Vintage Super Markets

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Flagship Lucky Supermarket in San Leandro, circa 1947

This was the first Lucky Supermarket and their flagship store in 1947. It had a coffee shop inside and "other amenities".

Sadly, this was torn down a couple years ago, after Albertson's decided to shut it down and the city refused to let Grocery Outlet take it over. The tower and awnings however were long gone by that time, anyway.

I found this photo and others at groceteria.com, which link follows.

http://www.groceteria.com/
sudsmaster++1-24-2010-12-07-43.jpg
 
PS-The huge lot is still vacant this day, 2-3 years after the building was torn down. The city is apparently planning to build a parking structure there instead. What a joke.

Nearby is supposedly the first strip mall in the USA as well, Pelton Center, directly across the street from Lucky's. The strip mall is still there, and is a relatively pleasant place to shop.

sudsmaster++1-24-2010-12-15-40.jpg
 
58limited & westie2

David, that Piggly Wiggly burned down not too soon after y'all moved away--one of the motors in a freezer. A total loss and completely torn down. That store had new meaning after Driving Miss Daisy came out. Do you remember the Safeway on 57th Street and The Loop? It became an AppleTree. After AppleTree closed down, the property was sold to THE Hospital and became offices and research. As part of the sales agreement, I understand, HEB had put in the contract the property would never be used as a grocery store again. The site is now a fitness center.

Charles, one of the last Weingartens built in Houston was at the corner of Hillcroft and Westheimer and was there only a short time before Weingartens closed all its stores. Weingarten realty is still in operation, commercial property. The husband of one of my first bosses in the late 1970s, worked for them during that time. I'm old enough to remember Henkey & Pilliot stores. My grandfather worked for and as a wholesale food broker/distributor. It's my understanding from my dad, he was responsible for bringing Peter Pan Peanutbutter to Houston and it was initially sold at Henkeys.
 
58limited

David, do you remember a small store called David's that was on Ave. G in a not-so-desireable part of town? That store was open up until probably 10 years ago. It was like walking back in time to a 1950s grocery store. They used to have the best sale prices on Blue Bell (& I'd stock up when it was on sale lol).

I don't know if this store is still in business, but there was another chain in Houston called Lewis & Coker. My mom shopped there a lot until we moved to the new house in 1961. After that, she shopped at Food Gian at Sharpstown Shopping Center/Mall.
 
Robert, hose curved roof Safeways are almost all gone now in western Canada. There were a few in Calgary but I can't remember one still operating by the time we left, usually taken over by some other store.. One in Mayland Hts area became an indy store
Here's a streetview link to it.

A&P here in eastern Canada finally went about 6 months ago taken over by Metro. The A&P was the first real "big" for it's time supermarket to open in Sarnia back in the early 50's. Mom used to pull me there in a wagon to get groceries LOL
Prior to that it was mostly smaller supermarkets, I think they sometimes referred to them as superettes.. Red & White was a big chain of them in Canada and the US.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...14.013195&spn=0.011005,0.076904&t=h&z=14&laye
 
OMG!

I forgot ALL about Bohaks!! We had one on second avenue and 29th street. I will always miss the perfume of freshly ground coffee that hit us in the face whenever we walked into the old A&P on 23rd Street. I get all misty whenever I see the movie "Born on the 4th of July" and watch the scene where he's working as a stock boy at the local A&P and you see all the Ann Page products on the shelves.

I also miss those wacky grocery roller coasters that would transport your carton of grocery bags through a strap-door out to your cars in stores like First National out in the burbs.

Anyone remember "cookie-pops"?
 
Rich, those look like Lucky pix from the book "Industrial Design" which covered a lot of Raymond Loewy's work. We had a similar yellow tiled tower Lucky around here that was cast off when Alpha Beta bought them out maybe 20-25 years ago. It changed hands and became a "Quality Plus" but didn't make it, and finally they tore the place down. I tried to get local columnist and author Alan Hess (of "Googie" fame) to join me in a fight to save the building, but he apparently had better things to do. It's now a strip mall with a Burger King front and center where Lucky used to be.

There's still a tile tower standing in Berkeley on Shattuck where it curves to become Sutter St. It's painted blue, but at least it's still there. There still might be an old tower in Palo Alto, but I haven't been up there for a while.
 
I get really sick of the teardown rate in this area, it seems to be everywhere though. No good reason here, except for the pigs that have to have their tax shelters with all the new empty buildings.

Our Pantry Pride building was torn down when they tore down Coral Plaza. It was thoroughly hammered by those horrendous three hurricanes in 18 months.

Our first Publix in Searstown, was opened in November of 1963. The far end of the plaza had this gigantic Sears, with a completely detatched automotive department. We had a giant Woolworth's in the center of the place. Fast forward to the '90s, there was a grand makeover of the whole center, Woolworth and a couple other stores were demolished for an enormous new Publix, and Goodwill and Staples got into the old Publix building. It is still a nice place to go after 46 years of business.

Ha! Just found a video of Woolworth's before it closed! Memories...

 
Hy-Vee:

I've tried shopping at Hy-Vee, with mixed results. The one closest to me is the Crossroads store on San Marnan, which is an older location, and not in a good way like Fareway; the place seems stuck in 1989, not my favourite era, not by a long shot. There isn't the selection I expect in a store that big, and prices are high.

Hopefully, come Spring and better driving weather, I can explore some other Hy-Vee locations and I'll find one that is more fun to shop in.

For now, it's Fareway and ALDI.
 
When I was a kid, we shopped at a Safeway store with arches and high windows. Didn't they have a Scotch-something brand at one time?

I like Hy Vee here in Omaha, most of the stores are relatively new (or replaced) and very nice. The store nearest us is a very nice store with a good restaurant, deli and an outstanding bakery department. Our locally owned Baker's stores are now owned by Kroger and it shows, merely a name and a shadow of what they were.
 
Bob, I never knew about David's. I was in my late teens and didn't really go to grocery stores except for the Albertson's at I-35 and Adams, later to the HEB on 31st.

In my hometown of Plano in the early to mid 70s, we had a Safeway with the arched roof. It was the only grocery in Plano and we had to drive across town and cross I-35 to get to it. When we first moved to Plano, there were no major roads near our neighborhood so we had to drive through a couple of miles of residential streets to get to a main road. That Safeway building still stands but is now a Hispanic grocery.

When Albertson's came to Plano, it was Skaggs Albertson's, then Skaggs Alpha-Beta (as teens we had a dirty joke about the name), and finally Albertson's.
 
Kroger:

"Baker's stores are now owned by Kroger and it shows"

Yeah, their absolute refusal to open more than two checkouts ever is a dead giveaway, isn't it?

My partner loved Kroger, for some reason. I hated it, and gladly spent the extra money to shop at Publix when I was in Atlanta.
 
Weingartens

Bob do you remember when in 1973 ir 1974 that Weingartens closed for a couple of days to mark down prices as they stopped giving out stamps. It was such a farce we thought. Do they still have Rice food markets and Randale's? What about Food Land. We first lieved in Oak Forest in NW Houston off 43rd between Ella and Shepard Drive. Loved the old Sears store on North Shepard.
 
Ralph,

Was the San Leandro 1947 Lucky store a Lowey design?

I think the supermarket you're thinking of in North Berkeley is a Safeway. Haven't been there lately but the tower sounds familiar.

Shattuck Ave actually continues on straight for a few blocks. The curve is called Shattuck Place and then it becomes Henry Street. It will finally take you to Solano Avenue, which has an older Safeway Store there as well.

http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=B...8021&longitude=-122.2693&geocode=INTERSECTION
 
Okay, does anyone remember Del Monte? It was the largest grocery to open in St. Louis county, tiny by today's standards. We used to drive Mama's Pontiac Tempest and fill that trunk up! (Oh, how I loved that car)
 
Charles, I remember when Weingarten's closed for those days and stopped giving out stamps-I believe they were Big Bonus stamps. Rice is sitll aorund the last time I checked, but called Rice Epicurian Markets, quite upscale now. Randall's is still around I think, but was acquired by Safeway over 10 years ago and went down hill substantially to Safeway's level (sorry folks) with significantly lesser quality produce and meat as well as the quality of customer service declined. Growing up, my family would procue I believe 1/2 a side of beef at A&P a couple fo times a year. That practice continued until I either finished college or the A&P closed--I remember that because my folks wouold bring me some of that meat to me when I was in college because it was so much a better bargaion than what I would have purchased in the stores and it "helped" with the budget they had me on each month then. After they ceased getting the 1/2 sides of beef, Mom largely went to Randalls for the meat, getting most everything at Kroger but she gradually evolved to getting most everything at Randalls up until the time they sold the house in 2002.
 
Funny the things that come back

Alan.. watching that Woolworths video you posted noticed the doors into the store,, the push bar,, how it said "Air Conditioned" on it Would never have remembered those little things without seeing the video
 
Interesting thread

I remember safeway & loved it .

Also enjoyed working on the refrigeration equipment of the older mom & pop stores - Some of the air cooled condensing units were belt driven & of course I had to save them when they finally retired :)

What can I say - You just have to love this old stuff :)
 
FINAST anyone????

I used to work as a customer service manager at FINAST aka First National Stores, before they were purchased by Royal Ahold. RA converted all Finast stores to Edwards Super Food Stores. Royal Ahold then aquired all Stop & Shop stores, and shortly after that all Edwards became "Stop & Shop". I really miss Finast though.. we did have some nice stores, but most were dirty, run down, and outdated. Upper mgmt. bled the company dry. Every time competition came to town we would close shop. Alot of long time employees lost their jobs. Does anyone else out there remeber FINAST? Just curious.
Mike
 
Publix

Yeah, Publix appears to be kicking Kroger's butt here in Atlanta. My local Publix is always a mob scene. Kroger never usually has anyone in it.

"Where Shopping is a Pleasure"

Malcolm
 
Gone from Sunny SoCal:

Market Basket
Michael's
Hughes
El Rancho
Food Giant
Alpha Beta (so named because the original store layout was in alphabetical order)
FedMart
Fedco
GEMCO
Sage's
Lucky (NOT "Lucky's")
Safeway (NoCal only)
 
Malcolm:

Well, it's very simple. You keep checkouts open, and you hire people who have at lease some rudimentary notion of customer-service skills, and you keep your stores really, really clean.

Also, I don't like Kroger's reliance on self-service checkouts. Every one of those damn things represents two of my neighbours (assuming sixteen hours of coverage on two shifts) who don't have a job available to them.
 

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