Long Lost Supermarkets- Finast , Grand Union, Pantry Pride, Hills

Groceteria. This blog is the Bible for all things grocery store and supermarket related. Reading through the old posts can be fascinating.

Grand Union, Red Apple, Pathmark, Waldbaum's, Safeway, Pantry Pride, A&P (I remember the smell of their freshly ground coffee) and many others closed in my neighborhood.

I'm on the East Coast.

Bohack

Alpha Beta

R2- I had a book about the history of White Plains, NY. They were a couple of photographs from the early to mid 1950's . In the corner of one photo there was a sign that said SAFEWAY parking in rear. They were in the Northeast for a while but disappeared by the 1960's. The same thing about the A&P- they had stores in Seattle and Los Angeles up until around 1970.

Sentry, Thriftway, Tradewell and Kienows. Kienows were famous for their macaroon cookies. They were great.

R1- I used to go to that site about 9 or 10 years ago.

Growing up in San Antonio, Handy Andy was the big grocery store (largely because at the time H‑E‑B didn’t sell beer or wine).

In the late ‘70s when I lived in center city Philadelphia, I would carpool with my neighbors and drive to N.J. to go to Pathmark.

This looks like the Grand Union near where I grew up. It's in Queens, and I grew up in NJ. They all looked alike at any given point in time, I suppose.

Grand Union play set, on eBay

It would be ironic if Grand Union did not allow it's workers to be in a Union.

My 75 year old mom still refers to any generic product as “Finast brand”.

“Saran Wrap is getting too expensive, so I picked up Finast brand”, she says after a trip to Costco.

Market Basket

Loblaw's in Ohio A&P with those Ann Page baked goods, the best spice cake ever.

R14- In the 1970's my mother would buy large glass jars of Ann Page Strawberry Preserves and Pineapple Preserves. Their own brands were generally very good quality.

Purity Supreme Supermarket. I think they died out in the 80s.

Mayfair Markets (CA: SF, Daly City, Millbrae)

Dominick’s and Fazio’s

Piggly Wiggly

Is Farmer Jacks still in the Detroit area?

I forgot about Piggly Wiggly. RIP

Super A Market

FOOD BASKET. Home of the huge amount of produce.

Safeway is still a mainstay, at least in Northern California.

Are there still Safeways in DC?

Hughes market (LA). Became Ralph’s.

Harvey’s in SW Georgia

Daitch Shopwell

Market Basket might be a brand they revived. I’ve seen it as a generic brand at Fairway and there’s even a commercial for it.

Bohack supermarkets in NYC. There had a chain of stores through the 1970s. He's an image of Jack Lemmon from the 1968 film The Odd Couple going shopping at a Bohack on the Upper East Side.

Minyards - Dallas, Texas

Bluebonnet Natural Foods before Whole Foods took it over. Dallas, Texas.

Finast became Edwards which is also no more. Is Food Emporium still around? That was like Whole Foods before Whole Foods. The Food Emporium where I lived became a Waldbaum’s.

Food Circus

Pick-n-pay, Country Counter, Fazios's, Stop-n-shop

^ Cleveland suburbs

How to be an Effective Supermarket Checker in 1965. Watch the whole thing and you’ll note the theme song from “The Donna Reed Show” in there.

Some of the 'long goners' from Philly are: Food Fair, Penn Fruit, Pantry Pride, A&P(the first to flee the city, they hated dealing with unions)Unity Frankford(?), a consortium of smaller, almost-corner grocery stores. I think Pathmark is recently defunct.

Acme Markets has always been king because they had so many locations, all the way from North Jersey to North Central PA and into southern Central NY(saw a photo years ago of Rod Serling's father[in a butcher's coat] in front of what I'm assuming was a NY Acme store, Serling was born in Syracuse) down to Maryland.

My mom would hit several chains to do her weekly shopping for six. Gas was cheap(15.9, 19.9 depending) so no one cared how often you had to fill the tank.

Food Town

Is Vons still around in CA?

I was good friends with Von der Ahe's granddaughter. The family made her bag groceries at Vons as a teen to teach her work ethic.

Her father committed suicide and she got his share and moved to Berlin.

"YOU COME FIRST at Finast Supermarkets. " First National Stores headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Yes, there are still Vons in California. The upscale version of Vons is called Pavilions.

Vons and Pavilions, as well as Safeway, are all owned now by Albertsons. And yes, the company also has stores in the state that go under the Albertsons name. Can get very confusing.

Yes, Vons is all over California (and rather expensive now).

We always heard that Alpha Beta stores were owned by Mormons, and if you were Mormon you could go in there and get free food necessities.

Big Bear (Ohio)

Anyone is the South remember Big Star?

Loblaw's - Weirton West Virginia

Canal Villere, Schwegmann’s, National — all New Orleans.

Delchamps — Mobile

Jitney-Jungle — Pensacola

Food Town - Salisbury, North Carolina

R2 There was a Red coffee grinder at the front of every A&P store. Today Eight o'Clock, Bokar, and Red Circle are available in bags. Not the same as freshly ground.

I would LOVE to go to the supermarket with all of you!

PigWig is long gone from my small hometown, but still exists. Mom was besties with Charlie, the manager, who used to slip us free candy and gum samples!

R2 Today Red Apple is the corporate parent of Gristede's and D'Agostino in New York.

I went to a Piggly Wiggly last week. They’re still around.

[quote]Food Town - Salisbury, North Carolina

It's still there. It just changed it's name to Food Lion about 40 years ago. Today, it has over 1,000 locations and is still headquartered in Salisbury, NC.

Bread & Circus, bought out by Whole Foods. The one in Boston was near symphony hall and round like an amphitheater.

1960s-70s Orange County, CA:

The fanciest by far was Richard's Market in Newport Beach. The outstanding meat and seafood, as well as exotic imported stuff. My grandma used to tease me about trying the chocolate covered insects and canned rattlesnake. John Wayne shopped there.

The trashiest was Ed Tunk's (later Gene Tunk's) in Westminster. Sawdust on the floor and always tons of flies. They had the nastiest beef I've ever seen (USDA utility grade).

Market Basket lives on and is a growing chain in MA.

TRY-N -SAVE

Springfield U.S.A.

Humpty Dumpty, IGA

Slightly off topic, but the same timing for these lost supermarkets:

No-Frill Brands - Typically in a white label with only the name of the product on the label.

Wow, the subject line takes me back. I had totally forgotten about Pantry Pride! LOL. Is A&P still around?

That's called generic, r57. Block letters and a barcode.

[quote] I forgot about Piggly Wiggly. RIP

Piggly is still around with 500 locations.

R16 pic looks like what 9 out of 10 Klan mothers would buy.

R30- Edwards is now Stop And Shop.

In St. Louis, we had Bettendorf's, Rapp's, A&P, Kroger and National. Today's market leader, Schnuck's was in its infancy. There were dozens of independent grocers affiliated with AG, IGA and Tomboy Markets.

Most of the independents are long gone. Bettendorf's and Rapp's merged, then sold out to Schnuck's in the 1970s. A&P departed the market in 1976, as did Kroger in 1986. Dierberg's and Shop 'n Save, local chains, came along to replace Kroger and A&P, but Schnucks then bought National in 1995 and Shop 'n Save in 2017. So, the local survivors in the grocery store game are Schnuck's and Dierberg's. who have to compete with national giants like Target, Walmart, Aldi, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.

Bettendorf Rapps

Grandpa Pigeon's

Drucker's

We had a small "Asian" grocery I liked (Chinese-Vietnamese owners).

Even though the name was Moo Suc Dong.

R58- A&P went out of business in 2015.

TWATS in Atlanta

Spicklemeyer’s

I think we've determined that intense consolidation in the grocery business has led to three or four giants selling under various trade names.

In my area Kroger and Walmart reign supreme.

Park-N-Shop in Charlotte, NC

It's all a game, r72...

Chicago: Butera and Dominick's (said as Dominick by my granmother in contrast to Jewels for Jewel)

Crotch’s

National T, A&P

Checkout

R29- Everything tastes better with Blue Bonnet on it.

R74, Butera still has about a dozen locations in Chicagoland. I shop at one in Palatine. It's a bit grimy, but they have good prices on produce and deli items.

I miss the days when you could pick up a real man.

r56 IGA is still around. There is one a mile down the road from me.

R79, that's nice to hear. I grew up on the Northside and I always used to get it's name confused with Berteau, a street near where I lived. Also, are there Treasure Islands still around? There was one in Boystown about twenty years ago, I'm not sure if it's still there. Don't get around that hood much these days. Potash Brothers, but I think that might still exist.

R77- It's EASY being a cashier in a supermarket nowadays. In 1964 it was HARD work. Pushing the right buttons on the old mechanical cash register, dealing with checks, dealing with coupons, having to maintain your HAIR do- UGH

At the end of the day I would have been saying- CALGON take me away!

R53, Richard's Market in Newport Beach was indeed nice, and a whole complex. There were clothing stores and gift shops. Plus, they had entertainment while you shopped. Besides John Wayne, Joey Bishop and June Allyson shopped there too.

R82, sadly Treasure Island closed their last stores about 4 years ago. When I lived on the North Shore, I shopped at the Lake Bluff store all the time. It's now a Heinen's (excellent store).

"It's EASY being a cashier in a supermarket nowadays. In 1964 it was HARD work."

Yep. Back in the day, most supermarkets in the midwest and northeast were strictly unionized shops. Part-timers and their hours were strictly regulated. All full timers had to have their 40 hours in before any part-timer could be scheduled. And part-timers got the same benefits as full time employees. Regardless of part/full time status, grocery stores workers considered themselves professionals and jobs were extremely difficult to come by. You almost had to know somebody already employed there to get a job. And if you got such a job, you held on to it for dear life.

That all changed in the early 1980's when "casual" part timers were allowed, i.e they had a differently hourly wage rates (usually minimum wage) and no benefits, but were allowed to work as much or as little as they desired. And with scanners, any idiot with an IQ of 100 or less could do it. Today, jobs in grocery stores are easy to come by and just as easy to leave. Hey, one shitty minimum wage service job is the same as every other minimum wage service job.

Jurgensen’s. Their van used to deliver to our house on Monday and Friday. Alfred Hitchcock lived a few houses south of us and also had them deliver.

New Orleans...Schwegmann, National, Canal Villere, Sav-a-Center.

R20 Farmer Jack went out of business July 2007. It was part of A&P. Worked there in the 90’s.

R87, we had a Jurgensen's in Newport too.

Value King

Try-N-Save

Try-N-Save

^

Shop n fart

[quote]John Wayne shopped there.

Is this how he dressed for shopping?

Bread and Circus

R82 Treasure Island closed Sep 30, 2018

Johnson's Market in Los Angeles. Just a few locations. I remember them being in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of LA, as well as nearby East Los Angeles, and I think, Montebello. The Boyle Heights location is now a Vallarta supermarket, catering to the Mexican/Latino neighborhood.

Stop & Shop, which was doing excellent business for years, will be closing in Astoria, Queens. Heard a Target will be taking its place. Because, you know, NYC needs yet another Target store.

The Astoria Stop & Shop might be closed already. It leaves the nearby residents, especially those who don't drive, without a nearby supermarket. There are many private houses and six family buildings in that area.

Why are so many of these companies obsessed with making massive profits, isn't any part of their business concerned with their customers needs? Don't these corporations have any shred of humanity?

How do these CEOs think their companies make money? No customers, no profits.

Houston had a really serious upscale market called Jamail’s. One of the owners was a friend. The place was super expensive (Made Whole Foods look cheap) but the service was impeccable. Unfortunately, it was on a very valuable piece of land, and the heirs chose to close and sell.

Then there was Cala Foods/Bell Market, with locations in Marin and San Mateo Counties, (Northern California), and San Francisco. It was your standard grocery store with a great prepared foods department, a deli, bakery fresh bagels and Krispy Kreme donuts. I miss it, the closest location to my apartment was open 24 hours.

R17- Those sound like stops on the BART train

Bohack

A&P

Grand Union