Ingles #488
Store Information:
Official Name: Ingles Market
Address: 176 Hwy 441, Clayton, GA 30525
Opening Date: Probably late 2008-early 2009
Store Design: Standard layout
Well, here’s something a bit different! We’re venturing out of Florida today for a look at a supermarket chain many people have never heard of. Ingles Markets was founded in 1963 and currently operates 198 supermarkets in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Their main private label brand is Laura Lynn. Most Ingles stores today (including this one) are built in the standard design (which also generally includes a gas station). The standard Ingles design is much bigger that your typical 45M Publix, topping out at 35-38 aisles compared to the 45M’s 16. Some older Ingles locations are smaller and lack gas stations, though. One Ingles store is even in an old Winn-Dixie Marketplace! And yes, “Ingles” is indeed how you say “English” in Spanish.
I tried the bread. It was okay. Publix’s is better.
My interior photos have run out, so we’ll move on to Google Earth aerials. The cameras used to photograph this area were not the right kind to take “fancy images”, so we don’t have one of those.
That concludes out tour of the Clayton Ingles. This store is essential to the area because it’s the only supermarket in Clayton (unless you count the Walmart Supercenter, and that only opened a few years ago). The closest full-service grocery store to this one is Bryson’s Food Store in Highlands, NC, a Topco-supplied independent. I went there, and although the decor was interesting, I didn’t think it was a very good store. Ingles stores, on the other hand, are comparable to Publix for probability that they will have what you need.
Until my next post goes up, read Remember the Pub Lion? or go check out Grocery South.
Thanks for reading!
Mr. Rejoice Retail
Very bright and up-scale. Looks like they have even more choice than Publix, with all the sub-departments! Thank-you for another great tour:)
You’re welcome! That amount of subdepartments surprised me when I first visited an Ingles. I think Ingles has just about everything that the average person would want. The only thing that I didn’t like about them was how there were ZERO options for non-bioengineered corn tortillas.
I’ve never been to an Ingles before, but their stores do look very nice. I believe their newer locations extend the high ceiling over the “grand aisle” with the bakery and deli, which makes that part of the store feel more impressive, especially with all the extra light coming in through the skylights. Still, this looks like a nice store with a large selection.
Going into an Ingles for the first time (one of their Franklin, NC locations), I was expecting something like an older Winn-Dixie, but their standard design is obviously more than that. I wasn’t expecting palace-like stores from a chain with just under 200 locations. Some Ingles stores are like Winn-Dixies, though, especially their Sav-Mor locations. I went to one of those. It wasn’t worth it.
Realistically there are 19 aisles in this store. What they are doing here is splitting the aisles in an odd-even number sequence. It’s not much different than how Wegmans does it up here, but with an A-B sequence for their aisle numbers.
The extreme depth of the store does make up for some of the double aisle numbering. The store itself is 70,000-80-000 sq. feet., compared to Publix’s average of 40,000-55,000.