Info about Giant Mart???

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Crepehanger
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Joined: 30 Sep 2008 22:52

Info about Giant Mart???

Post by Crepehanger »

Does anyone know much about the small town chain Giant Mart? They opened in the early 1980s in Manchester, Georgia, which I think was the first one. They expanded over much of the 1980s. I was familiar with them being in Manchester, Woodbury, Greenville, Talbotton, and Waverly Hall. Doing a search on google last night, it seems that the only ones left are Barnesville, Roberta, and Jackson.

According to a small business website, the parent company is Meriwether Properties with an office in Jackson. Beyond that, does anybody know anything else? I cannot even remember a great deal about Giant Mart since I worked at Big Star in Manchester in the 80s, and GM was the "enemy."
jimbobga
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Location: Senoia, Ga

Re: Info about Giant Mart???

Post by jimbobga »

Sorry this took so long, but I wanted to get the facts straight on this. I asked the local grocer, Ellis Crook, whose family has owned Crook's Marketplace in Senoia, GA, for over 80 years, ago this chain. He told me that the chain was started and is still owned by a Bill [?] Jones, who is currently a lawyer in Jackson, Georgia. He said that Mr. Jones would go into small towns back in the seventies and build a grocery, stock it with "everything that needed to go in it," and then the manager would receive 49% of the profits. I am not sure if the manager also owned 49% of the business, but when I asked if it operated like Belk did years ago, he said "sorta."

Mr. Crook pointed out that Mr. Jones is not related to the Louis Jones which owns a chain of grocery stores that cover the same region. While Giant Mart has only three stores left, Louis Jones - operating out of Columbus, GA - has quite a few more. Mr. Crook also said that there was a chain of stores in the Macon, GA, are that used "Giant" in their name, as well as another inner-city chain in Atlanta that used "Giant" on their stores. None of them are related at all. He also said that the Atlanta Giant stores are what is left of the old Big Apple chain from the sixties.

The Giant Mart stores that I have seen appear to be very low-end. The buildings are usually metal-sided stores with a concrete block front. Signage is individual plastic G I A N T lighted squares. All of the towns listed in your post are small county-seat, rural towns in which this would probably have been the "supermarket." Today...In Jackson, Giant competes with Ingles and Piggly Wiggly, both having relatively new stores on separate ends of town. Giant is in close to downtown Jackson. The Barnesville store is in a downtown strip center, and the only other competition in Barnesville is Ingles located on the bypass. Roberta is a small town about 25 minutes west of Macon. Giant is the only grocery store in the town, which has a population of under 1000.

Hope this helps some.
Crepehanger
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Thanks for the info!

Post by Crepehanger »

That makes a lot of sense. The Giant Marts in Manchester and Talbotton were managed by the same person who lived in that area. The one in Waverly Hall was managed by someone else. I appreciate your help answering the question.
Edric Floyd
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Re: Info about Giant Mart???

Post by Edric Floyd »

I work and travel through these very areas quite frequently. I am guessing that the current Piggly Wiggly stores in Manchester, Jackson, Talbotton and Roberta may have been Giant marts. Let me add Greenville Georgia. All of these stores fit the description and all of them have a simular color scheme and are very different from the Piggly Wiggly's that are owned by Southern Family Foods serving the Macon area.

Jackson has a Piggly Wiggly at the intersection of GA hwy's 42 and 16 at the train tracks where GA-16 travels east to Monticello. The Piggly Wiggly is across from the WEBB's grocery.
The Ingles is west of town on GA-16 and across the street from that is a recently built Dollar General Market.

I assume the current PW may have been the Giant Mart. There was a larger Piggly Wiggly which also had the original Dollar General and that building was converted into the Butts County government center. It was thoroughly renovated and there is no resemblence of the former stores left.

The Giant Mart in Barnesville is still open as Giant Mart and yes, it is only one of only two stores in town. However Ingles recently built a larger store including a drive-thru pharmacy and gas station directly next to its original store.

There was a Giant Mart in the town of Zebulon (west of Barnesville) and it has been closed for years. The sinage is still there. The font is simular to the Giant stores I saw in Atlanta on Bankhead Hwy and the one in my neighborhood here in Warner Robins Georgia. The local Giant mart here was renovated 10 years ago and is now called Giant Foods. We also have a Giant Foods store in nearby Byron Georgia. I do remember when I first moved to this area and shopped in the local store they had a list of all of their stores on the shopping bag and that included Byron, Jackson and Barnesville. Perhaps these were once owned together?

What I can tell you about the other towns mentioned (briefly)

MANCHESTER: Current "Pic-N-Save" is the former Lewis Jones/former Big Star. And Piggly Wiggly. The Lewis Jones changed to Pic-N-Save within the past year.

PIGGLY WIGGLY: the only grocery stores in Talbotton, Roberta, Greenville, Butler.

ZEBULON: Only grocery in town is Freshway Market. They also have stores in Forsyth and are building in the town of Byron.
Edric Floyd
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Re: Info about Giant Mart???

Post by Edric Floyd »

I forgot to mention that the only grocery store I know of in Woodbury is the Ingles located on the Northeast edge of town. I can't even think of anything in Woodbury that even resembles a former supermarket.
krogerclerk
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Re: Info about Giant Mart???

Post by krogerclerk »

The economic hub of Meriwether Co. was Manchester and Warm Springs with Greenville being secondary as well as the county seat.
Woodbury is close enough to the other 3 towns that it's likely a modern era supermarket never developed. I was somewhat surprised that Ingle's chose Woodbury as for its entry into Meriwether Co. I would have expected Manchester due to its size or Luthersville due to stradling the Coweta Co. line and likely the first are to receive the exurban overflow from Coweta. I believe some of the store fronts along 27-A in Luthersville resemble a supermarket, one of which I believe was Giant Mart in the 1980s. I recall a Giant Mart along 27A in an otherwise very rural area from the 1980s, I believe this was near Greenville or Woodbury.

The final location of Big Star in Manchester was built in the mid70s and resembles the former Big Star in McDonough. It replaced and older Colonial/Big Star from the 1950s. Like Montezuma and McDonough, the Manchester store briefly became an A&P in the 1990s. The region between the three cities of Macon, Columbus, and Atlanta seems to have been a rural stronghold for Colonial/Big Star well into the 1980s as the chain retreated from South and Eastern Georgia.

A&P had a pre-centennial store in Manchester, but I have not located it. It is either razed, heavily remodeled or one of the downtown storefronts. A&P was closed with the first wave of closings in 1974 or so. If it was a downtown storefront, that would certainly explain its demise as Big Star was readying to relocate to a 2nd generation modern supermarket.
EDEW
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Re: Info about Giant Mart???

Post by EDEW »

There was a giant mart in Warner Robins, Ga.

Based on Warner Robins Sun Ads, Big Apple in the Williams Plaza stopped appearing in print ads,and was replaced with Giant Mart at the same address. I do not believe that giant mart was related to the Altermans chain, Because there was another Big Apple that was located in the Northgate Plaza that remained Big Apple until the change to Food Giant, then in the late 80's was changed to Giant Foods after delhaize started closing the older BA/FG locations.

I believe it was a trade name used to make people think it was the same as food giant.
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