FORGOTTEN Grocery Stores of the Past 

Anyone remember grinding a bag of 8 o'clock coffee at the A&P store and that wonderful aroma of the freshly ground coffee beans? Ahhh..... the good old days☕ ☕☕☕😊❤️

Back then, people didn't go to the grocery store in their pj bottoms or grubbies. That's why the shoppers are wearing "day" dresses, even hats and gloves. Even those in sportswear were wearing "good" sportswear.

I remember standing in line to cash in my Green Stamps. I think I got a toaster or something like that. So much fun pasting them in the those little books!

I remember A&P and the wonderful smell of the coffee my father was grinding

I am from the Netherlands and I love these old pictures schowing a beautiful America!

Oh to travel back in time❤

My grandpa was the produce manager for our local A&P in Grand Rapids, MI for many years. He took so much pride in his work. His department was always clean and tidy, unlike some produce areas in stores these days!

Back before the country went ghetto.

One of my favourite channels! Thanks for your hard work. It is so cool to look back. Much appreciated.

There's a Piggly Wiggly just down the street. It's like walkin into 1964.

As a kid we always had a bunch of Swanson TV Dinners on hand in the freezer just in case we go snowed in....

A & P was the largest chain in the country back in the day. The lat one I was in was in Vermont in '76! My neighbor in Pittsburgh drove over 2 million miles for them!

Super cool memories of yesteryears 💛💜👍

In Atlanta, Georgia, I remember my mother shopping at the local Colonial store

Love old pictures!!!❤😂 love this chanel!!

My first time not in a carriage in an A&P was when I was 4 years old in the 50’s.I remember breaking open a pack of hostess cupcakes when my mother wasn’t looking😅❤ your channel

Kewl cool kewl, going back to yesterday and as a little boy raised on a farm, going to town was a treat, walking into one of these big grocery stores and the smell as soon as you walked in was like WOW! clean floors, clean everything, folks were dressed, not in grubby hippy clothes like today! You triggered 10:00 minutes of happy good feel moments...miss those times and places. Thank you! ❤👍🙏

One thing from the past was that people (esp women) dressed better to go to the market. One thing that is changing back is that self checkout is beginning to disappear because of theft.

In the Detroit Michigan Area we had the grocery stores, Farmer Jack. They were everywhere, now defunct. Its a sad story of mismanagement. So its one more to add to future episodes of grocery stores not here anymore. Love these videos.

My great grandmother loved A&P!

Awesome! Now do forgotten restaurants of the past!

We had a Red owl store here in Wisconsin, i also remember when pic n save first came to town and the gave you a grease pencil to write the price on the product for the cashier's to ring up. Some great times.

My first job was as a box boy at Alpha Beta in Whittier, CA in 1969. My mom shopped at Von’s and Ralph’s in SoCal back in the day.

My family lived near a Piggly Wiggly store in Reseda, CA...early 1960s

In 1968, in Dallas, when I was 7 years old, we always grocery shopped at Piggly Wiggly, as it was just down the street. I remember the grocery boy pushing out two carts of groceries for my Mama. He unloaded the carts into the trunk of our 1968 Oldsmobile, which was huge. The groceries filled the trunk full. On the way back home, my mother said to me and my little brother, "Please don't tell your Daddy that Mama just spent $35.00 at the grocery store!" Yes, in 1968, you could feed a family of four for almost two weeks on $35.00. Gasoline was also .27c per gallon. The "good ole days".

Funny how stores seems to have become more efficient with technology, and by cutting service. But prices continue to rise. Love old cars parked outside the stores.

Great video, but I'm surprised that Jewel Foods was left off the list. I remember when Jewel opened their first Jewel Grand Bazaar super-grocery store on the southwest side of Chicago. It was amazing! Samples at every department - you could have a free lunch just tasting samples of lunchmeat, cheese, pizza, burgers, etc. And they had a parcel pick up where you pulled your car up to an enclosed tent and the bag boys would bring your cart out and load up the car. Ah the good old days!

I was a kid in the 60s. I remember peeking into the back of the meat department when the swinging doors would open and seeing all the bloody sawdust on the floor. 😯😄

Clarence Saunders was an American grocer who first developed the modern retail sales model of self service. His ideas have had a massive influence on the development of the modern supermarket. On September 11, 1916, Saunders launched the self-service revolution in the United States by opening the first self-service Piggly Wiggly store at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Wikipedia)

Love the CARS 🚗 in the picture. I WANTED my grandmother's car SO BAD but didn't happen.😢😊 Shame we can't TURN BACK TIME 😂😂 Texas Nana

+1 for Publix.

i retired from kroger in 2022. i spent 25 years with them. i managed the floral dept the whole 25 years. so glad to retire because they became a very hard company to work for. corporate greed took over.

My dad joined the Air Force in 1978 and we moved from a dot on the map in NW Georgia to Mather AFB, Sacramento. We'd never seen a Kroger until then. Just Piggly Wiggly, Big Star, and local grocery stores.

In WI I most remember Piggly Wiggly, Red Owls, and of course we had Kohls.

Rogers SuperMarket the Bubble Yum 8 pack of grape gum was my pick of things to get 1 of I was allowed!~ I miss the late 70's & 80's grocery stores!~

A&P….The great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. Kroger’s in Milwaukee was called Krambo’s before that.In GreenBay Wisconsin there’s only 1 Red Owl Food Store left. My uncle drove a semi between Green Bay and Milwaukee stores delivering food.

I remember a Bohack's on Vanderbilt Ave. in Brooklyn, NY.

Publix still takes your groceries out to your car for you, and they wear a button saying “no tipping”. It’s part of the baggers job to do this for you.

when talking about Kroger today it also includes the following sub chains. Ralphs, Dillons, Smith's, King Soopers, Fry's, QFC, City Market, Owen's, Jay C, Pay Less, Baker's, Gerbes, Harris Teeter, Pick 'n Save, Metro Market, Mariano's

I wish grocery stores still looked like they did 0:26 in the 50s. They suck today because nobody cares about design or color and they’re all soulless clones of each other, even across different companies.

I lived in Florida for over 40 years and wouldn't think of shopping anywhere but Publix. They were and still are the best!

Self-checkout. A bane of all societies.

Thanks again.

The first Kmart in Garden City Michigan was our go-to store when I was a kid. Great video but you forgot to mention there submarine sandwiches which everybody remembers.

HEB, founded in Kerrville, Texas, in 1905, is still going strong as one of most favorite stores in the state.

It seems that until 1980 people lived in the real world, and then the world became artificial :)

In Ohio, I remember Big Bear grocery stores and they gave Green stamps. Fulmers was another store I remembered in the late 50s and 60s

I remember going to Super Fresh which sat abandoned forever then it became a Giant. The whole area of Odenton turned out!

We used to have Safeway and Piggly Wiggly in Oklahoma.

Super que de souvenirs, seul les Cadis n'ont pas beaucoup évolués depuis ces belles années... Vos vidéos sont toujours passionnantes. 👍✌✌😉✌

I was wondering through the whole video when you were going to mention Publix. 😅 The BEST grocery store back then and now. We Floridians are spoiled. Love this RU-vid channel!

Chatham,Great Scott and Farmer Jack grocery stores in Michigan, long gone unfortunately

Also Pick n Pay

The butcher would sometimes sneak his thumb onto the scale so it looked like you had bought more than you really had. I remember that an artist had a customer with her thumb under the scale and pushed it up.. Norman Rockwell was the artist. 😅

I also miss Gemco in California! They were a membership store that featured Lucky brands like Lady Lee! We don't have actual Kroger stores out here but stores like Foodsco features their brand heavily!

I was born in 1949, so growing up my parents shopped at the A&P.

Most interesting! Think about the grocery stores in the West and what has happen to many of them. I would find that most interesting too. Enjoyed the video. Carol from California

Publix enjoys the comfort of existing in a world without Union members, so there's a good chance you won't see one in Minnesota any time soon. They also try to stay in areas where there is little to no snow. They have a lot of footprint to continue to grow in the Southeast before they ever consider venturing into any state above the Mason Dixon line or west of the Mississippi river..

If you don't have them planned already, Schottenstein's (Columbus, Ohio), Kroger's Grocery Store & Fotomat. You should do one on these. ✔ 🙂

Anyone from the Rockford Illinois area and remember Hilander and Logli. They competed with each other but in 2000 Schnucks came in from Saint Louis and bought up both of them and branded them as Schnucks.

My mom worked there in the late 50's

They also had a mini theater booth where children could sit and watch cartoons while their parents shopped.

This was good.

you showed the A&P colonial style store developed for Haddonfield in south Jersey, but didn't comment on it. i've seen that design as far north as Michigan (Grand Rapids and metro Detroit) and as far west as the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City. The colonial style was mandated by Haddonfield in a downtown revitalization scheme to counter the looming threat of the Cherry Hill Mall. One of the last gasps for A&P was to launch a non-union line (Super Fresh? It's been too long) with the goal of converting all their stores to such, retaining only employees of 20-30 years. This failed and A&P did 3 rounds of store closings in metro Phila. They did have a bright point. Having exited Michigan in Dec., 1974 they returned in the 1990s by acquiring the Detroit chain Farmer Jack, sinking major big bucks into remodelling vintage 1950s stores or building new super-stores. They introduced rotisserie chickens (wonderful job, something Kroger never got right) but sadly collapsed just before A&P did. In the early 1980s, A&P asked PSFS (bank) to launch a check approval system (Act 1) so that when customers wrote a check drawn on a PSFS account, the ability to pay that dollar amount was validated AND the dollars in their account reserved for that purpose. Sadly this was launched just in time for the first round of store closings. Some coworker friends burned themselves out in order to launch it in time, all for naught. Food Fair also acquired Penn Fruit and the department store chain J.M. Fields. Some shopping centers had J.M. Fields next door to the Food Fair. They were "gone" from metro Phila. by 1980 but i was stunned to see them, and shop at them, in Miami in 1988-89. They held out for a few more years in Florida. Consumers could see the consequences of the A&P, Food Fair, and Thriftway closings as prices rose in other store chains.

😂😊 je me souviens bien des magasins Grand Ours 😂🐾🐾🐻🐻🐻🐻

Anyone from the Chicago area remember High-Low grocery stores? They were around until the early 1970's.

We dont have Kroger in Florida or Piggly Wiggly,mainly Publix and Winn Dixie

"Shopping Bag" in Southern Calif

People dressed better back then!

0:24 "Where shopping is a pleasure" it says on the wall.... they don't have to tell me what store that is.

You never mentioned Safeway, may it rest in peace.

Let me tell you all something. I LOVE PUBLIX I live in Fl and that is my store. A & P here is the thing wal mart was greedy. They came in and shut down so many stores until it was just to much, But Publix that what I love about them. You can be the top dog Publix is still going to be here and plus they have stock for their workers .

good channel

A&P belongs in the ashcan of history: dirty stores, high prices, expired products....sorry, don't miss it one bit except for the Bokar Coffee (came in the black bag).

👍👍👍👍👍

The significant change is the payment method.

I remember the jitney jungle.

You didn't mention the rise of Walmart (now the US's largest grocer) and big boxes like Costco. Also it would be a huge help if you would list all the brands under each of the majors; e.g. Kroger includes Ralphs (California), Smiths (Utah), and others. Also a Kroger/ Albertsons merger was announced about 18 months ago, but has not yet moved forward.

I also remember Pick &Pay in Ohio

Amazing women dress very well then❤ what went wrong today?

What ever happened to Shopping Bag Food Stores?

“Wrote a letter to John Bonham”?

Nice and White

Virtually no one is over weight.no fast food then.

First

3:35 That photo with all the Model T's is NOT Jamaica, Queens in 1930. Try harder!

The 1930 s markets were better eggs still had poop on them and meat was still warm and hairy and fish was sold with scales on them and there was a smell of Horse poop on the streets