Abso wrote:Fascinating to learn so much about ACME Supermarkets, and fun to reminisce a bit. I worked at the Beckley, WV, ACME Supermarket from 1979-1987. Made some good friends and memories. I still have a calendar that ACME created and gave to us. Each month featured one of the chain's stores with a picture of that store's employees posed out front.
If anyone's interested, I can dig up that calendar and post some pics.
I would really like to see some of the old pics. Interestingly enough I too worked at Beckley for a short while in the late 90's. I don't know that I ever seen the calendar and I didn't know of anyone who had one, so that would be cool. On a side note, Some of the old Acme Managers and executives were having an annual luncheon but the last time I heard anything about it was roughly 6 or 7 years ago.
No he had already retired by then, but the people there that knew him missed him ALOT. That store, if you'll remember, was a leader in gross sales for a number of years. It's sad that it had to come to an end, especially the way it did.
During a visit to the Bluefield, WV area in 1989, I came across one of Acme's stores IIRC on the Virginia side of town. I was intrigued because the store was externally a virtual clone of the Acme Market (by then closed) near my home in Baltimore, right down to the curbside pickup roller track in front of the store. It was virtually identical inside also, with the conveyor belt for the curbside pickup running across the front of the store in front of the checkouts.
Gary21228 wrote:During a visit to the Bluefield, WV area in 1989, I came across one of Acme's stores IIRC on the Virginia side of town. I was intrigued because the store was externally a virtual clone of the Acme Market (by then closed) near my home in Baltimore, right down to the curbside pickup roller track in front of the store. It was virtually identical inside also, with the conveyor belt for the curbside pickup running across the front of the store in front of the checkouts.
There is a very good possibility that there were some similarities to the Acme near you at that time. That would possibly have been around the time that the company was sold to the first owner outside of the original family. Mr. Peery (an original family owner) was known to travel to different states and "tour" other grocery stores for ideas to bring back to WV and VA and implement in his stores. He liked going to Publix as well. By the way, to the best of my recollection, A-Mart would have still been in business at that time. Thanks for lending your memory!!