Winn-Dixie, 3230 Augusta Road: late June 2000 11 comments
This Big Lots store on US-1 in between I-26 and the flea market, was clearly once a grocery store, but I don't know what kind. The design has that certain late 1970s "We have lost our collective minds" look
I know that this was a Big Lots as early as May 2001 because I stopped there on my way to the airport to pick up a camera I didn't care what happened to. What I ended up with was worse than the average drugstore disposable of today, and I ended up with a bunch of mostly awful pictures.
I can't pinpoint the date any closer than that -- I used to ride out to the flea market fairly often in the early 1980s, but what always caught my eye in this strip was the Fat Boy burger place, and the grocery didn't really register.
UPDATE 26 October 2009: Consensus is that it was a Winn-Dixie, so I have updated the post title to that from "Grocery Store" (and updated the closing date from '1980s' to '1990s').
UPDATE 11 March 2011: Updated closing date based on information from commenter Andrew.
11 Responses to 'Winn-Dixie, 3230 Augusta Road: late June 2000'
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Dave
24 Oct 09 at 9:39 pm
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I agree Dave. I've been in this store and from the way it is laid out I think it was once a Winn Dixie store as well.
Elad
25 Oct 09 at 10:26 am
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It was definitely a Winn Dixie. I used to pass by that place every day back in the late 80s and most of the 90s.
E.J.
25 Oct 09 at 6:57 pm
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Yeah, it was a Winn Dixie Marketplace in the late nineties. My cousin used to work in the meat market and my wife and I bought our first Christmas tree together here. The Big Lots used to be further down the strip mall, I think next to the liquor store or another store down, before Big Lots moved to the Winn Dixie space.
jamie
26 Oct 09 at 7:32 am
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I lived in this area during the mid-80s. So, WD was convenient & at the height of their popularity. It was clean, well stocked & had just about everything in one place. Then, as per your warning signs, things started to go downhill in the late 80s. All of a sudden things weren't so clean. Fresh cut deli meat was gone. Fortunately, I moved down the road closer to Krogers a year or so before WD bit the dust. I think there was a WD on Rosewood that held on to the bitter end. Nowadays Publix fills that void but does anybody know the story behind the fall of WD?
John R
26 Oct 09 at 10:25 am
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I don't know if I can post a URL here, so Wikipedia has a decent article on Winn-Dixie. Over-expansion, under-performance, poor cost control, bad inventory systems, poor merchandising, slow to adopt technology, and then bankruptcy between Feb 2005 and Nov 2006. The competition overwhelmed a culture at Winn-Dixie that was slow or resistant to change.
Grocery is a brutal business. Sell millions only to make hundreds or thousands of dollars. You have to scale up to compete on price with Walmart, or you have to compete on service and "nice environment" with Publix.
Mitch
26 Oct 09 at 4:08 pm
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Thanks!
Here's the URL.
FYI: One URL is fine. Two or more goes into the moderation queue and I have to approve it before the comment shows up. (Spam usually has lots of URLs..)
ted
26 Oct 09 at 4:14 pm
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Thanks for the link Mitch & Ted. I should've known. Wiki is my first "go to" for info on company history but I just forgot this time. Still, there seems to be a darwinian aspect to all of this. WM is the 800lb gorilla in the room of "free market".
John R
26 Oct 09 at 6:59 pm
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This Winn Dixie on Augusta Road closed in 1999 I believe and the one on South Lake Drive closed in early 2000 if I remember correctly.
Christy
10 Nov 09 at 5:10 pm
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This one closed in 2000:
WEST COLUMBIA WINN-DIXIE TO CLOSE BY END OF JUNE CHAIN DECIDES TO SHUT DOWN 114 LOCATIONS NATIONWIDE
MAURICE THOMAS, Staff Writer
A Winn-Dixie store employing 80 in West Columbia will be one of eight stores the grocery store chain will close in South Carolina by the end of June.The Winn-Dixie grocery store and pharmacy at 3220 Augusta Road is one of 114 unprofitable stores that are closing. The 45,000-square-foot store opened in 1994.
Winn-Dixie will try to place the store's employees at other locations, said Mickey Clerc, spokesman for the Jacksonville, Fla.-based chain. Full- and part-time...
Published on 2000-05-02, Page B6, State, The (Columbia, SC)
Andrew
11 Mar 11 at 11:12 pm
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planners come from using the internet or during box showroom combined with range.
14 Oct 13 at 8:55 am
I believe this was a Winn Dixie, later remodeled into a Winn Dixie Marketplace. I believe the exterior was actually remodeled to look like that in the early 90's.