The Market Report

Quick jump across the street from Monday's post to a property that looks like it could have housed a 1970s-era supermarket. It's set up exactly right, with a 30,000 or so square foot building and a large parking lot. This location is the bottom star. Image from Google Maps. From the parking garage behind the building, we can get an overview of where it is... A look at the building from the neighboring parking garage. Maybe the supermarket, if there was one, was in the lighter roof section. Moving back to ground level, we can see that the building is now subdivided.  A large section is taken up by The ArtsCenter. It definitely has a distinctly retail feeling, but I don't know that it was a supermarket. I stayed in the hotel immediately next door to this property, so every time I walked through, I took another picture! Obviously the facade could have been changed, but even the metal siding looks like a 70s supermarket.

For today's Snapshot, we're moving literally two doors down from Friday's Surplus Sid's , from 309 to 305 E Main St. This location is the center star. Image from Google Maps. This building struck me as a 1940s supermarket, similar in style to the former Acme in Union we saw a while ago. Today it is an Advance Auto Parts store, and it previously operated as a CarQuest Auto Parts. For some reason this reminds me of an early Kroger. Based on absolutely nothing, of course, except a minimal knowledge of Kroger's current operations. Even the windows along the side of the store look like a supermarket's. From here especially, doesn't that look like it could be a grocery store? Can anyone confirm this, or is there anyone else out there who also thinks this is a former grocery store?

About a month ago, we were down in Carrboro, NC looking at the Weaver Street cooperative food store. I took photos of a few other buildings in town that seemed like former grocery stores to me, but other than my impressions, I have no reason to believe they ever were. This location is the top right star. Image from Google Maps. This particular building looked to me like a 1920s-era food store, maybe a general store. It's almost definitely a 1920s-era building. The building with the white facade is reminiscent of grocery/ general stores of the 1920s, don't you think? Especially with the higher center section on the facade. The awning is also the right style, although obviously replaced. The building, which is located at 309 E Main St, is now Surplus Sid's, a junk military surplus, antique, and general merchandise store. Inside, it's hard to tell what it may have been in the past.

Key Food's On the Move - Again We're seeing rapid growth and development in Key Food's new Superfresh banner. A while ago I reported that there were more Superfresh stores on the way. Key Food has bought the URL http://www.superfreshfood.com (the website http://www.superfreshstore.com directs to the two Staten Island stores) from A&P as part of the deal. Until recently it redirected to a version of the Key Food website with the Superfresh logo instead of Key Food: However, visiting the URL http://www.superfreshfood.com will direct you instead to http://www.keyfood.com/superfresh , a page about Superfresh specifically. At first glance the website looks great. A short introduction, a map showing where the locations are, and the list of locations. One problem, though - there is one location on the map that doesn't exist (yet?)! (Consequently, there is one fewer location listed underneath than is labeled on the map.) Image from keyfood.com/superfresh . ...

Supermarket Mysteries I: Decor This post includes: - Greenport IGA, Greenport, NY - Key Food Marketplace, Beacon, NY - Jack's Foodtown, North Arlington, NJ The Greenport IGA Image from Google Maps Street View. The Greenport IGA seems normal enough from this Google Maps street view from 2012. Any seasoned supermarket expert will tell you right off the bat this is an A&P Centennial model, and they'd be right. That's not the mystery here. Here's a close-up of the storefront taken by a family member. Seems average enough, right? Take a look inside through those windows. First of all, that Customer Service sign looks like it belong in an Acme Theme Park store,  not a small IGA. (By the way, it's not from an Acme Theme Park store. Does anyone recognize it? I'm not too familiar with Long Island supermarkets, but it could be Waldbaum's or King Kullen, neither of which I know well.) But take a closer look at the signage on t...