The Market Report

Save-A-Lot Open:  2012-2022 Previous Tenants:  assorted non-grocery tenants Later Tenants:  Bravo Supermarkets (opened September 1, 2023) Location:  400 S Main St, Wilkes-Barre, PA Photographed:  December 22, 2018 Today's tour is not a particularly exciting one, but it's one I'm glad I have nonetheless! I visited this Save-A-Lot in late 2018, around 6 years after it opened , and shortly before Save-A-Lot started their push to sell all of their stores to franchise owners. There were a lot of casualties in that process as Save-A-Lot made it clear they didn't want to own any supermarkets anymore, so many stores that were not purchased closed. This one closed in 2022. It was a pretty typical Save-A-Lot inside, with produce and sales in the first aisle, meat on the back wall, and dairy/frozen on the left side. It was one of the nicer stores, though, as some are really disgusting, some are just poorly run , and some are perfectly fine . The Save-A-Lot appears to have been aro

Gerrity's ShurSave Owner: Joyce Fasula Opened: ca. 2002 - 2022 Previous Tenants:  Grant City > Kmart Later Tenants:  Gerrity's The Fresh Grocer (2022- ) Cooperative:  ShurSave Location:  2280 Sans Souci Pkwy, Hanover, PA Photographed:  December 22, 2018 Gerrity's moved into this 55,000 square foot former Kmart around 2002 from a neighboring former ACME , and around 20 years later, the store was converted from ShurSave to Wakefern's The Fresh Grocer banner. I visited while it was still a ShurSave, and I believe there have been some changes since then. But Gerrity's still owns the store, and the company is still run by "Mom," or Joyce Fasula. Her son Joe Fasula mostly runs the company these days, though. I believe this is the largest Gerrity's. I don't know how it has changed since becoming The Fresh Grocer, although in a Google Street View we can see a Fresh Grocer banner up and a ShopRite promotional truck outside. We enter to the grand aisle,

  We're now back in the northeastern corner of the state of Pennsylvania, for the southern part of the Wyoming Valley! The valley roughly stretches 30 miles southwest to northeast, with Wilkes-Barre in the southwestern part of the valley and Scranton in the northeastern corner. We're going to look at the area around Wilkes-Barre first, starting in Mountain Top (which, yes as you can assume, is not actually in the valley) and then through Nanticoke, Plymouth, Wilkes-Barre itself, Luzerne, Plains, Pittston, and Duryea. GIANT and Weis are the two big chains present in this area, although regional favorite Gerrity's is present too, as well as quite a few independents and former supermarkets that we'll be checking out! Tomorrow is our first store in Mountain Top on The Independent Edition !

ALDI Food Market Opened: unknown Previous Tenants:  none Location:  22827 PA-68, Clarion, PA Photographed:  July 1, 2023 Here's a quick look at a newly-renovated ALDI to the south of downtown Clarion, a store of just over 15,000 square feet built at some point before 2007. You'll notice that the renovation of the exterior is not nearly as extensive as some of the other renovations we've seen, such as New Brunswick . Is ALDI getting cheaper with their renovations? Is there just not enough competition here to warrant that much to be done? The store is the only dedicated grocery store in Clarion since the Comet Food Warehouse closed in 2019. There's also a Walmart nearby, but for a traditional supermarket, you'd have to travel about 16 miles east to the Giant Eagle in Brookville. Our last stop in western PA before we return to the northeastern PA area is Johnstown, where we'll start by seeing an independent corner store tomorrow on The Independent Edition !

I admittedly haven't spent a whole lot of time in the western part of Pennsylvania, but we are going to nevertheless take a little bit of time to look around this part of the state! On the map above I've placed the large cities (Erie and Pittsburgh) for reference, but we're going to be spending our time in Snow Shoe, Clearfield, Clarion, and Johnstown -- the first three along the I-80 corridor in northern PA, then Johnstown roughly 1/3 of the way from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg. Unfortunately, I've never been to Johnstown, but I have a friend from there and we have a quick look at two interesting stores from there thanks to them. We're going to start in Snow Shoe, with a look at a former supermarket (the only grocer in town) on Grocery Archaeology tomorrow!

Tops Friendly Markets Opened: unknown, ca. 2000 Previous Tenants:  ACME Markets (1960s-1995) > Bi-Lo (1995-ca. 2000) Location:  2758 PA-414, Canton, PA Photographed:  August 17, 2022 I don't have to say it, you all already know. Today's store tour is a former pitched-roof ACME! You can't miss that roofline. And we can tell that this one is an earlier model, too, because of the beams that slant outwards on the sides where they connect with the roof. Looks like ACME or a later tenant added some covers on some of the front windows on the right side, but mostly the original structure is intact! This store was built as a 14,000 square foot ACME in the 1960s before being sold to Penn Traffic in 1995. It became a Bilo , which because it was franchised remained until 2011 before being sold to Tops. It's been updated with the Tops decor I'm most familiar with, in an attractive but simple renovation. It does have these aisle markers which I don't recognize from any de