On June 22nd, the Jacksons Food Stores and Shell Gas Station reopened to customers on the corner of NE Glisan Street and 82nd Avenue. This multi-year project involved merging two properties and expanding the store’s footprint to accommodate an enhanced selection of edible items. The Jacksons design team implemented several retail and food service advancements throughout their new market, many of them firsts for the chain’s Oregon stores.
The redesigned Jacksons at 611 NE 82nd Avenue features a market-style store with prepared foods and grocery options, an eight-pump refueling station, and a corner pedestrian plaza with covered seating. The entire project added numerous new street trees and landscaping while retaining many of the preexisting mature trees. Later this year, a local artist will install a mosaic tile mural on the corner wall visible to all passing by the station.
The original gas station’s convenience store offered a modest selection of snacks and drinks in a confined space. According to Alex Romero-Chavez, District Manager for Jacksons, the structure itself had outlived its useful lifespan. He explained that the company would have needed to rebuild the store even without any expansion at this location. While looking at the site for improvements, Jacksons determined that an expanded store in this location would benefit the neighborhood. The group purchased an adjacent property to the north that once housed a Pizza Hut restaurant, merging the two properties into a 0.92-acre parcel.
Designers working with Jacksons used that expanded space to create a 4,452-square-foot convenience store with modern stone cladding. Customers can enter from the sidewalks or one of two parking lots to the north and south of the building. Gerard Aguilar, Regional Manager for Jacksons, anticipates store patrons will be impressed with the selection of food and drinks available at this location. Staff stocked the store with grocery essentials, including milk, eggs, and bacon. Shelves contain a wide assortment of chips, drinks, desserts, and other snacks. This location has an extensive selection of bottled wines and beer. A walk-in “beer cave” surrounds the shopper with a multitude of beer selections in self-fronting racks that always keep the brews visible to shoppers.
Prepared hot and cold food is another marquee feature of this store, and many new technologies help keep the food at peak taste throughout the day. It starts with an onsite kitchen in the back where precooked base ingredients are heated and assembled into the dishes available in the self-service displays. Hot food shelves use heated air curtains to keep the food at the optimal temperature until purchased. That retail technology works similarly to the cold air curtain used for open-faced refrigeration units. Even the pizza display utilizes new technology to better preserve the product. In addition to heating, it uses humidity controls to prevent the dough from drying out.
People looking for the staple of this type of store can use the brewed-to-order automated coffee machine. However, the cutting-edge automatic milkshake machine could see significantly more use, at least during summer. Customers can place a special ice cream cup into the machine and have it whip the frosty creation while they wait. Romero-Chavez explained that he has high hopes for serving the neighborhood. “This should be the destination for the whole community.” He envisions it replacing some grocery store trips for people in the community. The central location for the store has the potential to fill the gap left by last year’s closure of Sunny 82nd Market. Romero-Chavez is particularly excited to serve people who use the Montavilla Park and Community Center across the street that may need a take-and-go option.
Speed of shopping is an integral part of this store’s redesign, and Jacksons has just begun to roll out self-checkout to improve the customer experience. Each payment terminal can flip over and become a cashier-free station for credit card paying patrons. Age-verified products and cash sales will require store staff to ring up the purchases, but customers can otherwise checkout independently without waiting in line. This process only recently graduated out of testing, making this one of the first locations in Oregon to implement this payment option.
Over the last month, new store staff have trained at other locations. Jacksons has filled thirteen of the sixteen positions, and those employees have spent the previous few days readying the shop. The store will open daily from 5 a.m. to midnight, with plans to transition to 24-hour service when business conditions warrant it. People working and living near this store should now have a new option for convenient access to a variety of food items.
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