Supermarket Shopping Circa 1971

[launderess]

Let's take a trip down memory lane!

Looks like sort of place one remembers when out grocery shopping with Mother.

Clean, spacious and a place just full of stuff!

 

[cycla-fabric]

Boy I dont remember our local A&P ever looking like that. What supermarket is this one, it looks great even by todays standards.

Doug

 

[launderess]

Don't know as don't think video gave location.

Going by huge amount of Asian goods being displayed am going to say somewhere in California.

Wherever it was located it had to be suburbs. Few supermarkets located in urban areas were that huge.

 

[launderess]

Back then those young guys bagging groceries, stocking shelves, etc... was not a bad job to have in 1970's.

 

[nanook]

As they carried Knudsen Dairy products along with Van de Kamp's baked goods, this was most-assuredly somewhere in Southern California.

 

[ea56]

Grocery store checkers had to work a whole lot harder back then.  No conveyor belt in the store in the video, the checker had to remove each item from the customers cart and then manually key the price into the registrar.  No automatic calculation of the produce prices, they had to be weighed and then look up the price per lb. and the checker had to read the slide rule on the scale for the price per lb. and how much the purchase weighed, then calculate the cost of the purchase and key it into the registrar.  At least there was probably less carpal tunnel injuries then because the checkers were using more than just the same muscle sets during the course of their workdays.

 

And the prices were LOW!  Five lbs. of oranges for $0.79!  I paid $4.99 this week for a 5 lb. bag of oranges and that was cheap!  On Tuesday this week I went into our local grocery store to buy bananas and carrots.  Out of curiosity I weighed three Fuji apples that were $2.49 per lb., the bag weighed 2.5 lbs. so those 3 apples  cost $6.23!  Needless to say I put them back.  I can buy 3 lbs. of Pink Lady apples from Target for $5.49.

 

Going grocery shopping these days almost requires applying for a bank loan first!  In 1971 I used to spend $10 to $12 per week on groceries for just myself.  Now we spend well over $120.00 per week for the two of us.

 

Eddie

 

[bradfordwhite]

Looks familiar

lol

That pile of oranges still looks good. It must have taken stockers time to get them just right. Thank-goodness they now are usually in bags.

Grocery Shopping in 1971

Glass juice bottles, Muzak, original Doritos packaging, no self check-out.... How many brands do you see that are still around? To me this place looks relatively normal. It's like some of my first experiences in a grocery store. A&P in particular.

www.automaticwasher.org

 

[qsd-dan]

It must have taken stockers time to get them just right.

 

I haven't seen fruit stacked like that since the 90's. I always wondered if the extra weight on the lower tiers caused items to bruise/spoil quicker. I bet it did.

 

Also, very accident prone...

 

[gelaundry4ever]

shopping today

When did they receive conveyer belts and electronic cash registers we see today compared to back then?

 

[qsd-dan]

<a style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;" name="start_93567.1183221"></a>

When did they receive conveyer belts and electronic cash registers we see today compared to back then?

 

Conveyer belts have been around in grocery stores since at least the 1930's but the old ones used a mechanical button or on/off switch. The first item scanned via a UPC barcode was in 1974. I didn't see a barcode scanner or laser/optical switching conveyor belt until I moved to the SF bay area in 1985.

 

[circlew]

My dad's uncle's grocery store had two registers, but normally only one cashier on duty. On rare busy occasions, whoever was working the meat counter (my dad or his uncle), would open the second register for a few minutes. Most people had small orders, as they would stop in a few times during the week. The check out counter was rather small, and doughnuts and a candy jar were at one side. No conveyor belt, nor was one necessary, as most customers left with only two or three bags. There was no parking lot, only on street parking, and a lot of customers walked there. Some that walked brought wagons or wheeled carts to take their purchases home. The store was about 25' x 70' including the back area. It was in business 64 years, closing in 1974.

 

[launderess]

KNUDSEN name is still around. They are now part of Lactalis Heritage Dairy group.

https://knudsen.com/meet-knudsen/

https://northhavenhistoricalsociety.../memories-and-recollections/knudsen-memories/

https://santamariatimes.com/news/local/blast-from-the-past/article_7966a115-6363-5b69-9f6a-293073b8b952.html

 

[launderess]

Stacked produce.

Grew up in suburbs and yes then fruit was stacked as seen in video. Was like this in 1970's well into 1990's IIRC.

Problem was you know some "picky shopper" (you know the sort, type that assaults and otherwise man handles every piece of produce in store before making a choice), would invariably go for something many levels down. Well like taking a brick out of a wall the entire stack of produce would often collapse. Stock boys had a fit and threw dirty looks, while Mrs. Picky Shopper went on about her business.

 

[ea56]

Some of the stores here in Sonoma County still stack the produce like in the 1971 video. And yes Launderess, Knudsen is still being sold here too.

From the looks of the store in the video it closely resembles Safeway stores of that era. It could also be a Von’s market in the LA area. Von’s stores were and are almost identical to Safeway stores, I believe that they are affiliated.

Eddie

 

[ea56]

The first grocery store in Sonoma County that had scanners to read the bar codes, rather than old fashioned cash registrars that required the checker to key in the price of each item was Raley’s in Rohnert Park in 1977. This store was a stones throw away from the apartment that I lived in at the time.

Raley’s brought in one of their head checkers from one of their Sacramento stores to train all the checkers in the Rohnert Park store how to use these new fangled devices. She must have been high up the food chain with Raley’s because she drove a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass 2 dr HT, Red with Black vinyl top. She lived downstairs from me. Once all the staff were trained she moved on to her next assignment.

There were still many independent grocery stores into the 80’s here in Sonoma Co. that still had the old fashioned cash registrars. And many of these stores still required the checkers to fish the merchandise out of the filled grocery baskets, ring the items up, place them on the counter and then either bag the merch themselves or if it was large order a bag boy would do the bagging. It was unheard of for a customer to bag their own groceries or bring in their own reusable bags. And all the bags were brown paper, even the bags for produce purchases.

Eddie[this post was last edited: 6/23/2023-12:38]