Giant Food (Landover)/Decor packages

This is a guide to Giant-Landover decor packages. Note that none of these names are official.

Romanesque (197x-198x)
Starting in the early 1970s, Giant would introduce a new, larger concept to their stores. The interiors of these stores would now resemble open-air markets, with ornate design and Roman-inspired decor pieces, compared to traditional mid-century retail design used before.

The walls of the store would consist of a stucco crown moulding around the ceiling, with each section being offset by columns. Eventually, revisions brought about detailed walls, with designs resembling the products that are sold underneath.

The package was also the first to utilize mercury-vapor lighting, with early designs being consisted of a direct circular frame. Later prototypes would inset the openings by a few inches. Elegant chandeliers were also used over checkouts.

The Fort Washington, MD store was the last operating Giant with such remnants (having received a partial Red Block Letters treatment), until it closed in late 2019 for construction of a new store. The package was also known to have been adapted to the Giant Department Store concept.

Layout
This era would introduce and popularize the standard pre-Ahold layout, used for nearly 30 years across many new stores and remodels. The entrance consists of a small vestibule body, which laterally directs customers towards the produce section. Produce would occupy the bottom-right half of the store, with the floral desk and its assorted products being nestled at the corner. Dairy products made up the right-side perimeter, which segues into the bakery/deli prepared-foods area within the back wall. The pharmacy would serve as a divider between the prior departments and meat and seafood, the latter of which located their service area at the back-left corner. Frozen food products would then line the left-side perimeter, before reaching the front-end and checkouts (which would include beer and wine where permitted for sale). The customer service desk and office was placed in front of the entrance.

Center aisles would vary by store, though a few aisles in front of the pharmacy were dedicated to health & beauty products, and another two were dedicated to seasonal/general merchandise products. Select Romanesque stores would also feature overhead crown mouldings over the former section.

This layout would receive a mirrored version in the late 1980s, which would open to the left side of the store.

Red Block Letters (198x-199x)
In the early 1980s, Giant went for a minimalistic design for their interiors, as opposed to the detailed design they had used the decade prior. The walls were reduced to a cleaner state, primarily featuring large block-letter department text or a variety of neon signage pieces. Generally, the package would have a red and white color scheme, coordinating with their marketing for much of the decade. Alcoves would have wood paneling, and goosenecks were consisted of large red rectangles with the item text in Helvetica at the bottom corner. This coloring was changed for beer and wine departments.

However, its individual elements slightly varied across most implementations. Some would feature wall elements such as lines, tiles, or checkerboard signage pieces. The chandeliers, however, would now be in a modernist design form with a simple white cylinder representing the lighting piece. The checkout lights would be, once again, tall red markers with numbering in a Helvetica-style font as most other elements in-store. The aisle markers were now a flat, rounded rectangle with numbering in the center followed by text above and below.

This package is known to have been one of the most common interior packages prior to the Ahold buyout. Throughout the 1980s, stores with previous decor package would receive this package via partial remodels, often keeping notable decor elements or layouts from the previous packages.

Layout
Within this era, Giant pivoted towards larger stores, nearing 60,000 square feet in certain instances. Many stores in the decade experimented with state-of-the-art features, including skylights over produce and a number of aisles.

The floral section was now set under a large alcove, with a salad bar and juices co-located underneath. In several stores, the bakery department and alcove was expanded, with a long aisle of bread products being included alongside the counter. The pharmacy would also be placed under a lower ceiling, with the wall jutting out from the rest of the perimeter.

Another use of alcoves, which were heavily involved in this package, was located at the front end. The element produced a diagonal incision and turned parallel once again in order to serve as such. Generally, extra front-end products and beer and wine/frozen food sales would occupy this area. The upper wall in some cases would also serve as an associate mezzanine.

Red Neon (1983-1999)
As with 1980s trends, Giant Food would further embrace neon tubes and lustrous materials to create a vibrant appeal to their stores. While borrowing many pieces from the previous package, a new wall design was implemented, alongside other notable layout shifts. The wall was made of aluminum slats, primarily in a maroon color, with a reflective gold/gray stripe towards the bottom. The signage pieces would appear outlined in neon text.

Updates
Circa 1989, new wall neon pieces were issued. Designed by Timothy Stead, the package now featured a wide array of typefaces and colorful neon iconography representing the products sold.

Later iterations of the package changed the dominant color of the slatted walls from maroon to silver. The aisle markers and checkout lights would also change from a white on red to a black on white color. This was the last package to be implemented prior to the Ahold buyout.

Layout
The front-end alcove would now dedicate more space towards checkouts, with the salesfloor portion being relegated to the farthest third. The layout would rely more heavily on varied ceiling heights to create alcove effects. The deli/bakery portion became an alcove from the perimeter to the aisles; however, the ceiling was leveled to the main height in most remodels.

"Fresh Ideas. Great Values." (1999-2004)
Following the acquisition by Dutch conglomerate Royal Ahold in 1998, Giant sought an opportunity to refresh their image, doubling down on the existing "Fresh Ideas. Great Values." slogan to create a new brand identity. This would soon bring about a new interior design, with market-style elements as opposed to the modernist slant they had opted for in the last 20 years. This package and layout prototype was most likely introduced with the Gainesville, VA store which opened in September 1999.

The walls were beige, outlined by a trim set to a diamond pattern and colored by each perimeter department. The department color codes would be green (produce, floral, deli), blue (seafood, frozen food, pharmacy), red (meat), and orange (bakery). At the head of each department, a large sign would appear denoting each department, along with painted graphics or the "A Tradition of Quality" slogan featured as a subtitle. This would be the case for most sections, though certain areas varied, as is the case with the butcher shop (a striped awning) or the bakery (the entire wall featuring stenciled illustrations). The walls would also be adorned with banners set to the department's respective hue, advertising the slogan.

Aisle markers, the store directory, and other overhead signs would take triangular forms, with wooden headers/trims marking the beige background, and text on green slips. The checkout markers would be a similarly themed, larger cube, that lit up green (with self checkouts featuring a black light).

While most stores retained terrazzo flooring installed before Ahold's acquisition, new locations and select remodels featured new, multi-toned beige checkerboard tiling. The pattern was replicated with a different material near produce; remodels would also retain or paint the ceramic produce tiles gray. This would be the first time linoleum tiles would appear inside new Giant-MD stores.

In 2001, the Health & Beauty department was vastly rearranged and rebranded under Ahold's "Relax. Renew. Revive." banner; this concept was piloted at the Greenbriar store in Fairfax, VA (#208/745). New compact aisle markers were surrounded by a large, circular overhead sign which accompanied the decor underneath. New aisle designs would emerge, with liners curving in to produce an intimate feel. The floor would be wooden, with matching purple decor elements.

Layout
This was the chain's first experiment with a "grand aisle" blueprint for prepared foods and prominent perishables, in accordance with new competition and wider grocery retailing trends. The first major changes would appear at the front of the store, where the entrance format was vastly restructured. Two sets of doors were set perpendicular to the front wall, with a joint vestibule backing the front end of the store's interior. In later builds, these entrances would be separated from one another, with the door layout varying (orthogonal vs. T-shape). The checkouts, customer service and other utilities were generally located in the front wall abutting the vestibule. The checkouts soon followed, appearing between the two corridors.

The produce department was now accompanied with a multitude of fresh and prepared food departments. Fruits and vegetables made the initial space (and approximately half of the grand aisle, horizontally stretching the equivalent of a few aisles), with floral remaining in the front corner. The deli department would line the rest of the wall, and the seafood counter followed at the back end of the market.

Entering the perimeter actionway, the meat department immediately succeeds the aforementioned seafood station. The core of the meat product selection juts from the perimeter at center store, with a cutout for the butcher shop in the far back and a coffin cooler in between. Dairy products line the edge of the store until the corner, where it transitions to frozen food at the 90-degree turn. This continues until the front corner opposite to the prepared foods, which is now the site of the bakery (corner) and pharmacy (neighboring the entrance). Health and beauty products are in the aisles directly across the pharmacy.

Select stores opened with this package would also feature a café seating area, located between the floral and deli departments.

"You've Got a Giant on Your Side" (2004-2005)
The package, modeled off of Giant's slogan, "You've Got a Giant on Your Side", updated the prior interior package to invoke a new, modern, Euro-style design.

The walls would now be made up of a system of lines forming grids, providing panels for

Until "The Little Things are Giant" package was unveiled in 2019, this would be the final package exclusive to the Giant-MD chain. This would also be Giant's last package to implement mercury-vapor (domed) lighting, a fixture type the chain had used for over thirty years.

With a remodel of the Middletown, DE store completed in 2018, this decor package is now extinct.

No major layout changes were conducted for the new store set.

Super Giant (2005-2008)
Following scandals and financial struggles, Ahold merged the operations of Giant-Landover and one of its sister chains, Stop & Shop starting in 2004. Many operations and employees from the Maryland chain were consolidated into Stop & Shop's headquarters in Quincy, Massachusetts. This would include divisions responsible for store design, as these two chains would now share the Super Stop & Shop prototype. In turn, the new concept stores were branded as "Super Giant" akin to both the latter name and Giant's own prototype that originated in 1958. While it would resemble largely S&S's implementation with minor tweaks, it bore little relation to the early hypermarket concept.

The first instance of the new Super Giant concept was featured at the Columbia Heights store (in Washington, D.C.), which opened in June 2005. After additional stores with the concept were opened in Van Ness, D.C. and Millville, DE in Spring 2006, the chain began a wide rollout of the concept across new and remodeled locations later in the year.

For 2007, the wooden trim above coolers/perimeter wall openings was removed, with the department indicator portion becoming a plastic strip and the decorative piece. That year also saw Giant's first purpose-built stores with open-truss ceilings, then a growing trend across major retailers.

2008 implementations of the package switched to a vastly simpler design. Department signage along walls was solely indicated with small lettering. The package had also briefly become concurrent with the Project Refresh design across new and remodeled stores. The last stores with such iterations included stores in Millsboro (new) and Rehoboth Beach, DE (remodel).

The Super Giant layout was adapted into the succeeding Project Refresh package, used in select remodels and new-construction stores.

Project Refresh (2008-2013)
In late 2007, Ahold announced a comprehensive, multi-year remodeling program for approximately 100 stores in their Giant-MD chain.

In many of these remodeled stores, the floral department was relocated from its longtime perch behind produce, neighboring the customer service desk. This in turn opened the product to and provided

The tile floor defaulted to plain white linoleum storewide; other flooring types from the Super Giant package were continued into the package, such as wood in health & beauty, marble in floral and tan metal in produce. Remodels would also

2009 update
In mid-2009, a revision was introduced to the package. The wall color was changed from white to entirely yellow, with the wisps/taglines outside primary department signage removed. Gooseneck signage was modified to feature larger text, and a final checkout light design was introduced (a yellow/purple wedge). The decor package would remain unchanged beyond this point.

Giant-PA prototype (2012-2016)
For Giant-MD's first stylistic evolution after splitting operations with Stop & Shop, Giant-MD took to their sister chain, Giant-PA to bring a new enhanced concept to their stores. The first instance within the Giant-MD chain opened in Perry Hall, MD in August 2012. The store, opened withinin a former SuperFresh location, exhibited the new package coupled with a revitalized layout.

The pacThe columns would also be outfitted in a brick texture at urban stores.

This package was also implemented at Stop & Shop afterwards, making it the first to be used across all four Ahold brands.

The package would be Giant's first display of polished concrete floors, another trend common within retail.

Updates
From late 2015, implementations of the package were now simplified in construction. The wood trim would be constricted to wall signage. From this point, Giant would also tend to be more limited with adjustments in remodeling stores, keeping the previous lighting, floor styles, and other layout quirks.

Ahold Gray (2016-2018)
The walls were now painted a medium gray color, with signage being wooden boards or plain white block letters attached to the wall.

The package would introduce a new lighting type for stores, consisting of rectangular LED tubes directly attached to the ceiling. This would be gradually phased in to these remodeled stores, along with select stores from previous packages.

Starting with this era, Giant opted to consolidate their service meat and seafood departments at remodeled stores into a singular kitchen. Within pre-Ahold layouts for instance, the butcher shop counter (of which operations were trimmed following a 2012 restructuring) would expand to also provide seafood, the latter of which relocated from its longtime placements at the back corner of the store.

"The Little Things are Giant" (2019-)
With the opening of a relocated Olney, MD store (in a former Shoppers location), Giant launched a revision to the prior package. This is first decor package exclusive to Giant-Landover since operations were merged with Stop & Shop in 2004.

Department signage is in a black uppercase font, with a backdrop composed of a white brick pattern. Backlit photo frames (akin to those found at Aldi), displaying departments' respective content, appear on the walls as well.