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Has anybody ever heard of A&P's "SuperPlus" stores?

There's not that much info on them, but they were a small discount supermarket chain started by A&P. I'm guessing they were a "deep discount" supermarket, similar to Plus, another chain which you might be more familiar with. Plus was a German supermarket chain, however, the U.S. division of it was also owned by A&P. Apparently Plus & SuperPlus were completely unrelated?

From what I've read SuperPlus was a short lived concept by A&P that didn't last long, All sources claim that the concept was only in Illinois. I found an old news report from 1985 about A&P selling all remaining SuperPlus stores:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct- ... story.html

They all appear to be in Chicago.

If the entire SuperPlus chain were just these locations, I'd write if off as a failed concept and not think much of it.

The reason why I'm creating this thread and why I put it in "Non Region-Specific" is because a few weeks ago I found a newspaper archive of a SuperPlus ad, weird thing was, it was from either California or Florida (I don't remember exactly which state, but I'm leaning more towards California)

I did a quick look at an old A&P annual report to confirm it was the same SuperPlus and not just a different chain with the same name. Comparing the logo on the ad to the logo seen on the annual report, it was defiantly the same logo and the same brand.

I have since been unable to find said newspaper archive again. I tried searching for it, but all I found was a different archived ad from Illinois.

Does anybody have any info on this chain other than the 5 stores in IL?

Mainly the other locations in different states (specifically California)

Based on the fact that Plus and Super Plus would have been operating with similar formats at pretty much the exact same time, it seems likely that Super Plus was just a marketing variation (think "Super Stop & Shop" or "Winn-Dixie Marketplace"), maybe used on slightly larger stores that may have had some extra departments. That's not really uncommon.

Just to clarify: A&P came to be associated with Plus not because A&P owned the American division, but because Tengelmann Group, the European owner of the Plus chain became the majority owner of A&P in the late 70s/early 80s and decided to launch the chain in America, largely in repurposed A&P stores. It was not a success.

It is probably more likely that it was Florida, as A&P was having some success with the Family Mart concept down that way. SuperPlus hung on after A&P left Chicago for a few years, as the attached story says. I recall that it was essentially a warehouse market with meat/produce...akin to a Food 4 Less. Remember this was the early days of Aldi, so they were in Chicago already but only with the original hard discount 9k sqft stores with minimal refrigeration and minimal fresh stock. Jewel was the big gorilla in Chicago, and had moved heavily into their generic line in all their stores(and never expanded JewelT there, for obvious reasons).