Grocery Gossip: Zephyrhills' New Winn-Dixie #641
The Beef People's first new store concept in three years presents some expected themes with an unexpected twist.
Howdy folks, welcome to this week’s edition of Grocery Gossip. Rather than focusing my time on a full-featured post over these last two cycles, more urgent matters presented themselves and called for two back-to-back breaking updates. Our last one was, of course, a first look at the brand-new Winn-Dixie #1671 in Lake City which is housed in the town’s former Harveys Supermarket / Food Lion.
This week, we are getting another exclusive: a first look at the brand-new Winn-Dixie #641 in Zephyrhills, Florida. You may be asking yourself, “how does this store differ from the nearly-as-new Winn-Dixie in Williston that we toured in December?” Well, rather than rushing the conversion like they did further north, The Beef People are going all-in and gutting the former Big Lots storefront. It will be interesting to see if they plan to do the same with their additional new stores in Alachua and Keystone Heights.
Winn-Dixie ironically was the first tenant of the 4840 Allen Road property and operated store #685 here that dated back to the mid-1980’s. They abandoned this property back in July 1997 following a move to the then-new store #683, located less than a mile to the west. That 47,717-square-foot store is set to close for conversion to an ALDI by July 26, 2026, leaving the Beef People without a home in Zephyrhills.
Likewise, recently published construction documents state that a brand-new supermarket, Winn-Dixie #641, will inhabit 40,459-square-feet of the Westgate Shopping Center and fill the former Big Lots space. Let’s take a look inside.
The first thing you’ll notice is how this store’s layout is a departure from anything Winn-Dixie has constructed in the past. Designers were not bound by precedent, either, given how Big Lots wiped away all traces of this space’s supermarket past during that company’s 1999 conversion and subsequent remodels.
The floral and produce departments will be the first to greet customers entering the store, followed by three aisles of abbreviated shelving. The supermarket’s meat department will round out the back right corner of the building and is set to include a selection of upright cases along the wall and bunker cases in the rightmost aisle. This store will notably lack a butcher counter and will only feature a seafood service window.
Dairy cases will line the remainder of the store’s back wall, and frozen foods will occupy the leftmost grocery aisles in center store.
The biggest departure from the norm is that the bulk of the service departments will line the leftmost wall and be opposite the produce section. From back to front, shoppers will first find the deli located across from several short aisles of packaged bread. This seems to be a design choice inherited from the former Hitchcock’s Market in Williston considering how that is the only modern Winn-Dixie where I’ve seen such an arrangement.
Continuing forward, one will find himself / herself at the bakery window where several short display racks will separate the sales floor from the preparation space. Additional nesting tables for muffins and cookies will spill out toward the store.
The final service department, located toward the front of the store, is the kitchen. It will include the familiar wing bar, a selection of rotisserie chickens, and most surprisingly, a sushi counter. I will note how Winn-Dixie decided to separate this section from its traditional companion, the service meat counter, seeming to emphasize its prepared food offerings.
Several short aisles of wine will lie across the way from the bakery & kitchen while cold beer cases will line the opposite bank of this “grand aisle”. The front left corner of the space will include two additional restrooms as well as several office spaces for store personnel.
The other shocking piece I found about this store’s layout, however, is the presence of a nearly 500-square-foot customer dining area. This implies that Winn-Dixie is planning to indeed put a large focus on prepared foods in this new store, which would also help to explain the inclusion of sushi.
Customers will exit this seating area and pass through a self-checkout corral featuring six registers. An additional five traditional checkout lines and two customer service registers will round out the store.
The grocery store will feature an open warehouse ceiling and polished concrete floors. Expect an atmosphere reminiscent of Winn-Dixie #112 in St. Augustine but with the interior paint scheme of Winn-Dixie #102 or #1671.
This new Winn-Dixie will also feature an adjacent liquor store which will be accessed from within the main vestibule.
As for the inside of the liquor store, plans indicate that the space will be decorated very similarly to what we have seen in the past. The walls will primarily be painted light gray up to the warehouse ceilings. The sea of gray will include two bands of black paint broken up by three banks of large transom windows overlooking the floral and produce departments.
The exterior of the store is set to be a major departure from its current aesthetics. Winn-Dixie plans to demolish the building’s current vestibule and awning to create an entirely new façade reminiscent of the grocer’s previous endeavors. I suppose there is no use in reinventing a design which was only used on a handful of occasions.
That is all I have for today but make sure to subscribe to Grocery South for any future updates and leave a comment if you learn any new information.
Until next time,
- Sing Oil Media