NEW: Kansas City MO, 1925-1992
Posted: 08 Jul 2019 13:25
This one took a bit, but finally, here it is!
https://www.groceteria.com/place/us-mis ... nsas-city/
https://www.groceteria.com/place/us-mis ... nsas-city/
History and Commercial Archaeology of Chain Supermarkets and Other Retailers
https://www.groceteria.ca/board/
Well, that at least pinpoints the year of Safeway's KC departure to 1988...the same year as most of Safeway's other post-KKR divestments. No word on how they came to use the name.
Safeway had both Food Barn and Liquor Barn branded stores in operation at the time of the KKR buyout. In both cases they were usually small Safeway stores converted to a no-frills grocery or liquor format. Liquor Barn was ahead of it's time and similar to BevMo!.Andrew T. wrote: ↑10 Jul 2019 15:10Well, that at least pinpoints the year of Safeway's KC departure to 1988...the same year as most of Safeway's other post-KKR divestments. No word on how they came to use the name.
Food Barn lasted to 1994.
In fact several of the Liquor Barn outlets in the Bay Area actually ended up becoming BevMo stores. But back to KC, the interesting thing here, as I said, was that they apparently sold off the name (by licensing it, I suppose) along with the stores when they pulled out in 1988. I'm curious how that went down (and maybe if it happened anywhere else). From the article Andrew T. posted, it looks like a management group bought out the KC region stores in 1988. Maybe the licensed name was part of the purchase agreement.
FWIW the KC Grand Union was associated with the NYC-based chain--they were former Union Pacific Tea stores that were acquired by Jones Brothers in 1922, renamed to Grand Union in September 1924, and then sold to A&P in late 1925.Groceteria wrote: ↑10 Jul 2019 13:26 I feel pretty comfortable that the Grand Union stores in KC were a separate, local chain. It's entirely possible they were connected to the New York chain, but this seems like an odd location for them to choose since they had largely no presence whatsoever in between. A&P most likely entered the market by acquiring this entire chain.