By Wendy Wallace
Has the outside display of soda cases caught your eye when heading into Safeway? These constantly changing works of“pop” art are brought to you by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Washington. Keep your eyes peeled because any seasonal change, holiday or event may lead to a new gigantic display of 18-can cases of soda outside its front doors.
Distributor employees assemble the displays with some help from local Safeway workers when they need additional manpower. Some designs are created freehand and other times with diagrams, but each setup takes about two hours to pull together.
Look closely and you might notice that not all the cases are real-some are dummy cardboard, especially on the higher levels where actual cases of soda can could become top-heavy and wobble. Assistant store manager Bryan Everson said they don’t sell a lot more products by placing them outside, but it is a way to get items noticed and something fun for shoppers, too. And why not add some fun to a mundane task like grocery shopping?
Who knows, maybe next the pro-duce section will start making artistic veggie-and-fruit-scapes with lemons, avocados and red leaf lettuce.
