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Just for the record, the first Food Lion (Food Town) store is still standing. That store opened in Ketner Center on W. Innes St in Salisbury. It operated as a Food Town, later Food Lion, up until about 12 or so years ago, when it was replaced with a unit situated just behind the original store but o...

The Pop Shop stores in North Carolina are operated by Mid-State Oil Company of Lexington, NC. Mid-State is a distributor for Citgo and BP gasoline and private brands stations under the old Travelers name. Mid State was originally a Shell jobber, later Phillips 66, based in Salisbury that was purchas...

I can add that White Cross locations all over the Tidewater, VA area, as well as Richmond and Durham were all part of the same group that operated in Greensboro, and these all coverted to Revco about 1969 or so. Several of the Tidewater stores were Dart Drug in my earliest childhood recollection, bu...

I've never been a huge Safeway follower, as I am more interested in Colonial and NC based operations, but when I was in there the signage was definately circa 1960 +/-. In my teen years there was an identical Safeway up in Sandston that was still standing, the last I was through there, but it had be...

A note on the Mebane, NC connection. For a short time about five years ago there was an Acme Market in nearby Burlington, NC. The logo matched the Virginia operation. It seems that I read somewhere that the owners of the company (in Mebane) at that time may have had some ties to the old Byrds Superm...

As promised, here is the photo of the prototypical Giant Open Air Market. THis site was at Wards Corner in Norfolk and opened in 1963 or 64, but identical stores were built at Alexanders Corner in Portsmouth and at Mercury Plaza in Hampton. Other similar stores were built up through the early 1980s,...

Rich's tended towards "futuristic" designs. Their 1939 first supermarket site was boxy, but had exagerated neon lettering. Early postwar designs were the most conventional, but featured rooftop and facade neon extensively. About 1960 Rich's went into the drive-in restaurant business and bu...

Roanoke is a great town for hidden and preserved commerical history. I can add the following information: Mick or Mack opened their first store at 26 Church Ave SE in Roanoke in March 1927. Other stores opened in Salem and Vinton, as well as elsewhere in Roanoke during 1928 and 1929. Shortly after t...

I was in this store about five years ago, and it is a relatively intact 1950s Safeway. It is WELL WORTH A LOOK INSIDE!

Ingles was founded in Asheville in 1963, with a single store on Hendersonville Hwy just south of the Biltmore section of Asheville. This was a very distinctive building with canted windows all across the front and a neon sign at the roadside that was duplicated for all of the first 60 or so location...

Farm Fresh dates back to 1957 and began with single a location in Norfolk, I believe on Military Highway near Little Creek Rd. It was an expansion of a wholesale operation that dated to before 1920. It was strictly a Tidewater area operation thruough the 1960s, and a single store opened in Richmond ...

This building is an example of the final design used by Dixie Home stores. Other stores of this design were built in Asheville and Spruce Pine, NC