A Companion to this week's Sing Oil Blog Post
Winn-Dixie #179
11101 Old St. Augustine Road, Jacksonville, FL
Merry Christmas everyone! If you haven't seen it already, this post ties in to this week's Sing Oil Saturday on the Sing Oil Blog, profiling the former Sing Oil station located right in front of this Winn-Dixie store. Since we're in the neighborhood, we'll continue with our Christmas Eve retail adventures by taking a quick look at this Winn-Dixie. As you probably know, Jacksonville is Winn-Dixie's home town, with the company's headquarters located only 5 miles away from this very store. With that being the case, Winn-Dixie's Jacksonville stores are some of the best cared for in the chain, and it's always been like that through the years. All of the Jacksonville area stores received remodels of some kind during the 2000's, so Jacksonville was one of the chain's only markets that have had all the tired untouched Marketplace stores wiped away for years now. Even in the present, the majority of Winn-Dixie's Jacksonville area stores received early Down Down remodels, with that decor making its grand debut only a few miles away from here at the Baymeadows Road store. A few Jacksonville-area holdouts have gotten the Winn Win decor more recently, however, this store on Old St. Augustine Road still sports its mid-2000's Post-Bankruptcy decor as 2022 comes to a close. Winn-Dixie #179 is one of the last in Jacksonville to still retain this decor, and one of a constantly dwindling number of stores in the chain to still have this decor overall as Winn-Dixie progresses on their goal of remodeling all stores by the end of 2023.
Interestingly enough, my photos of this Winn-Dixie were taking almost two years to the day apart from my set of photos of the former Sing Oil station. When I originally visited this Winn-Dixie I didn't realize the historical lineage of the gas station out front, as the Sing Oil Blog had not yet been founded, and I had never even heard of Sing Oil to begin with at that time. Thankfully I ended up in the area again two years later, and we now have the complete tale to tell of this Winn-Dixie and its longtime gas station partner.
While Sing Oil had been on this corner since 1984, the Winn-Dixie you see here didn't come along until 10 years later in 1994. Originally (as I touched on in the Sing Oil post), the land which this Winn-Dixie sits on was part of the original parcel Sing Oil bought for the construction of their gas station. With Sing only interested in the very corner of the parcel at the intersection of Old St. Augustine and Losco for the construction of their new station, the remainder of the property was sold off in chunks. The chunk of property immediately behind the Sing station was sold to a developer who would later bring Winn-Dixie to this intersection, bringing us what we see here today.
If you thought the exterior of this Winn-Dixie was a little funky looking, well, you'd be correct. Originally, this store would have had the early 1990's "inverted check" exterior design (a better example of which you can examine here), common with early 1990's Marketplace builds. While that was a common exterior design, what was unusual about this store was it received the mid-1990's Winn-Dixie Marketplace layout inside - the layout that usually goes along with stores that looked like this. A true "inverted check" store looked like this inside (or better yet, this), so the store we'll be seeing here today is unusual in that respect. This store must have been a prototype straddling the transition between the early-1990's Neon Marketplace decor of the "inverted check" stores with the upcoming mid-1990's pastel Marketplace design, creating the unusual exterior and interior mashup we'll be seeing today. Adding to the oddities of this store, when it remodeled to the Post-Bankruptcy interior in the late 2000's, Winn-Dixie modified the exterior by squaring it off into what we see today, and moving the entryway into the fancy central atrium we see here:
The grand atrium we see here is the product of Winn-Dixie's Post-Bankruptcy remodel, quite the fancy towering entryway to add during a remodel! The new Post-Bankruptcy entryway resembles a standard mid-1990's Marketplace entrance, which made me think it was original during my initial visit. However, a small ramp still exists on the left side of the store designating where the original entrance was located.
While the exterior received a lot of work during the Post-Bankruptcy remodel, the interior was given a fairly standard (but quite thorough) refresh with updated decor, flooring, and fixtures. The floorplan we'll be seeing in here matches the mid-1990's Marketplace design, and besides that floorplan being used in combination with the older facade, the interior isn't anything super unusual for Winn-Dixie. The use of this floorplan makes me think this store received pastel Marketplace when it first opened, probably one of the first Winn-Dixie stores to prototype that decor (and this store being in Winn-Dixie's hometown not far from the corporate headquarters, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the very first store in the chain to get the Marketplace decor we all know and love).
I've always thought the Post-Bankruptcy interior was a nice look for Winn-Dixie, but I can see how this decor can come off as a bit dated now. However, this store has kept the decor looking quite pristine, as I've seen some Post-Bankruptcy stores in recent years with broken wall signs and rigged together check lane lights as elements of the decor began to fall apart. I have some tours of stores like that in my archives, although I know a good number of those stores have since remodeled to either Down Down or Winn Win. Probably by this time next year, this very store will have a much "fresher" looking produce department as Winn-Dixie works to remodel their remaining older stores.
Winn-Dixie's current revitalization campaign has been their largest push to remodel since the Post-Bankruptcy years of 2007-2011. It's quite amazing at how many stores Winn-Dixie got remodeled during that time, as the Post-Bankruptcy decor was quite widespread compared to some of the remodeling campaigns that came after it. I'm pretty convinced that by the end of next year, finding a Winn-Dixie with any decor besides Down Down or Winn Win will be difficult, as all signs are pointing to Winn-Dixie meeting their remodeling goal. Winn-Dixie's current TV and radio ads keep reinforcing that goal to remodel all stores by the end of 2023, and as of the end of 2021, 70% of the company stores have seen a remodel since 2016, and 2022 brought about 50 more remodels on top of that too. As sad as it is to see a lot of the decor variety die off, it will be nice to see Winn-Dixie have a cohesive brand image across all their stores for the first time in 30 or so years. (And don't worry, I've visited plenty of older Winn-Dixie stores to keep the memory of all those older decor packages alive, however, I don't think Marketplace will ever truly die!).
The store's floral counter was located in an island adjacent to aisle 1, behind most of the produce displays.
Beyond produce we find the organic section, followed by beer and wine.
The organic department had its own custom-made hanging sign, but no additional signage on the wall (like Wine & Beer has). Like many other supermarkets these days, Winn-Dixie has been eliminating the dedicated organic food sections when stores remodel in favor of merchandising these products alongside their mainstream counterparts.
Beer occupies the right side wall following the produce coolers, with wine in the few aisles in front of that.
The potent potables behind us, we now find ourselves at the deli counter in the back right corner of the building.
For a store that isn't super fancy or recently remodeled, Winn-Dixie had a fairly robust deli here with a sub station and a large hot case. I visited this store fairly early in the morning shortly after it opened for the day, which is why some of the cases look really empty over here.
The service seafood counter follows the deli to the left, although the decorative spotlights always find a way to get the best of me and obstruct my photos somehow!
Leaving the seafood counter, we find ourselves in aisle 3, home to candy and a variety of non-food products (greeting cards, stationary, etc.). The side of the aisle with the candy and stationary was lit from above, which is a bit unusual (as Winn-Dixie typically reserves these top-lit aisles for beauty/cosmetics).
Following that aisle, we now meander over to the soda aisle, home to both the national brands (on the left) and Winn-Dixie's famous line of Chek products (the large selection of which is to the right). Winn-Dixie has one of the most elaborate store brand soda selections out there, and Chek has always seemed to be a very strong brand for them with a large following.
Returning to the front of the store, here's a quick look across the front end. The check lane lights in this store used the recolored version of the Purple/Maroon style lights, leading me to believe this store had an earlier Post-Bankruptcy remodel (2007/2008-ish). Later Post-Bankruptcy stores used a different style of lane lights, which looked like this.
Cutting down another grocery aisle, we move from the front of the store to the back again:
Following the seafood counter, we find the meat coolers. Beyond the regular meats are the frozen meats, followed by lunch meats, meaning we have all of our meats well represented here!
Frozen foods are located in the center of the store, still featuring the original Marketplace-era setup of two rows of upright freezers with a row of coffin coolers down the middle. Some Winn-Dixie stores replaced the coffin cooler in the middle with more upright freezers in later remodels, but that was not the case here.
Both frozen food aisles are officially unnumbered. The aisle count goes from 5, skips frozen foods, and jumps to 6 after these two aisles (which is something I've seen Winn-Dixie do a number of times before).
Moving past frozen foods, we now find ourselves in the pet aisle.
At the end of the pet aisle was a small clearance rack with a few odds and ends on it. One item on the rack that jumped out at me was this Christmas advent calendar for dogs. It's not the product itself that caught my attention (dogs have every right to an advent calendar as humans do!), but it was where this product was intended to go that stood out to me - there were 4 or 5 of these advent calendars on the clearance rack, and there were all labeled with price tags for Ross Dress for Less! While it's not uncommon for supermarkets to get cases of store brand products intended for other stores (like these Whole Foods branded soap bars I spotted at a Winn-Dixie in The Villages), getting product intended for sale at Ross confused with product intended for sale at Winn-Dixie is an odd one!
From pet products, we now move along to health and beauty in aisle 7. In this aisle, we can see another row of top-lit shelving over the cosmetics, the more common place to see this setup.
Food items reappear here in aisle 9, as we get closer to the left side of the store.
Chips and snacks find their home in aisle 10, the store's second to last numbered aisle.
Dairy occupies the store's last aisle, also unnumbered, which is a double-wide aisle with a few open coolers of product lining the center.
From the back left corner, here's a look at everything we've seen so far along the store's back wall.
The coolers in the middle of the dairy aisle look to be original to the store's 1994 construction, just repainted to match the newer decor (as I can clearly picture what those would have looked like originally). In the background of this image we see the store's bakery department poking out, which we will take a closer look at now:
As usual for a mid-1990's Marketplace build, the bakery is located in the store's front left corner. Also as usual, the spotlights have to find a way to obscure the wall sign on me!
The spotlights aren't doing me any favors from this angle either, but we do get a closer look at the bakery counter in this image.
Stepping further out, here's a nice overview of the store's front left corner.
Next to the bakery is the store's former pharmacy counter, blocked off by some shelving and a good number of folding chairs. Even with all that, it's still pretty obvious what used to be here, as Winn-Dixie never bothered to repaint the walls or remove the decorative panels to either side of the old pharmacy sign.
Returning to the front end, here's a nice overview of the store's 7 check lanes.
I got some pretty nice shots of the store's front end, as well as the "Thank you for shopping your neighborhood Winn-Dixie" sign over top. I guess visiting a store first thing in the morning when hardly anyone is around has its perks for getting some good, unobstructed sightlines (and having no decorative spotlights around helps with that too!).
The store's service desk is located on the wall between the check lanes and the former pharmacy counter, the usual placement in these 1990's-built Winn-Dixie stores. The original entrance would have been in the corner just behind the service desk, where the 5 gallon water jugs and the vacuum rental kiosk are now.
Back outside, here's a look through the small breezeway on the front of the building. This breezeway looks behind the original slanted (but now straight) wall that gave the "inverted check" stores their distinctive look. Looking through the breezeway, we see the small strip of stores attached to the building's left side.
And with that, here's one final exterior photo of Winn-Dixie #179 and its unique (now modified) facade to wrap up this post with. If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to check out my accompanying debut post on the Sing Oil Blog here, profiling the former Sing Oil station located in front of this Winn-Dixie store.
So that's all I have for today. I hope everyone has a happy and joyful Christmas, and I'll be returning to AFB with new posts beginning on January 15th!
I'll see everyone again in the new year, so until the next post,
AFB
