Groceteria.com

Penney's was the subject of a case study at Harvard business school in 1958. Ironically, the push into hardlines didn't last long and although their catalog outlasted Sears, it was really their old, core business that outlasted Sears and Wards. Penney's already was rapidly opening stores in suburban ...

Jote's is mentioned in the obit that's linked and John Fazio ran it with his second wife from Dallas after they relocated. The store on Lake Shore Blvd that is now a Marc's was, indeed, the Jote's. I've been to it in all its incarnations (even pre-Jote's). It was a former Sears store (one of their ...

Colonial had a Jacksonville Division as of 1970. The chain had been closing stores in Ohio from the mid-60s, at the outer edges of its territory there (places like Mansfield, Fremont and Lima) and had sold its Indiana stores back to their former owners in the last 50s, but otherwise seemed to be at ...

Barney's was large, warehouse format. They opened it in two former discount stores (one was a Spartan-Atlantic, I don't know about the other). The Spartan-Atlantic was on Lakeland Blvd at East 305th Street in Wickliffe---it later became Carl's, a similar format operated by Fisher Foods. The building ...

The Soviet Safeway on 17th Street at Corcoran in DC is probably a contender. The facade was remodeled at some point--probably the 70s judging from the arched style and the 17th Street storefront may have been expanded at some point. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Corcoran Street side was ...

You can probably find examples of landmark applications online that would give you an idea of the general considerations. This store was the last A&P in DC but had been altered and was not necessarily the best example of its design prototype. It also isn't the only remaining centennial in the area ...

"no frills" (no caps) was a Loblaw banner--the timing is right, but not the location unless they happened to own a wholesaler there. Their main US subsidiary, National Tea, had had stores in Nebraska, but not Omaha and had sold off their more Western operations by the mid 80s, anyway. The timing ...

Safeway probably had stores in Martinsburg, Cumberland, Hagerstown and Winchester, so Keyser isn't outside the realm of possibility. Newspapers from larger towns might have mentioned locations or store openings---Cumberland being the most likely candidate.

It's difficult to get history on Mott's, but they date back to at least 1960 as a Shop-Rite chain. They dominated Hartford/Central Connecticut during the 70s and 80s which was a very competitive marketplace (Finast did well there and Food Mart was their closest competitor, plus there was Stop & Shop ...

Food Fair most likely would have been in Martinsburg, which is in the eastern panhandle and had other chains that had DC-Baltimore operations. Further west gest into logistics issues because of crossing the Allegheny Front, which is still a formidable barrier in places. I was in Baltimore a few days ...

National sold their Detroit division stores in 1966 and the stores in that Division seem to have been thinly distributed given the population and geography they covered. More interesting is that Food Fair/Farmer Jack never had stores in the Flint area. They had a store in Toledo (and several there ...

They weren't only in small towns. They also were in large markets where Walgreen's didn't have locations. There was one at Eastgate shopping center outside of Cleveland in what might have been originally a chain drug store and I've seen old ads for them in other sizable places. During the mid 20th ...

PH Butler was the ancestor of Streamline and ultimately Thorofare.

I'm surprised Red Owl wasn't here or in Kenosha. They were in Milwaukee and for a short time in Chicago.

Shop-Rite dates back to at least 1960 in Connecticut & Massachusetts, through Mott's which had the largest market share in Greater Hartford during the 60s and 70s.