Publix - The Palm Beach Story

At the beginning of the 70’s, Publix had nearly 60 stores in its burgeoning Southeast Coast (Miami and surrounding counties) division, but none in oh-so exclusive Palm Beach, where retailers were only allowed to locate “by invitation”. When that invitation finally came in 1971, Publix rose to the occasion with a superb Spanish Rococo design, shown here in a photo taken shortly after opening, in lieu of their standard architecture. The store’s landscaping, according to Pat Watters’ book “Fifty Years of Pleasure”, was provided by “ladies of a local garden club”. An impressive early example of a style Publix would employ much more in the future, this store still stands at 265 Sunset Avenue in Palm Beach.

The grand opening was appropriate for the area’s storied clientele – engraved invitations were sent out to local residents, and as Watters noted, “Rolls Royces abounded in the parking lot when the Publix door was opened with stately ceremony”. Another story in the Watters book from that day involved a woman and her maid inspecting a “pre-wrapped” filet mignon. After deciding the filet met their standards, they proceeded to order 120 of them (which Publix dutifully delivered) for “a few people” they were having over that evening. All in all, it must have fit the definition of a “gala” grand opening better than most.

Hope they remembered to stock up on Grey Poupon!

The Perfect Publix - Ft. Lauderdale 1962

By the early 1960’s, Publix’s reputation for elegance and service beyond the supermarket norm was widely known. Having established a strong trademark with the “winged” facades introduced a few years earlier, the interiors of the new Publix stores were becoming more opulent than ever. On top of that, the stores themselves were becoming larger, with new stores averaging well over 20,000 square feet. A fine example of the Publix stores of this period was the Coral Ridge Shopping Center unit in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, which opened in 1962 and for a brief time, was considered the company’s premier unit. Most of the photos seen here depict that store.

(For the handful of folks who go back with me on this site to its very beginning, may remember an early post called Publix Panache, and are thinking “Gosh, Dave, there aren’t many classic stores out there, haha. Why don’t you feature the same store twice?” I hear you. I promise we’ll move on quickly!)

Many features that would become Publix calling cards, a few of which would filter through to the supermarket industry as a whole over the coming decade, were already in place on this store. All in “dramatic color”, they included boutique-style settings for the ice cream and bakery departments, dark paneling, elaborate wood cutouts, pastel-colored freezer and cooler cases, and of course those (soon-to-be famous) green and white striped terrazzo floors.

Probably the most striking features were the beautiful, wonderfully intricate mosaic murals (click the first photo to enlarge and look toward the lower left corner, and also see the second photo here) that graced the entrances of the new Publix stores. These were the work of legendary San Francisco-based artist John Garth, who also created a number of them for Safeway’s magnificent Marina-style stores. While his Safeway work tended to stress historical themes, the motif that Garth employed for the Publix store murals was described in detail in a 1964 Look magazine article – “The dominating figure in Garth’s murals is a long-stemmed, blue eyed blonde whose lush beauty seems about to bust right through her diaphanous white gown. She just sits or stands on a throne looking hard to please, while faithful food-industry workers come bringing beef, citrus, lobsters, watermelons and the world’s other taste-bud delights”. The article goes on to liken a lurking pirate with a treasure chest hiding out in a corner of the mural to the bounty of trading stamps that awaited shoppers inside. Wow! After Garth’s passing in 1971, Publix would use a different type of murals on its stores, more along the lines of a painting on a white tiled background.

Regarding the above-mentioned 1964 Look magazine article, this was the second instance in which George Jenkins and his company were profiled in a major national pictorial magazine - two more times than any other supermarket chain, to my knowledge. Amazingly, the tone of this article is even more giddy than the Saturday Evening Post piece from ten years earlier- “In 100 stately superstores, a Florida grocer brews up new enticements for Her Highness, the never satisfied housewife”, reads the article’s tagline. Jenkins’ stores were described with felicity –“Inside, his light is heaven-bright, his climate a conditioned 74 degrees, his floors a green-and-white candy striped terrazzo, his pastel walls a fiesta of fairyland frescoes. His clean air, scrubbed by deodorizers, hums with Muzak sonatas night and day”. (I’d quote more, but I’m not sure how much you can stand. In a good way, I mean.)

Gushing superlatives aside, one thing is very clear – that George Jenkins knew that creating a special “experience” for his shoppers was the key to Publix’s success. Though their lines of business could scarcely be more different, Jenkins reminds me in several respects of someone else I’ve always admired, Walt Disney. Both men were of the same generation, Disney being born in 1901, six years before Jenkins, and their life stories were both stirring rags-to-riches tales. There was also a striking physical resemblance as well - both were trim, impeccably dressed and sported rakish pencil-thin moustaches. The biggest similarity, in my opinion, was their business approach – Jenkins and Publix, of course, and Walt in relation to Disneyland, his greatest single achievement. No detail of Disneyland’s operation escaped Disney’s careful eye, and even mundane aspects such as how long customers had to wait in line for rides were the subject of never-ending study, a constant search for even the slightest potential for improvement. Forty-three years after his death, the Disneyland reputation is still heavily staked on Walt’s achievements, attitudes and ideals. In a sense, although Publix’s boundaries continue to expand well beyond Florida, the same is true for them. Thirteen years after George Jenkins’ passing, they are held to his very high standards. Although Disney spent a great deal of time in central Florida in his last years, laying out the early plans for Disney World, to suggest that the two men ever met would be more than a bit far-fetched. Bet they would’ve gotten along, though.

As mentioned, most of the photos above show the Coral Ridge Shopping Center Publix in Ft. Lauderdale, a store that still exists, albeit in a remodeled state. These are from a 1962 Publix promotional booklet, as is the final photo below. The second photo, with the coral-colored wall and the store directory (if you click to enlarge it, you’ll still have a hard time reading the “Where Shopping is a Pleasure” slogan in the next-to-last panel on the directory) is of the Coral Gables store, from a 1962 advertisement, and the black-and-white shot of the produce department is from an early 60’s book entitled “Modern Supermarket Operation”. Not sure which location it is but it might be the Ft. Lauderdale store, based on the way cool aisle marker. Below, Mr. Jenkins looks on proudly as the steel skeleton in the background displays a familiar shape - another Publix is about to take flight!

Publix Earns Its Wings

In the world of mid and late 20th century retail architecture, there are a number of store exterior designs that are indelibly, inextricably linked with one company. Where supermarkets are concerned, it’s a fairly small number. Two of those that immediately come to my mind are the Marina style stores (glass-front, arched roof design) of Safeway and the Centennial stores (Early American/Colonial design) of A&P. Those two companies certainly weren’t the only ones to use these designs – Philadelphia-based Penn Fruit was a pioneer of what would later be called the “Marina” style (named after Safeway’s 1959 flagship store in San Francisco’s Marina district), and many supermarket firms, including Grand Union, Acme, Albertsons and Food Fair to name just a few, opened stores that featured the Marina look. And I’ve seen a couple of very nice early 60’s examples of Colonial-style architecture on a Stop & Shop unit (Coventry, Rhode Island) and even on a Piggly Wiggly store operated by Shop Rite of Texas (who built some of the nicest looking Piggly Wigglys ever, in my opinion). Despite this, the association of those two styles with those particular companies (Marina = Safeway) and (Colonial = A&P) still hold the strongest.

Another one I would add to this list is Publix, with their magnificent winged-facade stores that first began to appear in 1956. Perfectly capturing the optimism and good-natured flamboyance of the times, these stores caused a stir when first opened, and the design was such a hit that Publix would stick with it for nearly 15 years.

A commenter on a recent post noted that “it’s easy to see how the ‘winged’ Publix stores evolved” from the previous art deco designs the company used, and I would have to agree. If you look at the series of black and white photos at the end of that post, a natural progression can be seen, with nearly every store showing slight differences from the previous one. One design element in particular, the large “PUBLIX MARKET” lettering, was used on several pre-“winged-era” stores, and in a few cases was even retrofitted to older stores, replacing their more subdued original signage. In one sense, the move away from the art deco look was necessary as more and more of the new Publix stores were in-line with shopping centers instead of free-standing. The distinctive art deco curved corners could no longer be used, rendering the style much less effective in a shopping center setting, something that can be seen in the later photos on that same post.

On top of that, styles were changing. To me, there’s a parallel between the look of American automobiles of the late 40’s and early 50’s and the Art Deco Publix stores, which both sported curvy lines and high profiles. A similar parallel can be drawn between the late 50’s winged Publix stores and the long, low, sleek car designs of that period, razor-sharp tailfins replacing the curved lines of the preceding years. So it must have been like grocery shopping in a ’59 Cadillac, or a “wide-track” Pontiac! (Ok, I guess some analogies can be carried too far…)

Publix’s tagline, “Where Shopping is a Pleasure”, was boldly emblazoned on the new facades. Still in use today, this slogan was the creation of Publix advertising manager Bill Schroter. In the 1940’s and early 50’s, the company had used another slogan - “Florida’s Finest Food Stores”. Schroter discussed his feelings about the original slogan in the book “Fifty Years of Pleasure”- “doggone it, the thing was self-congratulatory, offering no promise…I realized this could be a sacred cow”. “People would say, ‘Publix was such a pleasant place to shop.’ Or ‘The people are so pleasant’. It triggered something, and I just came up with a slogan idea”. Initially apprehensive about approaching Publix founder George Jenkins with it, Schroter pressed forward and presented his case, and one of the retail world’s most enduring slogans saw its first use.

From a corporate standpoint, Publix continued to grow steadily through the late 1950’s, reaching a total of 37 stores by 1958. The following year saw the beginning of an initiative that played a big part in Publix’s explosive growth over the following decades. In 1959, Publix took its first steps outside its Central Florida home base, opening its first store in the Miami area on July 5th of that year. Things took a big step forward there in November, when George Jenkins learned that The Grand Union Company had decided to put six of its Miami area stores up for sale. Despite the hand-wringing of some observers (Miami has always been a notoriously brutal grocery pricing market), Jenkins moved ahead on the deal. Thus was established Publix’s Southeast Coast division. By 1963, the company had built 14 additional stores and opened a distribution center in Miami. Publix also entered another new market in 1959 when it opened a store in Jacksonville. With prohibitive single-store advertising costs and the need to marshal their resources for the competitive battle in Miami, the company soon decided to sell that store to hometown heroes Winn-Dixie. In 1971, Publix would return to Jacksonville, this time for keeps.

Another venture that did much to shape Publix’s destiny was its entry into shopping center development. In fact, the first “modern” shopping center in the state, St. Petersburg’s Central Plaza, had a Publix store as a tenant. Florida’s second shopping center, in Largo, was actually developed by Publix. Over the next 25 years, Publix would develop 70 centers, all featuring major general merchandise and specialty retailers to complement their supermarket units. In the early years, Publix’s shopping centers typically included such variety stores as W.T. Grant and F.W. Woolworth, a drug store (mostly Touchton–Rexall, and later Eckerd), along with all manner of bakeries, toy stores, dry cleaners, shoe stores and clothing stores among others.

One Publix-developed center has even achieved a measure of pop culture status (again, owing to a movie) – 1958’s Southgate Shopping Center in Lakeland, which featured a gigantic arch in the middle of the shopping center that is thankfully still intact. The shopping center was the site of a scene in the 1990 Tim Burton movie “Edward Scissorhands”, starring Johnny Depp, providing what one columnist called “Lakeland’s Hollywood debut”. (Have there been other movies filmed in Lakeland?) Earlier this year, the Publix store, which was remodeled a number of times and most recently featured an early 70’s-ish Publix look, was torn down. Soon a much larger, brand new Publix store will reopen on the same spot. The iconic “Southgate” arch will remain in place, but the new store will be in the modern Publix mold. While I’m sure the new Publix will be beautiful, part of me wishes they’d “winged it”.

All of these photos are from a 1958 Publix promotional booklet. The first photo shows the new winged facade at the North Gate Shopping Center in Winter Haven, Florida, resplendent in palm trees and S&H Green Stamps signs. Second, an impeccably dressed mother and daughter experience some pleasant Publix service. Note the box of Tide, “The Washday Miracle”, in the shopping cart. Consumer products don’t get more photogenic than that. Third is an aerial view of Lakeland’s Southgate Shopping Center. With all of those customers, who needs Hollywood? Below are some black and whites of some the first winged stores, painstakingly captioned below for your surfing pleasure!

Cleveland Plaza, 1209 E. Cleveland, Clearwater

211 Douglas Ave., Bradenton (unusual "concave" variant)

West Gate Shopping Center, 3909 W. Manatee Ave., Bradenton

Britton Plaza, 3838 Dale Mabry Ave., Tampa (Debra Jane sent me a link to an incredible ad that shows the neon lighting pattern for this particular store. It's on her Flickr page at this link. Wowza!)

Colonial Plaza, 2418 E. Colonial Drive, Orlando

North Gate Shopping Center, 8815 N. Florida Ave., Tampa

Madeira Shopping Center, 662 East Welch Causeway, Madeira Beach

North Gate Shopping Center, 1395 N.6th Street, Winter Haven

Southgate Shopping Center, 2515 S. Florida Ave, Lakeland
South Gate Plaza, Sarasota (slogan on the awning)

Southside Shopping Center, 6th St. and 45th Ave. S., St. Petersburg (still under construction)

An Endearing Late Fifties Publix

A look at some of the colorful interior scenes (actually from several different locations) that would have greeted shoppers of the Publix stores featured in the previous post. By the time these pictures, from 1956 and 1958 promo pieces, were taken, Publix had a firmly established reputation for attractive decor and well-thought out displays, nearly as elaborate for their realm as the nicer department stores would have put together for theirs. Here we can see some holiday decorations - the first and third scenes sporting brown and gold flower arrangements, presumably for Thanksgiving, and the second and fourth decorated for Easter, with a donkey for Palm Sunday and an Easter Bunny. This was a decade or more before I would have been concerned about such things, but I loved the PAAS Easter egg decorating kits once I was old enough to use them. Maybe it’s just me, but the kits seemed so much better designed in those days, making today’s look boring by comparison.

Visible at the end of the aisles in the first photo are miniature red-and-white striped carousels, leading me to wonder if this may have been the Publix store at the Ringling Shopping Center in Sarasota, Winter Home of the famous Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

These are some of the last Publix stores to open with tile flooring. Soon, all new Publix stores would have green and white terrazzo floors, a feature that would become one of the company’s most recognizable signatures. Also, Publix’s devotion to S&H Green Stamps is evident – they’re literally “flying the banners”, so to speak.

Another prominent aspect of the interior design was the internally lit strip signage that can be seen around the inside perimeter. Although a number of chains used a version of this, Kroger among them, I believe Publix was unique in their use of pictures interspersed with the signage text. The signage in the third photo, with Libby’s and Del Monte brands clearly visible, underscores Publix’s strongly-enforced policy at the time – to promote strictly national brands. With very few exceptions – coffee, eggs and a few other staples – Publix stayed away from marketing food products under its own private label. This philosophy, which Publix adhered to for decades, stemmed from a perceived need to provide familiar brand-appeal to the throngs of vacationers and families relocating to Florida from the Northeast and Midwest regions. Many years later, Publix would launch its private label program, now one of the most admired in the industry.

One last note – check out the store renderings in the framed picture at the top of the third photo and on the right-hand edge of the illuminated strip sign in the last one. Usually these depicted the facade of that individual store itself. If that’s not endearing, I'm not sure what is.

Publix - The Art Deco Super Markets

Nearly four years after the opening of the Winter Haven, Florida Publix market, “the most beautiful and most modern grocery establishment in Florida, and one of the finest in the United States”, it remained the company’s only store. Successful though it was, the economics of operating a single store were daunting, due to the inability to buy in volume and the very high cost of advertising per sales dollar, among other factors. Publix founder and president George Jenkins was acutely aware of the need to expand in order for his company to thrive. Jenkins stated goal at the time was “to build a chain of fifty stores like the (Winter Haven unit), no more”. In 1944, the situation began to look up, and the following year can be considered the true beginning of Publix as a “chain”. Unable to secure adequate building materials to expand during World War II, the company was finally able to scrounge up the necessary resources near the war’s end to buy a second store in neighboring Lake Wales.

The real catalyst for the company’s expansion, however, would come in the form of an acquisition. In 1945, J.A. Powell of nearby Lakeland, Florida, put his firm, Lakeland Grocery Company, up for sale. Powell’s company operated 19 little supermarkets under the banner of All American Stores. To put it mildly, the stores were humble in appearance - having “all the architectural charm of a shoe box”, as Jenkins later put it, but would provide the desperately needed volume. Included in the deal would be All American’s home office building and warehouse, the latter being particularly attractive to Jenkins, who understood the role of a distribution infrastructure as essential to a chain operation. Of critical importance was the fact that Powell was willing to provide financing on the sale price of $175,000 (for the entire company!), payable at twenty grand per year.

Beyond a cadre of loyal customers and a motley crew of stores, the All American buyout yielded a priceless asset to the fledgling Publix organization – a reservoir of management talent. The team of people that Publix gained from All American would lead the company for the next four decades, working alongside the dynamic Jenkins to take Publix from obscurity to being one of America’s most admired companies. This group included Joe Blanton, who worked his way up from meat cutter to vice president of real estate, ultimately becoming Publix president and “right-hand man” to George Jenkins. Blanton, a gentle giant who stood well over 6 feet tall and weighed over 300 pounds at his peak, became a highly respected figure in the supermarket industry and in Publix circles was revered nearly as much as the founder himself. Upon Blanton’s untimely death in 1984, he was succeeded as president by Mark Hollis, who began as a bagboy in 1946 in one of the former All American stores and whose father, William, would become a longtime Publix vice president.

Since it would be several years before Publix could afford or even obtain materials to replace the All American store buildings, great pains were taken to clean up, repaint and reequip the existing stores. Within the first couple of years, each of the stores would be renamed as Publix units.

And construction wasn’t the only aspect of Publix’s business affected by shortages. During World War II and for several years afterward, popular food items remained in high demand and short supply. Pat Watters’ book “Fifty Years of Pleasure”, released in 1980, describes the problems Publix (and many other grocers across the country) faced in keeping the stores stocked in those days. With packaged foods, for example, Publix was frequently forced to accept shipments that contained as much 50 percent of slow-moving off-brands in order to receive an allotment of what they did want (and could sell), such as Campbell’s soups or Libby’s canned vegetables. The shortage of meat was especially challenging, and the Watters book cites some unconventional meats that were stocked as a temporary solution – “sheep, rabbits, turtles, anything to put in a showcase”. (I can envision a big “Tastes like Chicken!” sign above the display.) These shortages and the resulting empty shelf space led to the introduction of another line of products – health and beauty aids. It goes without saying now that these lines (now typically called “HBC” for health, beauty and cosmetics) are indispensable to a supermarket’s bottom line, but prior to the late forties they were pretty much the sole province of drugstores. When Publix began to stock small amounts of these items – soap, shaving cream, cold cream, etc., they flew off of the shelves. Initially the manufacturers, including Colgate-Palmolive and others, resisted selling their products through grocery stores. When the sales numbers began to roll in, however, they were soon “breaking down our doors”, as Publix official Bob Schroter described it to Watters.

In 1948, Publix was finally in a position to begin replacing the stores, opening new units in the image of the Winter Haven store as designed by architect J.A. Tilden, with its distinctive art deco/streamline moderne lines, glass block tower and marble-and-glass storefront. The first replacement unit opened that year in Bartow, Florida. There was one notable exception to this plan. Soon after the replacement program was underway, Jenkins and Blanton began to question whether the level of luxury they were building into the stores was cost justifiable. It was decided that the next replacement store, in Clermont, Florida (Home of the Citrus Tower – Best. Tourist Attraction. Ever.) would have the streamlined appearance, but no glass block tower, no electric eye doors and no marble. The Watters book described the construction of the Clermont store as a fairly miserable episode, and whether or not the company considered it a “jinx” or there was some other reason, all subsequent stores would receive the full-blown luxury treatment. By 1951, twenty-five new and replacement stores had been opened. Jenkins was halfway to his goal.

The early fifties saw the introduction of another Publix signature – what would be a long-standing relationship with S&H Green Stamps. Publix initially agreed to give them out on a trial basis, with a benchmark of a 14 percent increase in sales as a requirement for keeping them. To their delight (both that of Publix and especially of Sperry & Hutchinson, no doubt) the increase was nearly double that. For decades following, Publix would be a most enthusiastic advocate of Green Stamps, prominently featuring S&H signs on their store facades and in newspaper ads. Years later, when competitors such as Winn-Dixie would drop stamps as part of a switch to a “low-price model”, Publix cheerfully doubled the amount of stamps they handed out.

In 1954, news of the Publix phenomenon reached a national audience for the first time. A 1954 issue of The Saturday Evening Post magazine featured a story entitled “The Grocer the Girls All Love”, a laudatory piece on George Jenkins and his company. As a number of you surely remember, weekly pictorial magazines, including Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post were staples of American living rooms during that era. Eventually they succumbed when their advertisers shifted to television, but in 1954 they still wielded considerable power and influence. The article described how Jenkins built his empire “by bowing to the whim of the housewife”, describing the sumptuous décor of the stores and extolling the company’s treatment of its employees. The article was illustrated with photos of Publix’s gorgeous new Lakeland store, including a photo of the very dapper Mr. Jenkins carrying groceries while escorting a beaming young mother and her three kids to their car. The article was no doubt instrumental in the rise of a new form of American anxiety - supermarket envy. As if Khrushchev wasn’t trouble enough.

The first photo, from a 1956 brochure called "Progress of Publix", depicts a color view of the “glass block tower” from a typical Publix store in the 1946-56 era. The second and third photos are from the Post magazine article referenced above, showing the brand-new Lakeland store at 916 N. Massachusetts Ave. The photos below show a sampling of different Art Deco-styled Publix stores, shown in approximate chronological order of opening. These photos are from a 1958 Publix brochure called "Personality of Publix" but shows stores of many vintages. Top to bottom, they are (1) Bartow, (2) the barebones Clermont store, (3) 225 N. Ft. Harrison Street, Clearwater, (4) 229 N. Orange Blossom Trail, Orlando, (5) 1065 S. Florida Ave., Lakeland, (6) 1118 S. Kuhl Ave., Orlando, (7) 801 S. Collins, Plant City, (8) 211 Edgewater Drive, Orlando, (9) 1720 16th St. North, St. Petersburg, with a very cool S&H sign, (10) 6001 Nebraska Ave., Tampa, a store that was completely rebuilt in 1995 and on which they retained the classic style , as seen in a new pic from Debra Jane Seltzer's incredible Roadside site - if only more companies would do that!, (11) Pinellas Shopping Center, Largo, (12) a wider view of the Massachusetts Ave. Lakeland store, nicknamed “The Masterpiece market of the 1950’s”, (13) Gandy Blvd., Tampa, (14) Central Plaza Shopping Center, 3340 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, (15) Ringling Shopping Center, Sarasota, (16) First Federal Shopping Center, 890 49th St. North, St. Petersburg, and (17) 5420 W. 9th St, St. Petersburg, now a Walgreens (and a t-shirt, thanks to Jack for the tip!)