JCPenney supermarkets

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retail_person_247
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JCPenney supermarkets

Post by retail_person_247 »

Does anybody have any info on this (or better yet, any pictures?)

From what I've read JCPenney had their own braded supermarkets.

I'm not sure how many of these operated or what regions they operated in, but there was supposedly one at the former Amigoland Mall in Brownsville, TX

I once read that the supermarkets were actually ran by Big Star, but were branded as JCPenney. According to this blog I found the supermarket was actually operated by a company known as "Supermarkets Interstate" a company that was started by JCPenney themselves.

Here's the blog that I found if anyones interested:

https://southernretail.blogspot.com/202 ... march.html
Retail_247
retail_person_247
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Re: JCPenney supermarkets

Post by retail_person_247 »

According to an old JCPenney annual report from 1977, they discounted the JCPenney supermarket concept in 1977

https://archive.org/details/jcpenneyann ... upermarket
Retail_247
retail_person_247
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Re: JCPenney supermarkets

Post by retail_person_247 »

A quick Google Search lead me to a Facebook page which has several ads for JCPenney supermarkets and also lists some locations

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 8961316497

(I should probably do some more research before creating topics on this form)
Retail_247
jleyerle
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Re: JCPenney supermarkets

Post by jleyerle »

Their first exposure to supermarkets was up in Milwaukee, where they had the Treasury which included supermarkets at some stores. They initially cooperated with Hinky-Dinky out of Omaha which set up Supermarkets Interstate before taking them over. There's some interesting material out there including employee newsletters which discusses their expansion. They had an unusual management structure where they didn't bother with private label and gave the local manager a good bit of autonomy to set pricing, ads, etc; and they also were apparently working on doing trucking backhaul from the areas where they opened stores. They appeared to be attempting an early hypermarket implementation (at the time in the early 70s, only Fred Meyer in the NW/Meijer in Michigan really did it) opening 100k sqft stores in 100k population micropolitan areas.
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