The Market Report

Original Grocery Tenant: Quaker Market Address: 443 S 5th Ave, Clarion, PA Opened:  1968 Closed:  1972 Later Tenants:  Comet Food Warehouse (1972-2019) > Faller's Furniture (2023- ) Photographed:  July 1, 2023 Hope you had a great weekend! Today we're taking a look at the former Comet Food Warehouse in Clarion, PA, about 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. It was previously owned by a company called Jefferson Grocery, whose Clearfield location we saw on Friday. This store closed in 2019, following struggles with everything from road closures to union issues (a case was brought to the NLRB in 2017 and closed in 2018 regarding this store). Here's more coverage on the store's closure. The store opened in 1968 as a Quaker Market, a chain or independent I know nothing about. Quaker closed just four years later when the store became a Comet Food Warehouse (store #12, in fact, and I have read elsewhere that Jefferson owned 13 stores in total at their peak). Today, th...

JG Food Warehouse Owner: Drew Rowles Opened:  1983 Cooperative:  none Location:  200 River St Photographed:  June 23, 2023 Here in Clearfield, PA, where we saw a former ACME yesterday, today we're taking a look at a former A&P! This A&P appears to have been opened in the early- to mid-1950s, renovated and expanded to its present 17,000 square feet in the mid-1970s, and closed no later than 1983. JG Food Warehouse opened in that year, as one of the retail grocery stores owned by a local group called Jefferson Wholesale Grocery. They were a wholesaler and small chain of retail grocery stores in this area, based in Clarion, about 50 miles west of here where they also owned a grocery store. There's not a whole lot of information out there about Jefferson, and a 1958 lawsuit regarding a company of the same name but based in Pittsburgh may or may not be referring to the same company. (And is JG Food Warehouse just short for Jefferson Grocery?) Jefferson has been...