Video from the once mighty super grocery retail chain at local store in New York. Footage of people buying items, baggers bagging groceries, etc... This video last around 9 minutes. #a&p #pixystix
it's amazing how this coverage footage would be considered useless and boring at the time. Now it has incredible value for it's role as a living visual document of a bygone era.
I did this job in a different supermarket from 77-80. That register is new for that era. And I can still pack a paper grocery bag better than anyone I know to this day.
Very beautiful when one with a single decent salary could work & buy a home, provide clothes for the kids, get groceries at affordable prices ,and have the wife be a stay at home mom... Too bad most can't live that american dream no more!
@@ddub9696Yeah 1980 was kinda the end of that era. After that it went downhill with Reagan,both Bushes as well as Clinton and Obama and now especially Biden.
@@infernicide666nah. It was Reagan. The policy changes enacted by the Reagan administration and the Republicans in power in the early 80’s led to the biggest increase in poverty in the history of the US by the time Reagan was done and Bush came in. They basically set the stage for the billionaires and wealth disparities that we live with today. Reagan changed many laws that protected working people and made it ok for corporations to do whatever the hell they wanted to working people.
@@g-dave8002 I’m not disagreeing with you. You’re absolutely right! What I’m saying is that Clinton as well as Obama kept that going which was WHY we got Trump! He is an effect of this broken system and not the cause of it. He of course did little more than pass a typical Republican tax cut though credit where credit is due he did not get us into any new wars though he was and is still pro Israel. Biden and the current Democrat party is in 2024 what the Republicans were in 2004. Sending billions to Ukraine and Israel and supporting the same authoritarianism Bush and neocons supported. BOTH parties are corrupt and paid for by the Israeli lobby (and yes I’m including Trump in that). Some minor differences on social issues maybe but on the whole no matter who wins Tel Aviv wins.
Yep $50 was a full shopping cart! cHard to believe and not everything came in plastic. You could buy milk in cartons or glass and juice in glass or cardboard. things were glass,can,cardboard! Plus those paper bags could be filled and not break.Not all the time!
No, groceries were very expensive in the 70's and 80's, when you adjust the amounts for inflation. $1 in 1980 is the same as $3.65, today. I remember milk was $2 per gallon, so that's 7.30 in today's money. Minimum wage was 2.30/hr.
@poonksooniger Everything the mainstream media tells you is a lie. Everything the president tells you is a lie. Basically, almost all media and the government are lying to everyone. And they've been doing it for a very long time. Too many people are just too ignorant and believe what they say.
@@OhJodi69 Exactly. This is why people need to pay attention in school. Because it's really easy to look at numbers and dream up some broken logic that is painfully wrong but feels seductively correct. Food is cheaper now than it has ever been in history. This is why even in poor countries everyone is FAT. In 2022 the US finally hit disposable income levels spent on food that reached the levels seen in 1980, but only because people are spending twice as much eating out and half as much on food from the grocery store. In 1980 people spent about 8.5% of their disposable income on food at the grocery store. Today that number is closer to 5% so food in grocery stores makes up about 40% less in household spending today than it was in 1980 in real money. Those savings are now being spent in restaurants.
I remember those registers. NCR 2552 (I think). Worked on those in the early 80s. They were noisy. The ribbon cartridge was always chewing itself up. The sound took me back 40 years. Thank you for sharing this with us.
I was also 14 years old in 1980. I grew up with A&P my mother shopped there all the time in the 1970's. She would by large glass jars of Ann Page Pineapple Preserves and Strawberry Preserves. Their own brands were good quality from what I remember.
Your channel is amazing….what is all of this? News station stock footage? The quality on it is all pro TV camera…very clear etc. The 70s/80s footage just gives me a warm feeling inside…I’m 53, grew up during those years when things were simple, no cell phones,computers, 24 hr news, almost anything you bought grocery shopping was under $3….It brings back a lot of my childhood memories. Keep ‘em coming!
I used to go to A&P with my dad (and, sometimes, with my late grandparents...usually, with grandma more than grandpa) during the 1980s. I miss the way things were in the 1980s. I miss being young with my family alive and well. *COME ON!!* Somebody, *PLEASE* invent a time machine so I can take it back to these days again. I'm begging anyone out there!
Ikr? Now you spend 90 bucks on one bag of groceries unless you're just buying top ramen or some other cheap crap you shouldn't eat. And most of the cheap crap isn't so cheap anymore. It's sad.
NCR 2552 cash registers. A modern version of the bigger NCR 255, but the two could be mixed and matched on the same store loop. Scanning was already around for the registers by 1980, they probably couldn't afford it yet or the traffic counts didn't warrant it yet.
The A&P I shopped at was in Lumberton NJ. The coffee grinders were at the end of each checkout lane. Eight O"clock Coffee aroma while you bag groceries! Then A&P became Superfresh, which was a good market too. But A&P ruled!
Almost everybody in that store was thin. You notice that? And look at what is being purchased, no cookies and candy and sweets and junk food. If this was filmed today I'm sure 90% of the customers would be overweight and their shopping carts would be full of junk food. Those food companies sure have done a number on the people of this country. Unhealthy food everywhere.
So true and sometimes you get that one that looks like they just hate life altogether, and you were getting on their nerves by coming down their aisle lol
The cashier was quick in keying the items. The technology of the registers was 5-6 years old at the time this was filmed. I worked with these in the 90s but they had scanners. One thing I hated was you didn't see the numbers you keyed until you indicated a department, look up number, or tender type. I think it would have been easy to overcharge someone.
I forgot what it sounded like getting checked out in a place like that with the old style pin printers. good ol days. i rememebr it in the 90s and 00's like this.
I love seeing the old POS equipment. I was a cashier from 1994-99 right before dot matrix went away. I always got ahead of the register scanning. My favorite was the NCR. Kmart had them. Unique sound. I still hear it. I used IBM systems and use to be the on call troubleshooter. I once had a idiot head cashier tell me I wasn’t supposed to “fix” the register and she called support. The support people told her to hold, heard my name paged for a call. Picked up the phone at next register and I was connected to support and the head cashier who called. The support person says just reset it so we don’t have to send out a tech. Store manager eventually said to staff call me first not support unless I deem it necessary.
Being from Northern Europe it's always fascinating to watch how the personnel in an American grocery store pack the customer's items; no such help for customers here, we learn to pack on our own, lol.
@@KingMacintosh2 There has never been packing service in Finland or Sweden, customers always packed their own groceries. Also, we do have traditional checkouts still - I'm a cashier in a supermarket, I oughta know, lol. Don't know where you are from but pretty sure they still have cashiers in America as well...?!
As an American living in Denmark, I am always amazed at how I barely get a scowl from the cashier. Not even a hello or anything. I know it’s just cultural but service levels here are definitely much lower than the US. My mom’s supermarket in the US still has both a cashier and a bagger at each register.
The cash registers and printers in this video are a lot faster then the ones I remember. Hell that's pretty fast even by today's standards, or maybe the checkers were just faster.
I remember going to A&P with my grandparents in the early/mid 2000s fun times We even became friends with one of the workers My grandpa still has the paper bags saved from before they closed down.
I remember visiting a 1970s style A&P near Apalachicola, FL and seeing how small it was. Truly was a very small grocery store, but had everything you needed under one roof. Too bad A&P shut down in 2015.
Wow NCR Point of Sale with No Scanner. They had Price Look Up numbers for some things though. When you did find one of the early scan stores it seemed so magical and cool.
That was my first job when I was 15yrs old or 14yrs old bagging groceries at Krogers back in 1984 or 1985. I miss those days and think about them quite often...
Wow, this is a complete time warp. What if one of those customers is watching now.😂These videos are wild and you weren't discreet you had to have a big azz camera you lugged around.
My friend worked at A&P back then..He was a bag boy and had to wear a dress shirt and tie..he also had to push people’s shopping carts to their vehicles and help them unload their groceries..I remember he did pretty good with tips.
The cash registers were a nice look at the first that were computerized, but there weren't scanners there yet. I first saw a grocery scanner summer 1980 at a Shaw's Market in N. Conway, NH. I also like the closeup of the receipt at 3:00. I think the old mechanical registers could also measure sales by department, and this computerized receipt could also show (as I think the older ones could also) the department to which each sale was made: FRZ (frozen), DY (dairy), PRO (produce), GRX (taxable grocery), and MT (meat).
I worked at the last A&P in the the city I grew up in till they closed, we had to ground the coffee beans at the checkout. I hated the polyester smocks.
Vampire Robot you must be from the north by the looks of your videos in your collection, not me I'm from Louisville Kentucky born and raised, but these vintage films are great to look back, i was checking out what u have in your video vault channel, it looks great.
I was 3 years old in 1980, and I remember going to the Super Duper with my mom. Pac-Man came out that year and our local store (also in NY) had it. I remember begging her for a quarter and playing while she waited impatiently. Such a great early memory.
I remember these A&P checkouts.. the sounds of the printer really bring back memories. I'm surprised they weren't using scanners at this time. Was A&P slow to adopt the technology?
I don't remember having plastic bags in 1980. But maybe they were pretty new. I notice someone (perhaps the customer) says that he doesn't want the plastic bags but the "other ones". 3:40
Nowadays, the greenies are forcing people to have the "other ones" by getting the local governments to ban plastic, despite evidence that bans have a negligible environmental impact, and only drive sales of dedicated 'single-use' bags through the roof. Not to mention that New Jersey's extreme version of a ban has even led to heavy-duty reusable bags becoming waste, as the larger stores are banned from using paper.
It seems as though A&P upgraded from using the big NCR cash registers to the smaller cash registers with light emitting diode displays. There was an A&P store in my hometown of Brooklyn, New York, before I was born in 1953, until the 1970s, after the badmen robbed the store. The merchandise was plentiful and cost less than after the 1970s decade.
I always wondered when did platic bags start. Seeing People with them, They at least started in 1980. I wonder the same about plastic Milk Jugs. When did it go from cardboard/Glass to Plastic? I remember my Mom buying the Gallon cardboard containers with the plastic handle fastened to it, in the early or mid 70's.
This was the main store I remember my mom shopping at and I continued to shop at until it closed.☹️ All the great products like 8 0' clock coffee, Jane Parker , and etc.Can anyone else name some more? I still love the 8'0clock coffee I buy it from other stores.
Times were hard back then with run away inflation but I would trade anything to be reliving those simpler times right now. Families were closer and a trip to the movies at least gave some a social life.
This is so depressing. I really thought going so far back would reveal some differences from 2024, but I'm seeing none. People aren't friendlier, life doesn't seem any happier, and the boredom is palpable. I have a strange suspicion that had this been 1979 or 1978 it would have felt different.
@@drewski1535 Yes, I myself am in central NJ. We left SI about 9 years ago. Wish we could have left 20 years ago, but kids, jobs etc., kept us tied to SI. SI was a great place to grow up for me in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. It's hell on earth there now.
Ahhhh.......the days when the cashier knew how to pack a bag and said thank you. Today you have to pack your own items and pay for the bags while the cashier just stands there and plays games on their zombie phone.
The lack of background music in the store is somewhat unusual. I recall "helping" at a Shoprite as a little kid, where my mother worked, marking cans with a label gun. Laser scanners, computerized registers and UPC barcodes thankfully made that task obsolete.
