Kroger Neon and Wannabe Neon Décor

Welcome back to the Mid-South Retail Blog, everyone! Oh wait... I suppose you should be welcoming me instead, I'm the one who forgot to post for a whole month!! Oh well, I was quite busy in May anyway. Now that it's summer though, my goal is to get through all of the Kroger décor posts (which I have streamlined into five posts, as compared to whatever number I'd given out before). Whether or not I meet that goal is yet to be determined... but for now, let's try and knock at least this one out of the park!

As you may be able to tell from this example of a typical exterior look of a Kroger of this era, today's post focuses primarily on neon décor, with what we flickrites whose photos are featured in this/these post(s) - that is, kingskip1, Bradley_Memphis, l_dawg2000, and myself - call "wannabe neon" also included as, to borrow a term from Albertsons Florida Blog (and his, well, Albertsons Florida Blog), a "quick glimpse."

Inside the store, as always, is the produce section, dubbed in this incarnation of Kroger décor - preceding millennium, featured in the last post, by the way - "The Kroger Garden." And boy, does the neon live up to its name! If you follow my uploads on flickr you probably know by now that I am a sucker for neon in stores. Sadly, I was unable to get any pictures of a neon Kroger before they all were remodeled or handled otherwise.

Alternatively, the Kroger Garden was sometimes dubbed "Fresh to You," shining bright in blue instead of spectacular green. (Seriously, the neon in that last photo looks awesome!!)

Joining the produce area, as is typical, is the bakery (above) and deli areas... although as you'll see below, Kroger seems to have always had an issue between naming the area in a formal or truncated manner. In the neon era I can see this as having been a spacing issue, but millennium, with standard-sized signs, is a different story...

  

Accompanying these two departments are bread and rolls (below) as well as other areas which either didn't necessarily always receive neon signage (i.e. donuts) or were located in various places in the neon layout (i.e. cafés).

It appears that in some cases, the bakery area got custom names... not sure how which stores got what neon was determined. In any case, meals to go would be in the general vicinity.

All of that was just (generally, anyway) on the side wall... can you believe it?! Moving to the back of the store, you have more of your usual grocery staples, such as lunchmeat (stylized here as "Luncheon Meat") and milk and/or "The Kroger Dairy."

Along with prepackaged meat, of course, comes real meat! "Choice Cuts" cut the corner below...

...but doesn't always.

Of course, sometimes meat was just "Meat." And if seafood was lucky enough to get its own neon, it typically was marked "Fresh Catch."



Now, down the opposite side of the store with frozen foods! Well, not exactly: frozen foods actually never got a neon sign (at least to my knowledge), as it, while not in the center, did run down some aisles and not along an edge of a store. That other outer wall tended to be reserved for such departments as floral, pharmacy, and ice cream (!).

From there, you're on the front end of the store, which, besides the checkouts, doesn't house much of interest. (Aside, of course, from a potential location for the café, as pictured above - you can also see how the general aisles are marked by a pronounced ceiling, er, thing that, for all intents and purposes, is bigger on the inside ;) ) So take a look down instead, and notice the cool floor tiles that put the finishing touches on the stunning Kroger neon décor package!



But wait, there's more!

We come to the wannabe neon Kroger décor part of the post! In essence, this is just a cheaper, neonless version of the neon package, so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it. After all, a photo is worth a thousand words, right?

Well, some question words could be used to describe (or, well, interrogate) the wannabe neon décor. As you see here, not only does Kroger once again demonstrate naming inconsistencies - "Kroger Garden" versus "PRODUCE" - but some stores with this package got loud, capitalized department names, while others got more relaxed sentence case.

Speaking of "cases" (horrible transition, right?), here's a look at some other wannabe neon departments whose products are shelved in refrigerated cases: deli, meat and seafood, and dairy. Below are other examples of this décor, as found in the bread and rolls and pharmacy areas.

Even the restrooms sign in both types of stores got the wannabe neon treatment! 



And to close, I have to say a big thank you for checking out this second in my series of four Kroger décor posts! The next one will come this summer, I promise - maybe even this month! Until then, have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!

Retail Retell