Today was the first time visiting the new Winn-Dixie here in Gainesville. It has taken the place of the Lucky's that we had on 13th, and uses pretty much the same layout as that store did. A couple of things were ripped out and moved around, but for the most part things are in the same places.
The meat section is the same size as it was with Lucky's, which is surprising to me given that Winn-Dixie's slogan is "The Beef People". I know the other store in town has a much larger meat department.
Gone are the various "health-nut" type foods, instead the aisles are stocked with what you would expect in a generic grocery store. The beer and wine section is also no longer as eclectic, and I saw a lot of generic stuff in there. Half of that area is also taken up by the standard soda aisle, etc.
They did keep the in-store bar, and the carts all have cup holders, so you can still go to the store, grab a cart, order a beer, and do some leisurely shopping while drinking a cool one. They also have short half-carts the way Lucky's did, which I love. They used to have those carts at the other store in town, but those have disappeared, sadly.
There were employees all over the place stocking the shelves... the store has just opened, and is getting hit hard by people checking out the new store. It will be interesting to see what the store is like in a couple of months once the "newness" of the place is gone from memory. I will say that they have done a wonderful job in refurbishing the place, with all new floors.
There were a couple of things that ticked my not so good meter though... The number of check-out lanes has been reduced, and in the place of two of them they have installed four self-checkout lanes. That isn't the bad thing... the problem is that those checkout lanes are set up so that you cannot remove any items from the bagging area until you are complete, otherwise the system will not let you check out any other items. This is a pain in the ass if you have a larger number of items in the cart. I was using a small cart, but at a certain point it made sense to clear some items that were bagged back into the cart. No dice. In addition, the machines do not automatically start cashing you out when you insert your card at the end... you have to tell it that you are done, tell it to use the credit card machine, then tell the credit card machine that the total is correct. My suggestion? Go look at how Walmart of all places does this... their system WORKS!
The other nit-pick I have is that they repainted the parking lot, and one of the things they did in doing that was to eliminate the motorcycle parking spots. This is Gainesville... we have a lot of motorcycles and an even larger number of scooters in town, and providing them with separate parking areas is pretty much necessary in larger locations like this one. You can even see where they used to be... now just covered with lines saying no parking at all.
The need for a new store in this area was high, and Winn-Dixie managed to identify that need. Sadly, they apparently did not really look at the town and what its residents are composed of. read more