Groceteria.com

Even middle class people have bought furniture on time for ages and that's been a big part of traditional furniture retailers' models. Still, that model has been undermined by easy access to credit cards and they may have gotten more marginal buyers than they had had in the past. They clearly over e...

The Red & White does look like an A&P--the offset red & white "Super Market" sign is very A&P. The often used a fancier font, but it's not hard to imagine that the "Red & White" circle once said A&P (Outward facing signs wer unusual, tho) or it replaced a ...

The updated stores I've seen usually had cosmetic touches on the front--a fake peak roof, sometimes white fencing. Usually not much investment and often they were in shopping centers. The freestanding pre-Centennial stores tended toward yellowish brick (probably to highlight the red A&P logo). S...

Cafeterias were common in New York City in the 60s, but gone by the late 70s. The Horn & Hardart's I remember in Philly from a trip in the late 60s were cafeterias, rather than automats.

Given the brick facing, etc. this seems unlikely to have been a remodeling of a pre-superstore location. The windows also look too low to date from a previous Kroger generally closed older stores and replaced them with superstores. This got them into a lot of hot water with community groups in place...

Probably the largest chain to use a model something like Fedco's would be REI, which has a lifetime membership. REI shares profits with members through a dividend. USAA, the insurance company for people in the military or the uniformed public health service is another example. Fedco probably was mod...

Suburban stores began to shed these in the 70s and early 80s. Second tier markets never had them in the 'burbs or even in many downtown stores. They probably only made sense in the heyday of downtown stores in the largest of cities. In big city stores like the one where I worked, there was an employ...

I was under the impression that the Grandways were always combos, essentially expanded from a super market base and much smaller in size & scope than full-line discounters (unlike JM Fields, Bradlees and other "companion" discount chains, which were full-line, fullsized stores separate...

One was just South of I-440. When it was still a SuperX, it still had the brick and fieldstone facade from its Kroger days. the store probably would have evolved into a Revco & then a CVS. It was a freestanding store on the West side of Hillsboro. The older Kroger was a little N of I-440, also o...

Interesting...Kroger was very aggressive about replacing 1940s stores. They usually were gone by the late 50s, even if they were less than a decade old. It would have been unusual for them to stick around until the mid-60s. I can only think of a couple exceptions to this rapid replacement policy. On...

I'd argue against Kroger because they didn't use a nameplate that would fit the recessed inset. The pictures I've seen from around that era had white on blue--either the art deco script they've used since the at least 1950, usually on a squareish sign or with individual letters or else Kroger spelle...

Ironically, there was a "Food World" in Columbus' Big Bear country in the 70s. It was an entity that took over former Albers & Big Star stores in Cincinnati & Columbus. It didn't last long. The Big Bear name originated in an early super market in NJ that predated the Columbus chain...

I was lucky enough to grow-up with some interesting old stores and got attached to more as a young adult. There was a large, mid/late 50s shopping center near our house which got the bulk of my mother's shopping, but things got more interesting when we did errands a few miles away on the edge of Cle...

The recess I mentioned is in the signage area. I was thinking maybe A&P would have put the rectangular part of their sign over that, but it tended to be shorter than that space and wider. To the extent that chains could build right after WWII, they would have recycled their pre-war designs. By 1...

Early A&P's did use a stepped design, but there's an aspect of the store front that runs against this being A&P--the recessed rectangular section in the store front, above the windows. A&P stores from the late 30s Usually had flat front's and a metal sign--that had a round center (with &...