A DJ at Walmart? Phenix City store celebrates remodel with barbecue, giveaways
A Phenix City Walmart Neighborhood Market held a ceremony Friday to show off a remodel that will change the experience of shoppers.
The store at 3864 U.S. Highway 80 West will celebrate the completion of the remodel throughout the day with giveaways, barbecue and a DJ.
According to a news release, improvements made to the store include:
New signage, fixtures, LED lighting and flooring throughout the entire store for better line of sight and easier navigation
Refreshed interior and exterior paint and signage
Remodeled bathrooms
Refreshed mother’s room for nursing mothers
Front-end transformation with more self-checkout lanes and manned registers
Expansion of the cosmetics department including a manned register
New “Grab N Go” coolers and a “Dollar Shop” at the front of the store
A lot of the changes were meant to provide more customer service, said operations manager David Arroyo. Previously, the Neighborhood Market only provided self-checkout. The new updates now give customers the option of having a cashier check them out upon request, Arroyo said.
“Having manned registers back for our customers — and actual cashiers to ring up our customers — is huge,” Brown said.
Another big change to the customer service was moving the online grocery pickup to the front of the store, Arroyo said, which allows customers to pick up their orders quicker. The addition of a family restroom is another change that was great for a small store like the Neighborhood Market, Brown said.
New signage throughout the store is easier to see and read, Arroyo said, and the signs are higher up than they used to be to add to the visibility. The pharmacy also has updated technology that employees will be able to utilize when assisting customers, and more seating in a better location.
Digital screens will also be used at customer service and at the deli, adding to the increase in technology that came with the remodel.
Along with the cosmetic changes, the store also has had an expansion of items that it is able to sell, Brown said.
“There are things we were not able to carry due to the fact of our size,” he said. “But with us expanding our counters an additional eight feet, we were able to add a tremendous amount of items that we normally wouldn’t have had for our customers.”
Over the last few months, the store had to balance creating the experience shoppers would soon have while also maintaining standards during the months the remodel took place, store manager Wyley Brown told the Ledger-Enquirer. One of the biggest difficulties was ensuring there was enough parking while construction equipment took up portions of the parking lot.
This store is lucky to have great residents in the area, Arroyo said, and the store ranks highly in its market because of their customers.
“It should be a lot more comfortable for customers to be able to park and come in to do their shopping,” Brown said. “And it should do nothing but continue to get better and better to give our customer their needs.”
