Groceteria.com

I was browsing through old family pictures, and happened upon these logos on a small promotional pamphlet included with a photo sleeve from 1992:



I'm very familiar with SupeRx, it being the local drugstore of my youth; but what about the others? I've heard of combined food-drug stores from the early 1980s carrying "Kroger Sav-On" branding, and I've heard that Kroger purchased a New Jersey Sav-On chain around the time it was first setting up SupeRx Drugs in the early 1960s, but I don't know much beyond that.

Just what and where were these SupeRx-affiliated Sav-On and Thrifty stores? I'll take it these had nothing to do with the western drug chains of those names...

SuperX was merged with Indianapolis' Hooks Drugs in '88 and subsequently spun-off as a private company that later bought Brooks, a New England Chain. Revco bought the operation in '94. The Kroger-Sav-Ons were combos that retained the Sav-On name long after it ceased to have any real meaning, but I would assume that the freestanding Sav-Ons (NJ, FL and AZ, I believe) would have been part of the SuperX spinoff. This would explain Sav-On and SuperX, but not the absence of Brooks or Hook's or the presence of Thrifty. There probably were other Thrifty's besides the one in LA. There was more than one Thrift Drug chains (one in Springfield, IL, as well as the bigger one based in Pittsy), and Thrifty would seem to be an equally easy name to duplicate.

I don't recall Thrifty as being part of the SupeRx operation, but the ad doesn't show Gasen's, a St. Louis region operation. When SupeRx was divested, it became two companies, HSI(for Hook SupeRx in which Kroger maintained an ownership interest) and eventually sold to Revco, and another SupeRx company that included the Florida and Arizona/southwestern SupeRx drug stores. Some SupeRx locations were retained by Kroger and used for expansion of the adjoining Kroger location into the combination food-drug format and few soldiered on as stand alone Kroger Drug Store units. I don't know the final dispsition of the second SupeRx company, but it seems to have ceased to exist by the early 90s.

While it doesn't solve the Thrifty mystery, I do remember that a year or so before being swallowed by Revco in 1994, SupeRx was using shopping bags printed with a grid of six rectangular logos like these (presumably for SupeRx, Hooks, Brooks, Gasen's, Thrifty, and Sav-On). The same grid appeared on Revco circulars for a short time during the acquisition as well, under the headline of "We welcome [logos] into the Revco family!"