Giant - Centreville (Centrewood), VA): The Dawn of a New Era

Welcome back to the Shoppes of Battery Mill! Today, we will embark on our first retail tour of the Washington, D.C. grocery behemoth (aptly named Giant). In particular, I would like to highlight the store's latest remodel featuring a rather innovative concept.

Giant - Centreville (Centrewood), VA (#0788)

(Taken in 2014)

Store info

• Address: 14125 St Germain Dr, Centreville, VA 20121
• Opening date: 1986
• Remodels: ca. 1999 (Fresh Ideas. Great Values.), ca. 2009-2010 (Project Refresh), 2019
• Features: Bakery, Deli, Meat & Seafood, Beer & Wine, Nature's Promise, Pharmacy, PNC Bank

Photos taken July 20, 2019

The Centrewood Giant in Centreville, a quintessential pre-Ahold Giant-MD store, has had a long presence within the community, continuing to feature steady volumes of customers. However with new competition looming in the area and a general investment plan by owner Ahold Delhaize, this store has now been upgraded to a unique new design.

Giant first unveiled this new décor package in April 2019 at their new Olney, MD store, a relocation into a former Shoppers building. While staying consistent with the previous gray design, Giant-MD's new package . Sister chain Stop & Shop also introduced a similar prototype, also deviating from the Ahold standard as the holding company continues to diversify their stores at this time.

Before we begin our store tour, we look outside at a retro Giant Food sign concerning their shopping carts. Clad in red, as with many signs original to the store's opening, this sign also reminds us of a time when child safety belts in shopping carts were not as ubiquitous. Customers were required to visit the manager's office in order to obtain such for their cart. Beneath the sign, floral products are seen on sale, fit for the summer (when this photoset was taken).

Big changes in store! Target-esque much? Nevertheless, this sign's definitely one that reflects Giant's current advertising scheme.

We start off the store tour (or "stour"?) with a remnant from the prior decor package.  This was Giant's first foray into making floral a quick-stop department, where it was often positioned directly behind the customer service desk. Since the remodel concluded, these sections have remained in the same place (albeit with new signs).

Here are two views of the skylight! A common feature in 1980s Giant Food stores, these served to bring in some natural light into the produce sections. While it may not be as effective at this point, bear in mind it was getting late when I did this store tour.

During the "Fresh Ideas. Great Values." era, models of several farm items (including a scarecrow and a tractor) were perched on the sill of the skylight. These were removed following the Project Refresh remodel and have not been restored since.

Fancy yourself brick walls and illuminated letters? You've come to the right place, I guess.

Illuminated photos! These seem to be rather... reminiscent of what Aldi has done in recent years. Nevertheless, these are creatively used elements that previous packages never had, and such invoke classic Giant with its photos of objects.

A new rearrangement for the remodel, this marks the corner of the store beyond produce. As typical of pre-Ahold stores, this corner was once home to the floral department, with dairy and extraneous produce items (such as this salad bar) slightly off to the side. The boom in natural/organic foods and an overall change in direction with the prior Project Refresh remodel swapped the floral corner for a large Nature's Promise department.

However, this time, it seems as if Giant is content with allocating their natural and organic selections to regular aisles. In turn, this area has become home to prepared food bars and an array of dairy products.

We skip ahead to the milk station where a sign of the times is present, with repainting is in progress. The new grayscale, brick-clad paint above is seen clashing with the softer yellow theme below.

With the store's original opening, a lower ceiling stretched to about where I am standing. While it was removed with the store's late-90s "Fresh Ideas. Great Values." package, the same general layout has been carried over.

Turning around for a little bit, we witness the brand new natural/organic foods selection, carried over from its previous corner of the store. New LED light fixtures and freezers help for this section to continuously promote their offerings.

Here we present a side view of the deli and bakery stations, at this point largely unchanged from the previous configuration. The kitchen tiles are the exception, however as the stripe has turned a simple gray. Oddly compared to older Giant stores, the bakery leans in towards the pharmacy rather than the sides of the store.

Introducing Giant's new aisle markers, featuring one of the most coveted aisles in the retail community - Aisle 12! I would certainly like to salute Retail Retell for bringing this fun trend to life - check his blog and Flickr out for more of his work!

Here's a slight look towards the pharmacy, clad with new signage and all... though you should definitely note that restroom sign. Where is it exactly?

*looks* Oh, wait...

Likely the most significant change of the remodel is within the meat and seafood departments. Prior to the remodel, the store featured a small butcher shop counter amongst a long row of coolers. At one time this was fully functional, however as Ahold relocated distribution this eliminated service butcher shops. This rendered the butcher counters simply open windows into the backrooms where packaged meat products were prepared for sale.

Therefore, in this remodel, Giant has decided to save space on both meat and seafood categories and merge them into one service department.

The Frozen Foods aisle is somewhat deceiving at this point, except for the gray walls, that is.

 A remnant from the previous package, Aisle 14's marker being cleared is sure a sign of the times.

During the remodel, Giant allocated greeting cards to an unlikely place as they were reconfiguring shelves. Surrounded largely by frozen dairy products, this section makes up what was once an angled corner featuring the seafood department. As pictured before, the said service counter has been folded into the service meat counter. This had been a common location for Giant's seafood offerings prior to new layouts introduced in the Ahold era.

Pictured here is an alcove area, common in late 1980s-build Giant stores, and featuring checkouts. There is likely a mezzanine inside given a stairwell is nearby. With this remodel, Giant increased floor-space devoted to self-checkouts, leaving remaining service checkouts to this space.

Also pictured is Giant's latest iteration of a "thank you for shopping" sign. Despite correctly matching up to this store's opening year, the sign is only partly true. Giant's first outpost in Centreville, within the Newgate Shopping Center, opened in 1971 within rural surroundings. The former location was eventually moved to this one as the population of the surrounding area was rapidly increasing. In the years following this store's relocation, Giant added two additional outposts within three miles of this store (Vilage Center and Colonnade).

Closing out the store tour, a blank store directory is pictured near the checkout lanes. Giant has had a long history of utilizing store directories numerating product locations, dating back to at least the 1960s. I do not remember what has happened to this particular sign or if it has been updated to Giant's latest package. The age of the smartphone and general disuse may render these signs outmoded.

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Thanks much for reading! Now that the Shoppes of Battery Mill is officially in business, we will be looking to finalize the blog design and branch out into more diverse retail content. 'Till then, see ya soon! -BatteryMill