The Woolworths at the Circa shopping centre in Bella Vista in north west Sydney is the closest store to the Woolworths head office, and it’s where they shoot their in-store television commercials. But since the Circa store opened about five years ago it has been sparsely patronised a lot of the time - mostly due to the promised adjacent office complexes never being built. The nearby Norwest Private Hospital is being expanded, and a massive retirement village is starting to be built across the road from Circa, but I think it may be too late for the long underperforming Woolworths and it looks like I’ll lose my local supermarket.
I drove past that Woolies on Sunday and thought that I have still never been there. There are a few quiet Woolworths stores in my area, when do we find out which ones are closing?
I thought they used the Kellyville store for their commercials? Or maybe that’s just the exterior shots since it’s a standalone store.
I’ve seen them shooting at Circa. Maybe they use both?
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Yeah probably, they use the Kellyville store in this ad but it’s just the outside:
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Recently, they had used the Wolli Creek store in their ads. It looked to me like they were using whichever one was the newest for their ads.
I have never seen anything like this before: Cadbury chocolates in security cases in Kmart!
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/north/kmart-reservoir-locks-cadbury-chocolate-blocks-in-security-cases/news-story/02fd911819376491cdb7faa64f0129ea
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Is that a bogan area? 
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Reservoir is only about 12kms North of Melbourne. I don’t know enough about the fabric of Melbourne and it’s surrounds to make any credible commentary, but here in Sydney most suburbs located about 12kms from the CBD are still on the relatively rich side (especially these days)! 
But aside from that point, what an odd story…
Reservoir is a middle class suburb, but it may be just that store which has a high theft rate of confectionery.
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There’s only 15 to 20 Woolworths supermarkets being closed across Australia. There are 961 Woolworths supermarkets across the country - it’s extremely unlikely that the Bella Vista supermarket is being closed.
I can think of a few Woolworths supermarkets in Sydney that should be closed down, the one Eastlakes Shopping Centre being a good example. I used to work at Woolworths, and often overheard some light-hearted jokes that Eastlakes is a dumping ground for employees who fuck up big time. Not hard to imagine why - it’s located in a shopping centre that is literally decaying, and is already within a reasonable driving distance to better shopping centres. The council has blocked every development proposal for the last few decades.
It doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that there are 20 equally dire supermarkets across the country that Woolworths would be justified in closing. I’d put my money on any supermarket which hasn’t had the new logo stuck on the storefront to be very likely to be one of the stores that is closing down.
BKK Eastlakes Shopping Centre by mubd1234, on Flickr
To fully gauge the shitness of Eastlakes, have a look at this (it’s a bit old, but believe me it all still looks like this) - https://www.flickr.com/photos/63973275@N03/albums/72157634564574442
There’s also Flemings in Bexley North, which is basically a very small Woolworths. The signage is the last remnant of a fairly large supermarket chain and clearly hasn’t had a renovation in decades. My money is on this one being closed as well.
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Eastlakes Shopping Centre looks almost as rundown as the infamous Minto Mall did before it’s much needed revitalisation as the Minto Marketplace a couple of years ago! 
I would probably agree that the 27 Woolworths supermarkets most likely to be closed down as part of the restructure are in rundown/dead malls like Eastlakes or remaining ex-Flemings/Food For Less stores.
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You’re quite right about that, as Woolworths Fremantle in WA recently closed after the news of the restructure. 
As you can see, neither the Fremantle store updated to the 2008 signage.
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The funny thing is that it’s quite well patronised during the day, because it’s the only shopping centre in the high density, low income area (those photos were taken around 5:30pm when a lot of the stores had closed). Aldi does a roaring trade (it was only opened in 2007), Woolies doesn’t do too badly either. My guess would be that they’ll want a spot in the new shopping centre (if it ever gets built), but the current store is an embarrassment and too expensive to try and renovate when the “all-new Eastlakes Shopping Centre” timeline is always around the corner (it has been for the past 20 years and still nothing has happened!)
I go there once in a while just for curiosities sake. It’s the closest thing to time travel I’ll ever get.
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That store wasn’t even that old! Must have opened just before the rebrand judging from how modern the store format inside looks. That was a location opened far too early though - a supermarket will do well in 5-10 years when the higher density residential around the Fremantle CBD is (finally) completed. A lack of free parking also didn’t help.
If they held on for another year, they would have gotten a trade boost from the upcoming temporary closure of the Woolstores Coles when that building is redeveloped.
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A few other stores I have noticed still carrying the pre 2008 signage and layout are
Warwick
Dianella
Morley
Some elements such as the old “The Fresh Food People” billboard and older asile signs remain, while some stores have removed or updated older signage.
Since Woolworths have been kinda slack with updating older stores, have any Coles stores been the same? It seems since the failed 2007 Coles Group massive proposed rebrand, most stores have removed any traces of the previous Orb and Tick logos as well as the older store layout.
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From what I saw while I was in the area recently, the Woolworths at Newington Marketplace here in Sydney (which for some context is only a suburb away from Olympic Park and I believe the units in/around the suburb were part of the Athletes Village in 2000, the “Avenue of Europe” out the front of the Marketplace possibly suggests that) is another one that still has the old pre-2008 logo out the front!
As far as Coles is concerned, since the “coles” logo text hasn’t changed its probably quite easy for them to update the signage when they only really need to remove/cover-up the old orb/tick off a lot of things! 
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The Woolworths store near my workplace (Blackburn North shopping centre in Melbourne’s east) changed the sign from Safeway to Woolworths a few months ago, but still has pre 2008 layout and older aisle signs. I wonder if that store is in danger of closing too?
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I doubt this, but I wonder if any Coles stores are still using the older entry interior at the store’s front… I know until just last year, the Morley store still had this, albeit coloured beige and removed the Orb. The store was recently refurbished and is now using the 2010’s signage.
The Mirrabooka store was still using the 1991 asile signs with the Orb removed before that store was also updated! 
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Carousel still has those aisle signs and the front entry thing IIRC - it’s an ancient and rather small store that’s only still like that cause they’re waiting for the refurb/relocation in the coming years - was the same deal with the Joondalup store before it got its refurb/expansion when the centre got extended.
If you want an interesting one to take a look at, take a trip out to Stirling Central in Westminster - Enormous supermarket, it was originally a flagship Newmart (Bi-Lo) store opened in 1999, converted to an Action about 3 years later, Converted to a woolies another 3 years later. It STILL has the Newmart livery around the checkout and stickers poorly placed over the action/newmart logos around the interior walls. It also has some classic 90s supermarket style (the black coloured roof with very high/exposed ceiling in the fresh produce area). Their were a lot of these poorly converted Action Supermarkets around the place, but not many are left and I don’t think any others are around that were originally Newmart branded.
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