Old supermarket signage

[WillPS]

The Starbucks across the road in the former Happy Eater is well worth a visit to appreciate its ridiculously stylish roof.

Apparently it was a Little Chef, according to its Wikipedia page. I do like a hyperbolic paraboloid in a building.

Happy Eater was merged in to the Little Chef chain after both ended up under Forte's ownership. Happy Eater was the first restaurant to operate under that roof.

Fun fact - the Chinese restaurant which is literally next door was a Little Chef until the two chains were merged together. It closed after the Happy Eater was rebranded, and was originally yet another roadside chain which Forte bought and merged in to Little Chef - Kelly's Kitchen.

[AGuyFromUpNorth]

Somebody recently uploaded this 'urban exploration' type video of the old Wilko building in Sheffield:



A lot of the stuff is still left inside (old shop fittings, office furniture etc.) At around 41 minutes in, in an upstairs store room there is the old Wilkinson signage (which makes sense as this branch was the first to trial the newer branding in the late 2000's), as well as an old Woolworths shop front sign, which is bizarre as this particular shop had the 'Woolco' branding and closed in the 1980's, whereas that Woolworths sign is a lot newer. My guess is that it has to be from another branch - but why it was kept up there for all those years in the first place is a mystery.

[james2001]

That red Woolworth's sign is from a LOT later, from the mid-late 00s, literally the last few years of Woolie's life, I think that style came in around 2003/4. Before then, they were individual letters rather than a single sign, like this:



The Wilkinson sign conversely is very old! I think the white version of the logo with black drop shadow stopped being used in the late 70s. Most likely that sign had been taken down long before the modern Wilko branding was put up! The branch on the A60 going into Nottingham still had a version of that logo (but on an arrow rather than a stripe) until very late in its life.

[WillPS]

The Wilkinson sign conversely is very old! I think the white version of the logo with black drop shadow stopped being used in the late 70s.
...
The branch on the A60 going into Nottingham still had a version of that logo (but on an arrow rather than a stripe) until very late in its life.

It lost it when the business rebranded as "Wilko" (a kind of hybrid between the logo that shown there and the more common 80's/90s/00s one):
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ib6ifmHZB9jRmRf69

Most likely that sign had been taken down long before the modern Wilko branding was put up!

Sadly Google Maps seems to have lost all pre-2015 Street View data but yes it certainly did, it had the very common 90s/00s logo when I moved to Sheffield in 2008, then it became the trial store for the new format (still 'wilkinson' above the door but in the new style) and then had a very minimal conversion to the Wilko brand when they decided to rename.

You could always tell the stores that got the pre-Wilko brand 'Wilkinson' treatment because they also changed the shade of red they were using, so the signage didn't quite match the rest of the frontage.