June 2026 Project of the Month: Richmond Beach Foods
Some buildings are just buildings. And then there are the ones a neighborhood grows up around.
The corner store at 2002 NW 196th Street in Shoreline has been one of the latter for nearly a century. Since 1927, it has cycled through names — Richmond Beach Supermarket, Doug's Market, Tom & Jerry's, Lamb's, The Little Store at Richmond Beach — and through all of them, it held the same essential role: the place you walked to. The place where kids could show up with a dollar and leave with a pocketful of candy. The kind of place that doesn't get built anymore, only inherited.
Richmond Beach Foods is that inheritance, and the people carrying it forward grew up on it. Norene and Lauren are Richmond Beach kids. They know this store not as a business opportunity but as a piece of their own childhood. Now raising their own families just up the road, they're honoring what the corner always meant by bringing it back to life. In October 2025, they became tenants of the building and small business owners, and with a sense of nostalgia that runs deeper than branding, returned it to the name they remember from when they were young: Richmond Beach Foods.
They've brought it back as a neighborhood market and coffee bar with one foot in its long past and the other pointed firmly toward the community it serves today. They're still piecing together the full story with old photos, names, decades of regulars, and they welcome anyone who remembers to reach out. That kind of openness is rare. It says something about what they're building.
When Richmond Beach Foods came to us, the path was clear: the new sign needed to honor the store's history without looking like a museum piece. This is a working neighborhood market, not a nostalgia project, and the sign needed to read that way from the street — while still carrying the warmth the corner has always had.
We fabricated and installed a new illuminated sign on a painted cabinet using reverse pan channel letters in a nostalgic font that work well to support the store’s iconography. In addition, we added a canopy to help shield the entrance from inclement weather in the long PNW winters when fresh, strong espresso is always welcome.
And those warm neon tones we used illuminate more than the letters, they evoke feeling. There's a quality to this kind of light that binds people to a place, that makes a storefront feel like it belongs to the neighborhood rather than the other way around. For a corner that's been glowing in some form since 1927, this feels exactly right.
The installation went up on the building in April, and the result does exactly what good exterior signage should: it earns its place on a facade that's already earned its place in a community.
Our owner Andre Lucero has spent years investing in the neighborhoods around our work, including years of support for the PTA, Boosters, and Youth Athletics and their fundraisers right there in the Shoreline community. Projects like this one aren't just jobs for us — they're a chance to put something real back into the places where people live.
At Western Neon, we talk a lot about the difference between making a sign and marking a place. A sign tells you what's there. A marked place tells you why it matters. Richmond Beach Foods is the latter, and we were glad to be part of the next chapter.
Richmond Beach Foods is open at 2002 NW 196th Street, Shoreline, WA 98177. Follow them on Instagram and on Facebook. If you have old photos or memories of the store across any of its eras, they'd love to hear from you.
Completed installation photography by Western Neon
Western Neon creates custom signage, interiors, and public art. With 40 years of experience, we make your vision a success from the first idea to the finishing touch. Start a project today!