores is those have a small grocery/cleaning supply section in addition to everything else, but otherwise hold at roughly the same size as a standard Dollar General. I think Popshelf is an interesting concept, and I think it will succeed. Five Below has become a national chain following a similar idea to Popshelf, and by tweaking the target demographic, Dollar General has created something entirely new. After seeing it in person, Popshelf also blends in well with the DG Market stores. By adding Popshelf's merchandise and vibe to a Dollar General Market, it creates something that looks almost like a less-refined version of a modern Target store (wow, now I'm comparing Dollar General to Target - what has this world come to?!) Dollar General is definitely upping the bar, and finding ways to appeal to more shoppers is always a big plus in the business world.

     Currently, Popshelf only has around 20 stand alone stores operating in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina, although Dollar General's ultimate goal is to open hundreds of Popshelf stores nationwide in the coming years. More Dollar General Market + Popshelf conversions (as they're officially called) are expected to happen as well, in addition to the growth of the stand alone operation. Dollar General expects to have 25 of these combo stores complete by the end of 2021, Merritt Island having been one of those chosen. As of the publication of this post, in addition to Merritt Island, the only other Popshelf open in any form in Florida appears to be another combo store in Lakeland, although I'm sure we'll be seeing more of Popshelf before long, as I'm sure Dollar General wants to "pop" up more of these stores soon!

     It's always intriguing to see a new retail chain appear, as it doesn't seem like you see too may new ones popping up anymore. Hopefully Dollar General continues to have success with Popshelf, as I think Popshelf fills a niche no one has ever tried to capture before. All that being said, I really don't have much more to add, so I hope everyone liked this little preview of Dollar General's new chain, and maybe experience one yourself down the road. 

So until the next post,

AFB