Will A&P, Pathmark, Waldbaum's Superfresh, & Food Emporium last?

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

M

mtn1584

Well-known member
Joined
May 30, 2009
Messages
935
Location
USA
For all the metropolitan are New Yorkers out there....New Jersey, Philly, Fairfield Cty Conn. etc....Do you think that the "Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co." owners of A&P, Pathmark, Waldbaums, Superfresh, and The Food Emporium will be around much longer? I read an article where the bankrupcty court judge gave all the executives bonuses to stay with company while these executives want givebacks from the union employees. I dunno, I don't think it looks good for them, or the company. Any thoughts??
Mike
 
Speaking For MySelf

Haven't seen an "A&P" in the NYC area in ages, well not on Staten Island nor Manhattan anyway.

Employees of my local FM aren't happy campers and there was talk of wildcat union action.

IIRC many grocery store chains and or independent stores in the US are in some sort of trouble. High costs, including fixed things such as rent and such, coupled with labour make for some tight margins. If that wasn't bad enough consumers in many areas are doing less shopping in brick and mortar stores in favour of online (Fresh Direct). Or, they can go to large bulk stores like Costco, Walmart, etc... We finally got a Costco in Manhattan and it seems to be doing a brisk business. Though were persons in the typical small NYC apartment store all those bulk items is anyone's guess.
 
pathmark has seen its better days...

the pathmark stores around me- 2 in a three mile radius have grown, "long in the tooth" theyre dirty, unkempt, and to me it looks as if upper management have taken their eye off the stores conditions... ive been shopping pathmark for over 20 years. wow has it changed... shoprite is my choice of store now-

i think the whole corporation will be just a memory soon..
 
Shoprite Owns My Local

Associated Supermarkets and am that well pleased. Stores are clean with a nice selection of organic and even a healthy asile of items from across the pond. Sadly the later is restricted to foodstuffs and not laundry products. Still is nice to know where one can get Heinz beans in a tin, or potted meats such the urge arise. *LOL*
 
A&P

The A&P Supermarket that was here in eastern Ct was a awful mess before it closed.
Dirty, spoiled food, and almost no help around. Still it is sad to see a trademake store go down the tubes.
 
Every Store And There Mother Seems To Sell Groceries Now

Including such places as Duane Reade and Rite Aid, so it must be hard all way around for established supermarkets.

This is happening all over the United States as well. The growth of the Internet has made home shopping so easy that even though many predicted housewives (and others) would always prefer to shop for groceries as they always had done, now have to adjust themselves to the new reality.
 
Target has a grocery section in its larger stores, but it is nothing like a large supermarket. Still, if you are in the store for something else, prescriptions maybe, it is more convenient to grab something there than go to another store. You also have to factor how much more eating out is taking place. Around here, most grocery stores have very large areas devoted not just to service delis, but also to huge salad bars and hot food counters and sit-down eating (I won't say dining) areas. So it might be these kinds of stores as well as fast food places that are sucking business away from older, more traditional format grocery stores.

Back in the 70s, the A&P stores in many east coast areas became PLUS stores. PLUS stood for Priced Low U Save. The stores were bare bones and were the first to skip putting price tags on grocery items in favor of scanning the UPC bar code. I don't know if they were Ann Page products with a new label or what, but most were good. I remember liking the Worcestershire sauce. I remember them in the Atlanta area and then I went to one in the Vienna, VA area in the late 70s-early 80s, but they are all gone now in this area.
 
The superfresh locations near me are pretty clean and organized, but the selection is limited, and the prices are high. While I can get good deals with coupons and specials, I wouldn't want to buy too many items at superfresh's "regular" price. The pathmark closest to me has been geared towards bargains, but unfortunately, their prices are not very good. When A & P bought Pathmark, they cleaned up the store, reduced the selection, and increased the prices.  Now Pathmark and superfresh carry pretty much the same things. The Shop Rite stores near me tend to be more crowded  and a bit cluttered, but they have a much wider selection - more varieties and sizes - and lower prices. Despite being further from me, Wegman's is my favorite grocery, and if they built one closer to me, I would have little need to visit other supermarkets.
 
Wegmans

Joe, I don't get it, what is all the hub-bub about Wegmans, everyone seems to rave about them, what chain would you compare them to?
MIKE
 
Wegman's is not like any other grocery store near me, so I can't compare. It has an extensive prepared food section of high quality foods. They have a very large in store dining area, and some stores have pubs inside.  It is a great place to meet up with people and eat - something I wouldn't say about any other grocery store near me.  There are things you don't find at other stores, like in-store chefs, a fairly extensive international section divided by country/region, a huge cheese shop, and an extensive tea section to name a few. They have various house wares and unique things that you may find in an upscale kitchen or home store. Yet their everyday grocery section is clean, organized, and has some of the lowest prices around. They treat their employees well, and service is excellent and friendly. I guess I can best describe it as a unique shopping experience that is not only a fun adventure, but also delicious!

 

There is more about it in this wiki link.

en.wikipedia.org

Wegmans - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
A&P? I didn't realize they were still in business. I don't think I've seen one since the 1970s. I do recall Pathmark from when I lived in NJ; I bought all my groceries at the one in Bricktown. Is Pathmark still bag-it-yourself? I always thought it was clever how they had two belts, with a diverter for the checker to send the groceries down one or the other, so that one person could be bagging their groceries while the next customer is being checked out.

Here's a grocery name I bet a lot of you have never heard of: M&J. They were big in Tennessee and Georgia in the '60s and early '70s.
 
I doubt they're around much longer...

...it's a nationwide trend. Fred Meyer was an independent Portland company that was absorbed by Kroger...the stores that did well are still around under new management. The others are history. So are a lot of independent grocers out here.

If that chain of stores is having that kind of difficulty, they don't stand much of a chance. The Costco's, Sam's Clubs, Wal-Mart Supercenters, and the other big grocers will see to that on sheer competitive prices alone.
 
Wal-Mart has just started the new Wal Mart Express stores theyhave just built and opend the first 2 for the company aound here they are only 15,000 square feet and carry grocery items and some white good (no clothing) and a Pharmacy. They are going in the small towns rioght now (5,000 or less population) WalMart is going to run the small town supermarkets and Drug stores out like they have stores in other areas. The first to open is just 8 miles from here where we have a supercenter. The Wal Mart Neighborhood Markets they have are going up in the largers towns/cities with the Supercenters. The Express stores seem to be the size of our Aldi. These stores are also going after the Dollar Generals/Family Dollar Dollar Tree stores. The link to read is below.

 
From Kansas City to Dallas, I grew up on A&P. But since I left home in 1967 I have never seen another one.

I've seen Safeway close all their stores in Austin, buy another chain and close them, then do it again. Blocks from my house they built a Randalls from scratch, operated it 5 years, boxed it up and packed it away. It's now a World Gym.

I was shopping at Albertson's in Austin when they packed that away. Yes, Austin had Walmarts but they weren't the market leader, a private company out of San Antonio with the unlikely name H.E. Butt is. They changed their name to HEB. For a 'family' business, remarkably they had their own brands and kicked Walmart's arse.

HEB is not in DFW and prices are substantially higher here on everything. I ended up at Kroger. Good store brands and 10% geezer (which I'm) discount with their store card which is also good for 10c off a gallon of gas if you spend $100 a month at the store (who doesn't?).

I've been to Walmart and Target. Not impressed with price or selection. Not impressed walking through women's wear to get to groceries. Not impressed with 30 registers manned by only 2 clerks. Or with the 'flea market' clientele.
 
A bit of interesting reading...

Those of you who have lived in the South are probably familiar with the grocery-store chain whose name has inspired a million risque jokes -- Piggly Wiggly. It turns out the chain was founded in 1916 in Memphis by a man named Clarence Saunders, and it was the first self-service grocery store. Saunders developed the first shopping carts for customers to use in his store, and worked out the concept and operating principles for the checkout stand.

Later, he tried to develop something even more radical: an automated grocery store. It was going to be called Foodelectric. From what I've read, it would have been sort of like a grocery automat; you'd walk down a row of little doors or chutes and press a button for each item you wanted, and it would dispense the item to you and would somehow keep track of what you had in your cart. Then, when you got to the checkout, it already had everything rung up and totaled. This was all radical stuff back in the 1950s. Unfortunately, Saunders died before he could build a working store.
 
I've seen Safeway close all their stores in Austin, buy another chain and close them, then do it again. Blocks from my house they built a Randalls from scratch, operated it 5 years, boxed it up and packed it away. It's now a World Gym.

It seems that whatever Safeway does in Texas turns to crap. When they were first here in the 70's they had limited selection and convenience store pricing. Nobody wanted that. Then they sold the stores to the employees and called it "AppleTree". The only difference was that the stores had an even more limited selection and they became dirty. About 2 years after AppleTree started, it was gone.

I was really ticked when they took over Randalls. The Randalls flagship stores had the best selection in town and quite a number of imported goods. The stores were large and clean. Pricing was pretty competitive. Then came Safeway. Out went most of the items that you'd go there for and a lot of their items went to house brand only. People stopped coming. Now whatever they have left are ghost towns. I went into a Flagship store at 6:30pm on a Saturday night and I was the only customer in the entire store! They only had 1 checkout lane open.

So Safeway will eventually kill off Randalls and leave and come back in a few years and buy someone else out and repeat the entire process again. Somebody ought to lift their license to operate in Texas!

Albertson's was here for 5 years. Nice stores with a pretty nice selection, but their pricing was too high. They eventually gave up and left too.

So now we have Kroger, H-E-B, what's left of Randall's and Walmart. And H-E-B and Walmart are having a price war. The Walmart stores are alot larger than the H-E-B stores so therefore have a larger selection, but at H-E-B you find a lot more upscale brands for only a few pennies more than Walmart, if Walmart even had it in the first place.
 
The Superfresh 1 block away from me is being closed in December of this year, and I heard that the larger one a mile or so from me on Columbus blvd is being closed in December as well. There will still be one located about 6 Streets west of me and it has an overhead parking garage. The only disadvantage to shopping at the closer stores is that their prices are a bit higher than the one farther away.

To tell the truth I usually buy most of my groceries from Whole foods markets or a farmers market and I use the superfresh for cleaning products. It is also good having one close so I can make a quick dash for something. As it is now their inventory is inconsistent. Sometime they have an item, many times they don't and they can't tell you when it will be in stock again.

Shoprite - I agree with Joe. They have more and better prices but the crowd!

Is it going to last - NO
 

Similar threads

M
A&P to close 25 stores and selling 7 additional Connecticut stores
Replies
13
Views
14
petek
petek

Latest posts

Back
Top