Favorite Grocery stores

[kenmore1978]

cash register noise

I miss the almost deafning noise of the mechanical cash registers at grocery stores.

I was working at Montgomery Wards when they made the switch from the model 5300 mechanical cash registers to the new electronic ones. That first day was chaos, often the registers would forget their programmng, and NCR guys would be running around re-loading the software with CASSETTE DECKS!

 

[deeptub]

Cash Registers

Speaking of cash register noise...did any stores outside of the Chicago-area Jewels have talking registers? They appeared sometime in the early 80's. They've all disappeared in the last 5 years or so.
I think the registers were NCR, and they had a box called a POSitalker mounted on a pole. A woman's voice would speak the price of each item as it was scanned.
TWO FORTY NINE
ONE NINETY NINE
NINETY NINE CENTS, etc.
The conclusion of a sale went something like this:
TOTAL--FORTY ONE FIFTY SIX
CASH--FIFTY DOLLARS
CHANGE DUE--EIGHT FORTY FOUR

Agony would be the shopper with a big stack of coupons:
FIFTY CENTS--CREDIT!
TWENTY FIVE CENTS--CREDIT!
ONE DOLLAR--CREDIT!
ad nauseum

I'm surprised that they've disappeared. Now that we're really trying to address the needs of individuals with diabilities, they've eliminated something that was so useful the visually impaired (though doubtless annoying to the cashier who listened to it for an entire shift).
T.

 

[westie2]

Talking Cash Registers

We lived in New Orleans for several years in the 70's and 80's. Schweggman (now gone) had the talking registers my kids thought they were so neat. They came in before scanning Those cashiers could make the registers fly. Most had over 50 checkouts and on weekends lines were long.

Stores at that time were Schweggmann. A & P, Winn Dixie, IGA, Breaux Mart, Nationial & Canal Valerie. Ntaional bought Canal Villerie then Schweggmann bought National and I think in 1999 they went belly up. A & P is now Super Save and took over most of the old Schweggmann building. They were huge 300,000 plus sq feet. Always liked going there would stop at the snack bar up front and get a beer and shop.

Where we live now have IGA, Harps/Price Cutter, Wal Mart Supercenter Aldi, and Sav-A-Lot. Can drive about 20 miles to a Dillons which is owned by Kroger.

Work for a large poultry company so by chicken at employee sales. Have a large caning company here so buy cases of vegatables from them and a Jackson Baking plant (Little Debbie) where we go to company store and buy at about 1/4 the cost of a supermarkets.

 

[geoffdelp]

In Central MN, I grew up with Red Owl, Piggly-Wiggly, SuperValu (now all defunct in this area) and the local small grocers.

In St. Cloud, we now have Byerly's, Cub's and the local chain called Coborn's. The Rainbow Foods we had went belly-up about 2 years ago. Byerly's is way over priced with their carpeting throughout the entire store and Cub's is "scary". It (Cub's) is not very clean, open 24 hours, and the quality of their fresh foods is not very good. I'm very leary about going in there.

In Litchfield, MN (about 50 miles from here), you can still shop at the Red Owl.

You see a lot of local small stores when you travel ... those are always fun to go into!! Some haven't changed in years. You can ocassionally find a box of detergent or a soap that hasn't been carried in regular stores for years.

 

[angus]

Well, here in Southern CT - no contest. Stop & Shop is the biggest - having saturated the area with their superstores. We also have a Massachusetts based store - Shaw's which seemed to take over all of the old Finast/Edwards stores and some of the now defunct Grand Unions. For the most part our local Shaws is filthy and smells like rotting food and sewage. It is incomprehensible to me how they stay open. Fortunately we have a Trader Joes in town and a Stew Leonard's a few towns away (actually Stews is pretty remarkable - excellent meats, produce, fish, dairy, deli and a revolving list of grocery items and very reasonable prices. It is billed as the world's largest dairy store and it is something of a tourist attraction). On the health food front, we have a Wild Oats in Westport about 6 miles away. We also have an IGA which I will use when I can't face the hordes of Stop& Shop people. Funny thing, when we first came to Fairfield in 1966, we had at least 8 supermarkets: 2 A&P's, 2 Grand Unions, 2 First Nationals (Finast), 2 Stop& Shops and 2 Pantry Prides (BTW, I worked in a Pantry Pride while in high school and it was as filthy as you could imagine - possibly worse)

Now we are down to one Super Stop & Shop, that dreadful Shaw's and the IGA for a town of over 60,000 people. Seems unusual.....

 

[kenmore1978]

L.A. Grocery stores

In a previous post, I noted thatt we're down to basically 3 big chains. Growing up, there was a LOT of choice of where to shop. There were bascially 3 levels of stores:

The corner "Mom & Pop" store, mostly replaced by 7-11's nowadays, but stil fairly common.

The local "market", which was much larger, sometimes would be a chain with only a few stores, but had full service and one could do all their shopping there.

The "Supermarkets" which were the large chains.

in the 50's and 60's these were:

Ralph's
Safeway
Von's
Piggly Wiggly
Thriftimart
The Boys
Market Basket
Alpha Beta
Hughes
Smith's Food King
Fox Market
E. F. MacDonald Shopping Bag
Lucky

All these stores had MANY outlets, so there was no questin about choice. I've read somewhere that the L.A. Metropoliton area is the most competitive supermarket area in the country. Gradually all these stores either pulled out, went under, or bought each other out till we're down to basically Von's/Pavilions (Safeway owned), Ralph's/Food4Less (Kroger owned), Albertson's/Max Foods, and a couple of smaller chains (Stater Brothers, Jon's, Gelson/Mayfair) Some specialty-type stores have moved in (Wild Oats, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's) into stores the big chains were forced to sell due to merger restrictions.

 

[retromom]

Fav stores no more

Unfortunately, like everything else, the small companies are being acquired or forced out by the large conglomerates. Pretty soon there will be one big grocery chain, one electric company, one phone company, one bank, etc., etc., etc.,

You can go to any city and see the same stuff: Target, Chili's, Best Buy, Kroger. You could spin me around and ask me where I was, but I couldn't tell you. Everything looks the same. Cities (especially suburban areas) no longer have any character. Sad, isn't it.

 

[shawn]

Southeastern Connecticut Markets

Stop& Shop is No 1 in the area, with Big Y, WalMart super center and ShopRite. We had a Shaw's but it closed two years ago for lack of bussiness. There is a C-Town also but is is so awful I don't go there at all. Angus what does Stew Leonard's sell? would like to go there sometime.

 

[angus]

Stew's really started as the Clover Farms Dairy with milk and egg deliveries. IN the late 60's Stew Leonard II opened a store in Norwalk on the site with milk, eggs, cheese, orange juice, and literally three flavors of drinks - Orange, Punch and Lemon/Lime. What was unique was that the milk and juice packaging area was visible to shoppers through huge glass walls. One of the first marketing things they did which is still in effect today is the small petting zoo with a few animals. BIG draw for the kids. Also throughout the store, are huge displays with animated singing cattle, vegetables and fruits. ALso incredibly cool was that up and down the Post Road from Norwalk to Fairfield, they placed "milk dispensing" machines so for $.50 you could get a half gallon of milk. That was an incredibly clever marketing move for the 70's. Over time the store continually expanded and now it is a huge place and is recognized nationally for its cleanliness, variety and quality. They carry almost everything edible from lettuce to bakery, deli and hot prepared foods. The only thing I could tell you is that they don't always carry every grocery item so for example you may not always get Welch's grape juice or rice or mayonnaise there since the "traditional grocery items" rotate in terms of number of brands and selection within brands.
Overall I think that considering the volume they do and believe me you cannot imagine the crowds on weekends, they do a fairly decent job. The breads lack the character of say, a real Italian bakery, but I have used them and they are not bad. Their strength is dairy, meat and produce plus the occasional truckload sales. I think if you have occasion to go, it definitely is worth a trip - just do it early on a weekend!!

 

[jasonl]

And in the land of rust

The locals used to shop at Schwegmann's. Properly pronouced "Shweg-mans", but we used to say "Sha-wag-a-munns".

It was a chain of about 5 or 6 stores in New Orleans. The biggest one being on Old Gentilly. I remember being fascinated by the place with its HUGE (at the time) shopping area and its upstairs section with Dr's offices and stuff like that.

I worked at the Chalmette store for a few years before I got started on my computer career. They treated me, well.. let's not go there.

About Vol-Mart, They put alot of small locally owned stores out of business and they assimilate the employees from the smaller stores into working there.

I'm a huge fan of the little guys. I liked walking into a smaller store and being treated nicely and helpfully when I'm looking for something. OK, on food stores. Again, the little guys. There's a neat market called Balestra's by my house. They have a good selection but very friendly people and get this (take note Vol-Mart) ALL THE CHECKOUTS ARE ALWAYS OPEN. That means, very little lines and the checkers are very friendly. That's rare in New Orleans.

 

[richm]

Central MA

Supermarkets are right up my alley, I was in the food business for over 20 years, a store manager for over 10 years at Big D Supermarkets (a family owned chain in Worcester, MA, bought out by Price Chopper about 10 years ago). Price Chopper is now the market leader here, followed by Shaw's, Stop & Shop, then Big Y. They all have built brand new stores here within the last 5 years. I typically shop the most at Price Chopper, due to the quality meats and produce, the variety, as well as better prices. I also buy a lot of organic food, so drive every couple of weeks about 45 minutes to the nearest Whole Foods.

Rich

 

[scott55405]

Here in Minnesota we almost never had national grocery chains. We had a number of large local chains that dominated our grocery scene, in addition to some other smaller ones. We did have Kroger in the 1960s, but this is a very union-oriented state, and someone above mentioned that Kroger does not seem to like that, which may be why they didn't stay.

Our big local chains were Super Valu, Red Owl, Country Club, and Applebaum's. Sid Applebaum is the person that started our current "Rainbow" chain, which was sold to an out of state company in the last year or two, and which I have never cared for. I was surprised to see some Red Owl stores still in operation, though I'm thinking they're just using the name, as I don't think Red Owl has existed as a company for some time now. They and Snyder drug were the same company. Super Valu and Red Owl were headquartered right on the edge of Hopkins, and Country Club in St. Louis Park.

David, you lived right by a Shopper's City! I think that behemoth is still sitting empty up on the hill, at least last I was over there a few years back. You know that building behind SA near Aldrich Arena off White Bear, it was Hillcrest Bank for years, no idea what it is now, that was originally a Kroger.

There was a Shopper's City in Bloomington as well, and some others. They had a separate liquor store (can't have liquor in the main store in Minnesota) and they were interesting stores to a kid, though I doubt I'd ever set foot in one if they existed today. Kind of on par with Kmart or Walmart. They did have a bulk candy counter, and by gum, they bagged your groceries and put them in your car for you!

The St Louis Park Target store, which was the second built, also had a grocery department in its original incarnation. Those grocery units were operated by Applebaum's, who also bagged your groceries and put them in your car. Again, because of the union, the grocery units in places like Target and Shopper's City were completely separate areas in the store with separate cashiers, not "all in one" the way today's super stores are operated. In fact at that time, union grocery stores were closed on Sundays, and I remember the main store being open while the grocery area was closed.

There is a Cub (which started out independent and became part of Super Valu I believe) near my home that I like, probably because it is about half the size (due to limited size of the lot it's built on) of a typical Cub and because I shop late at night. It took the place of an old Super Valu which was demolished to make way for it. I've always gotten fine meats and produce there and they keep it clean and the workers are very nice. I'm much less impressed with the behemoth suburban ones, and find them difficult to navigate. We also have a branch of a small, somewhat upscale chain called Kowalski's not far from here, actually housed in an old Country Club, where I'll occasionally go, particularly if I need something on a weekend when I would never go to one of the mainline stores.

I liked our old line chains pretty much equally, Country Club was known for having good sales (remember the green newspaper sheet ads David?) Red Owl also had a larger, bag your own variant called "Country Store" here for a while which weren't bad stores.

My understanding is that the carpeted, upscale Byerly's, at least in days of yore, were really quite unique in the industry and people are/were quite marveled with them. They are nice stores and I do go occasionally if I'm near one.