Groceteria.com Message Board

Business looks very slow in those photos.

In CA, there is a large handfull of Thrifty ovals remaining either on street or building signs of current Rite Aid Stores with "Rite Aid" filling the oval. A much smaller number of Payless shaped signs remain. San Mateo comes to mind.

Funny how Eckerd has an oval too. Also in CA most of the signs are red/white, not blue/white.

In Las Vegas, the Rite Aid signs are very inconsistent, most, but not all of the locations that are in a shopping center have red letters, while, the standalone ones on the corners are in White Letters with Blue Background...

The CVS in Boulder City has their sign in a Thrifty oval, it was previously a Sav-On, and then a Thrifty...

I don't know where else the Thrifty ovals are here in Vegas and I don't know what the Payless signs looked like...

I've noticed that too. I thought it might be because the Thrifty locations they took over their "store colors" were red/white and since Riteaid was a "new" company in so cal at the time they wanted to stay as Thrifty looking as possible. I've actually seen quite a bit of oval signs in so cal mainly in the Hollywood area.

nope that's not it because in Pennsylvania, most of their stores have red lettering...except for the standalone ones with the white lettering, its strange, I guess they differentiate the standalone, newer ones, from the older in-line ones with the fonts...

Maybe it was just their "prototype" at the time.

In around summer 1998 Rite Aid opened new stores in Sparks, NV and Sun Valley, NV on the same day. One had the blue awning/signage, the other had the red cut out signs. A few months later they opened two more Reno, NV locations which both got red cut out signs. They later opened new locations in Fallon, NV and Carson City, NV both of which received the blue awning.

Another difference in the stores that had the blue awning vs. the ones with the red cut out signs was the blue awning buildings also had odd diamond windows while the red ones had normal looking square windows.

I don't think there was much rhyme or reason to what they were doing. Walgreens also seems to have multiple types of building/signage types notable the neon thing above the entryway that is in some locations but not others.

In Las Vegas the older Walgreens don't have the neon things, only the ones built in the last 3 years have the neon things...so I guess you're right...

I think with Rite-Aid its more of a stand-alone vs. in-line/older vs. newer...even though we do have 2 or 3 in-line that are blue and have the diamond windows...

I dunno because ive seen some stand alone and within shopping centers with the blue prototype and/or the red. I want to email them and ask what their logic is because I'm very curious now....

Has anyone noticed that Walgreens doesn't specify their doors as "IN" or "OUT" making customers often use the door closest to where they park and which usually ends up being the door closest to the cash registers.

i don't understand what you mean, all the Walgreens here have one entrance...

now what's really strange is this CVS near my house, where the IN door is on the left and the Out is on the right, its like going through the UK, (jargon)...

I'll share what i've seen with Rite Aid in the Philly area:

Older strip center stores used to feature a rectangle sign with the Rite Aid "shild" followed by the word "Pharmacy" I don't know if the sign frames were put up by Rite Aid or the previous stores, as I know most of the strip stores were once part of another chain, but the name escapes me now. As the exteriors (as the majority of the interiors of these stores have not been touched since the late 70's/early 80's) got remodeled, the signs have been replaced with "RITE AID PHARMACY" red lettering with no shield. I've also seen white lettering when the shopping center is painted a darker color like green. Maybe this was to give the stores a more "neighborhood" feel as opposed to a big-box pharmacy.

The late 90's freestanding locations have "RITE AID" white lettering on blue awnings, but usually no shield on the store itself. The freestanding pylon, if the store has one, will have the shield logo with the word "Pharmacy" underneath.

The new Customer? world prototype has white RITE AID lettering on brick with a small Rite Aid shield to the left of that, and the full size shield logo on the pylon.

All the acquired Eckerd stores look like they are just keeping the pill shaped sign frame, and filling it with white RITE AID lettering with a blue back (and since Eckerd's coloring was blue, no other exterior signage/painting has to be changed in most cases--which may not be the best plan as even Eckerd stores built in the late 90's seem to look dated and not well maintained on the exterior. (The Eckerd stores built out of brick to fit in with the local townships look much better)

it is very common for pharmacies on the East Coast to put pharmacy or pharmacy within on their signs, it had to do when drug stores were sometimes built without pharmacies, such as the case with CVS (mainly the one in the malls), and then CVS/pharmacy...

yeh, I saw the ones in Philly, many different sign concepts there...

Now that Louisiana has suffered two major acquisitions, I can say a few things here.....

When RiteAid bought K&B Drugs, they weren't consistent with signage at all. Most of the stores varied between three sign types:

The white background with the RA Shield Logo
The Red Background with Rite Aid and the store's specialty departments
The Blue Background with the same as the previous.

The Blue sign only seemed to go on the higher traffic stores, which were remodeled immediately. The Red background went to the newer stores. The majority of the stores that got the shields are now gone. There was no preservation of the K&B oval or purpleness.

8/15 This former Eckerd in Albany Georgia (East Oglethorpe Blvd) had its sinage changed only on one side of the building. The Eckerd oval sign was removed completely on both sides. The new RITE AID sign here is not contained in the oval.

http://www.edricfloyd.com/DSCN4595.JPG


This store sits just a block from an old (still open) Rite Aid that is part of a Harvey's supermarket in a former Kroger at the corner of E. Oglethorpe and Cordele Rd

http://www.edricfloyd.com/DSCN4596.JPG

I was going to mention this earlier, I'm guesing that that's Rite Aid's new signage technique, putting "Pharmacy" in a times new roman (or similar) small caps font. We have a brand-new build in Bremerton showing this, tan brick with a corner entrance, the corner is white rounded. If anyones interested, I'l take photos.