Food Giant/Mayfair connection in Las Vegas?

[rnaikens]

A mystery. I have a Food Giant ad from January 30th 1962. The two locations listed became Mayfairs.

We briefly had 4 Food Giant stores in Vegas in the 90's. They were started by a former Mayfair executive who ran a Food Giant division of Mayfair in Tucson.

Were the Vegas Food Giants owned by the California chain or Mayfair? Any thoughts?

[klkla]

A mystery. I have a Food Giant ad from January 30th 1962. The two locations listed became Mayfairs.

We briefly had 4 Food Giant stores in Vegas in the 90's. They were started by a former Mayfair executive who ran a Food Giant division of Mayfair in Tucson.

Were the Vegas Food Giants owned by the California chain or Mayfair? Any thoughts?

I wondered thet myself. When I worked for Mayfair Markets in 1980 the Employee manual had logos for six chains (Mayfair, Gelson's, Food Giant, El Rancho, Low Cost Discount Foods and another I can't remember). I never knew where the El Rancho or Food Giant stores were.

[rnaikens]

An interesting tidbit to add to the Mayfair story.

The President of Mayfair around the time they started closing stores in Arizona was Ralph Ed Myers. The story Ed told me was that he saved the most profitable location for last, the Mayfair on Paradise & Tropicana in Las Vegas. Mayfair gave him that store as a severance of sorts.

Ed made major bank on the store and was bold enough to rename the store "Ralphs Market." The logo was really similar to the SoCal chains logo. Even though the Ralphs name wasn't registered in Nevada, the SoCal chain still threatened to tie Ed up in expensive litigation. So Ed changed the name to "Ed and Ralphs Market."

He had to close the store and take a real nice buyout when the airport wanted the property.

Around the same time, Smith's wanted to close and sublease thier store on 22 E Oakey. Ed took it and for 10 years it was almost as big a cash cow as the Paradise store.

What seems to have done that store in was the city condemning some large apartment complexes in Naked City and Walgreens siphoning off a chunk of the liquor business. It didn't help that Ed lived life large as well. He's a character.

He closed it down in the winter 2003. The building itself, one of the first true supermarkets in Las Vegas (1955) is scheduled to be demolished soon.

Ed still is kicking around running a wholesale business. If you want to have a beer with a lively, fun guy, he's the man.

[runchadrun]

Accodring to a 1978 LA Times artcle, Arden Mayfair acquired Food Giant Corp which operated 16 stores in the Tucson area.

[jamcool]

Mayfair entered Arizona in the late 50s under the El Rancho banner-there was an existing operator using the "Mayfair" name. By the early 70s, there were El Ranchos in Phoenix, Tucson, Yuma, and Flagstaff. During the 70s, Mayfair bought the Food Giant chain in Tucson, the handful of El Ranchos there were converted to Food Giant. In Phoenix the El Ranchos were gradually converted to the Low Cost Discount Foods format (no stamps, no frills) by the end of the decade, the other El Ranchos kept their name. In the 80s the Low Cost stores were remodeled and the El Rancho name was brought back-briefly, by this time Arden-Mayfair pulled out of AZ, and sold their stores to various independent operators.

[rnaikens]

Any thoughts on who owned the Tucson Food Giant chain before Mayfair came along? Chain or local ownership?
There aren't any logos on the Food Giant ad I copied for Las Vegas. Just says Food Giant Supermarkets. The 1000 Tonopah Hwy (Rancho) says formerly Faiman's Market.
Was Food Giant in SoCal in 62?

[runchadrun]

Any thoughts on who owned the Tucson Food Giant chain before Mayfair came along? Chain or local ownership?
There aren't any logos on the Food Giant ad I copied for Las Vegas. Just says Food Giant Supermarkets. The 1000 Tonopah Hwy (Rancho) says formerly Faiman's Market.
Was Food Giant in SoCal in 62?

Both the LA Times and WSJ refer just to "Food Giant Corp" so it was probably a local chain.

The Socal Food Giant (Food Giant Markets, Inc, later to be owned by Vornado) had 38 stores in 1962. All of the stores were sold to Smith's (LA stores) and Vons (San Diego stores) in 1971 and 72.