The Market Report

Wilson's Meats Owner: Nathan Wilson Opened:  1967 Cooperative:  none Location:  5694 Rising Sun Ave, Lawncrest, Philadelphia, PA Photographed:  July 2021 We're just across the street from yesterday's store to check out Wilson's Meats, a small butcher shop/deli/meat wholesaler which has been in business since 1967. A little bit like Farmer's Best, this butcher shop seems to have seen better days, but it's in much better shape and seems to still do a good business. The store is around 4400 square feet. As we see, some of the refrigerator cases that probably once held packaged meats are now holding other things, like these jars of pickles, relish, and peppers. But that section aside, the store is very fully stocked. At the back of the store are the service counters for poultry (seen here) and red meat. The rest of the packaged meats are at the back of the store, and there's also a small grocery selection of the basics. It's a very pleasantly old-fashioned...

Farmer's Best Supermarket Owner: unknown Opened:  2009-2022 Cooperative:  none Location:  571 Adams Ave, Lawncrest, Philadelphia, PA Photographed:  July 2021 One of the more well-known former ACMEs in Philadelphia is the Farmer's Best Supermarket, out here in the Rising Sun Plaza. The sprawling, roughly 23 acre mall at Rising Sun Avenue and Adams Avenue was originally anchored by a department store and this ACME when it opened in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The ACME received the 1980s remodel and then small updates in the 90s Checkerboard Arch era, to use Acme Style's terms, before closing in the late 90s. Hong Kong Supermarket opened up in the former ACME in 1999 before changing to Farmer's Best in 2009, but it's unclear if the store changed ownership. After my summer 2021 visit, the store changed names again in 2022 to Super HK Supermarket (presumably for Hong Kong). These days, the Farmer's Best/Super HK store is rather large, at a solid 57,000 square fee...

Ben City Supermarket Owner: Jian Wu Chen Opened:  2002 Cooperative:  none Location:  5520 Whitaker Ave, Lawncrest, Philadelphia, PA Photographed:  July 2021 Welcome to the Ben City Supermarket of Lawncrest, also known as the Bến Thành Supermarket (hopefully I got those characters right). I see it referred to online as both, but we're gonna go with Ben City. This store was built in the early 1970s as one of the first new-build Pathmarks after Supermarkets General left Wakefern, according to JoshAustin610 . Pathmark moved to 840 Cottman Ave in 1993, which closed in 2015 and briefly became Penn Foods Market in 2019, and is now vacant. Josh also notes that this strip mall has been expanded into an L-shape, meaning that the right side of Pathmark's facade is no longer visible.  Ben City is in the range of around 42,000 square feet, but as we can see above, some of the space along the front wall of the store is leased out to other small businesses. Ben City is a very ...