Los Angeles was also seeing the beginning of the “drive-in market” phenomenon, where several complimentary food retailers (a butcher, a baker, a grocer, and a produce vendor, for example) would locate within the same small shopping center surrounding a parking lot. In Southern California, Ralphs Grocery Company was expanding into much larger stores than had been seen before in most of the country.
Growth by merger became common in the late 1920s and 1930s, and led to numerous antitrust actions and attempts to tax the chain stores out of existence.Īs early at the 1920s, some chain grocers were experimenting with consolidated (albeit still rather small) stores that featured at least a small selection of fresh meats and produce along with the dry grocery items. In 1928, the new chain bought most of the west coast’s Piggly Wiggly stores, and later acquired Sanitary Stores in the Washington DC area as well as MacMarr Stores, another chain that Charles Merrill had assembled.
#Does the first go to superscribe in 1st series
In 1926, Charles Merrill, of Merrill Lynch set in motion a series of transactions that led to the creation of Safeway Stores, when he arranged the merger of Skaggs Cash Stores, a chain with operations in Northern California and the northwestern United States, with Los Angeles-based Sam Seelig Stores. Some still offered delivery and charge accounts, although most chain stores had abandoned these practices. Most of these stores remained small, counter service stores, often staffed by only two or three employees, with no meat nor produce departments.
Small regional chains such as Kroger, American Stores, National Tea, and others began covering more and more territory, and A&P began moving toward a more national profile, operating over 10,000 of its “economy stores” by the end of the decade. It was not until the 1920s that chain stores started to become a really dominant force in American food (and other) retailing. Self-service stores came to be known as “groceterias” due to the fact that they were reminiscent of the cafeteria-style eateries that were gaining popularity at the time. Butchers and greengrocers (produce vendors) were completely separate entities, although they tended to cluster together for convenience’s sake.Ĭlarence Saunders’ Piggly Wiggly stores, established in Memphis in 1916, are widely credited with introducing America to self-service shopping, although other stores (notably Alpha Beta in Southern California) around the country were experimenting with the idea at about the same time.
Grocers (and most of the chains fell into this camp) sold what is known as “dry grocery” items, or canned goods and other non-perishable staples. Grocery stores of this era tended to be small (generally less than a thousand square feet) and also focused on only one aspect of food retailing. We'll look specifically at the time frame before 1946:Ĭhain grocery retailing was a phenomenon that took off around the beginning of the twentieth century, with the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (established 1859) and other small, regional players. The First Supermarket Appeared in 1946 – True or False?Ī visit to the site by David Gwynn offers a quick history of the supermarket. The thing is, as much as I love Joel's work, this is an inaccurate and overly romanticized perspective of our food system. If you're on social media at all, you've probably seen this attached to a smiling picture of Joel, or a backyard garden, or a chicken coop or a bucolic country scene.
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