The Market Report

Buddies Groceries Opened: 1992 Owner:  Shane and Bud Savage Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  IGA Location:  43 Main St, Oakland, ME Photographed:  August 12, 2019 I love the look of these old-school street front stores in small towns! Once again, I'm not too certain on the history of this building, but Buddies Groceries has been occupying the approximately 9,000 square foot space since 1992. They're an IGA member. The first aisle is on the right side of the store, with beer on the outside wall along with some dairy. Meat and deli line the back wall with the rest of dairy and produce in the last aisle on the left side. Frozen foods are in the front-left corner. It's a small store, but complete (there's even a small in-store kitchen that makes prepared foods). This store is obviously on the older side, but like many small-town independent grocers, kept up nicely. IGA stores in New England (and parts of the mid-Atlantic) are supplied by Bozzuto's and use F...

Today's memorabilia post is dedicated to brands used largely by independent grocers, starting with the IGA brand itself... IGA ...and spice tins, of course. I would estimate these date back to the 1960s. IGA changed to its current logo by the late 1970s. Spotted outside a small bookstore in Lewisburg, PA, was a box of IGA instant oatmeal -- okay, it was full of books, but once long ago it had IGA-brand oatmeal! An unusual color scheme was used here on this ca. 1950s IGA allspice tin, spotted next to a Red & White tin. And that brings us to our next brand! Red & White We've discussed Red & White before, including recently , and the brand was distributed to the Red & White and independent stores. In fact, it continues to be, although it is harder to find these days. Today, it's distributed by the Federated Group, which also distributes Hy-Top, Life Goods/Life Every Day, and Seven Farms brands. IGA and Red & White were both based in Chicago. IGA still is, b...

Tony's Meat Market Owner: unknown Open:  2011-2023 Cooperative:  none Location:  124 Grove St, Wilkes-Barre, PA Photographed:  December 22, 2018 Tucked away into a neighborhood of southern Wilkes-Barre is this 4,000 square foot butcher shop/corner grocer that appears to have been in business for a very long time. Prior to 2011, it was the Grove Market, which was affiliated with AWI, a cooperative I discussed at length in yesterday's post . In 2011, it became Tony's Meat Market, which then earlier this year became the Grove Mart . Inside, we can tell that the store has been a grocery store for a very very long time. The store was Passeri's Cash Market from 1936 through at least 1974 (and later in its life called Passeri's Master Market), although founder Joseph Passeri retired in 1966. It appears in 1966, the store was sold to Benjamin Leggieri, who around the late 70s appears to have converted the store's name to Leggieri's. Leggieri's was in business un...

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 429 N Enola Rd, Enola, PA Opened:  1960s Closed:  1983 Later Tenants:  SuperFresh (1983-2002) > ShurFine (2002-2017) Photographed:  August 15, 2022 Quick look today at a former supermarket in Enola, PA, built actually as a Centennial A&P and later converted to SuperFresh in 1983 before closing in 2002. A ShurFine operator opened later the same year and closed in 2017, the same year the new Weis opened about two and a half miles west. The 30,000 square foot store has been split between a Family Dollar and a PennDOT facility. That's all for Enola, and our final store in this area is about 16 miles north along the Susquehanna River, tomorrow on The Independent Edition !

Happy spring from Shurfine! This Spring Sale-A-Bration matchbook is a little newer than the Shurfine matchbooks I showed yesterday, with the newer logo which was used up until recently (and is still used by Shur-Save). I've mentioned that some of these matchbooks traveled quite the distance to arrive in an antique store in small-town Maine, but this one would not have had to go far at all. I unfortunately don't know where this grocery store would've been along Stone Street, since so much of that area has seen such significant development recently. But someday, when we get through the rest of New England, we will be visiting Maine! And how about this one... I had never seen this logo for Stop & Shop previously! Unfortunately, other than the name and logo, there's not much else as far as historical information goes. And moving slightly south from Maine, we enter East Pepperell, a beautiful small town (well, it's part of Pepperell) in northern Massachusetts right n...