TOUR: Weis Markets - Faxon, PA

Weis Markets

Opened: 1950s

Previous Tenants: none

Location: 305 River Ave, Faxon, Loyalsock, PA

Photographed: August 18, 2022

Welcome to the Weis of Faxon! This is a very old-school Weis, having been built in the 1950s (probably within a few years of Sunbury, juts under 30 miles south). Unlike the downtown Sunbury location, this store has been expanded and renovated, bringing it to its current 39,000 square feet or so.

The store faces the side street, River Ave, with the registers running along this wall as seen above. The parking lot is mostly in what's now the front facing 3rd St. We enter to that side of the store with produce and deli in what amounts to the grand aisle. Meat/seafood run along the back wall of the store, with dairy/frozen on the right side and pharmacy/bakery in the front right corner -- or approximately where the words fresh market are in the above picture.

Even though it's an old store, it's gotten some very nice upgrades, including the second-most-recent decor package. While it's a bit limited because of the store's low ceilings, it still looks nice.

Between the low ceilings and structural posts everywhere, we can definitely tell this store's age on the inside, but it doesn't feel outdated at all.

We can see how the usually big and bold decor has been significantly scaled down for this store. But there are still upgrades being put in, which makes me think the store isn't going anywhere anytime soon, such as these new deli islands, of the same style that's going into brand-new Weis stores. You can also see the service deli, closed for the night, behind it.

Up next is seafood and meat on the back wall. This is a lower-end version of this decor package, more closely resembling the earlier first-gen Fresh Market decor package, which you can see in this news story. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that this has a version 1.5, between the original Fresh Market decor and version 2.0, such as what we see in Sunbury. This store has a lot of similarities to Tannersville.

Weis has a solid international foods selection in many of their stores, although of course not nearly as impressive as some of the other stores we see. Here we can tell that the store is older (with the support poles and low ceiling clearly visible) but that it's extremely well-maintained.

I also like that some of the aisle markers, such as this one, are more thematic rather than listing individual items.

Service counter closed for the night, but here's a look at seafood and meat. Packaged meats continue along the back wall of the store.

Note the blue flooring here -- meaning that it's possible the blue flooring seen in Tannersville was not installed by Insalaco's (which I further speculated on in Hazleton).

Note that this store has newer aisle markers than a store like Tannersville, more similar to what we see in Sunbury.

And yet the hanging promotional signage here in the meat department is certainly from the first-gen Fresh Market decor, so this store either was a transitional design or was later upgraded with a few elements from the second-gen decor package.

Dairy and frozen in the last aisle.

As we see, the store isn't huge, having only 11 aisles in total.

The bakery is in the front corner, with tile that more closely resembles the second-gen Fresh Market decor tile.

Because of the low ceilings around the perimeter, the bakery signage is not actually above the bakery, instead over the packaged baked goods in the second-to-last grocery aisle.

And around the corner from bakery is the pharmacy. Again, the signage has to be slightly out-of-place because of the ceiling setup. Here, rolls and bagels are labeled Pharmacy.

Beyond pharmacy is the customer service counter, with this sign that I don't really recognize from any decor package but I assume is from the same decor package as the rest of the store.

And a look at the front-end before we move along! Weis has been here for a long time, opening before and outlasting a competitor just a block north, which we'll be looking at on Monday on Grocery Archaeology!