The Market Report

As usual, my information here comes from Josh Austin . This store started as a 1950s-era Grand Union that closed by the mid-80s with CVS opening shortly thereafter. The store is located at 2440 Hamburg Tpk, Wayne, NJ. Photographed August 2019

Didn't even realize that my planning lined up another former Acme for today, along with our snapshots from yesterday and the day before . I'm not going to provide an extensive history here, mostly because Acme Style already has done so much better than I ever could. Anyhow, I have to agree with Acme Style's conclusion that the new facade is very nice and that it is a lot like the newer facade updates Acme is doing now. The store is located at 11 Center St. Photographed May 2016

This store opened as an Acme Market on August 10, 1957 and closed on August 6, 1966, as Acme Style reports . Today, it's a CVS (surprise!) and at 565 Valley Rd, it's just up the street from a currently operating Acme in a former A&P, which will be coming to the blog soon. This store was only 11,000 square feet. However, the current Acme is only 30,000 square feet or so, and the other competition -- a Kings farther north on Valley -- is smaller at 17,000 square feet. Like so many stores of this era, the storefront actually faces the street with the parking lot on the side. Photographed May 2019

Some former supermarkets have been so badly butchered or, depending on how you look at it, so well reinvented, that you can't tell that it was ever a grocery store. Some look like they just closed yesterday. Others fall in the middle -- they still have the bones of the supermarket, but have been extensively altered. Today's Snapshot falls in that last category. Yes, this building is now a Walgreens, and it was previously a Drug Fair. But you don't have to imagine too much to see it as a former A&P centennial-style store. Obviously the existing facade has been extensively covered, but the shape is still there. And the entrance still faces the parking lot on the side, just like it would have in the A&P days. I wasn't able to get extensive coverage, but there are still loading docks in the back also. The store has a basement, which is a no-brainer because it's on a hill meaning that the lower level is ground level in the back. I'd driven by this store ...

Obviously, this is a supermarket blog. But sometimes something else catches my attention and I decide to post that as well. About 25 miles west of Tampa, in a small coastal town called Indian Rocks Beach, I saw something that I had never seen before. And that was this. It's a CVS. Not a CVS/pharmacy, but just a CVS. As in, a CVS drugstore without a counter for prescriptions. Just CVS. No pharmacy. The logo looks very lonely up there with no other words to keep it company, don't you think? And inside, where the pharmacy should be, there is just general merchandise shelves. Now, I'd heard about these non-pharmacy pharmacies before, but I'd never seen one in person. I don't know exactly why this store doesn't have a pharmacy counter, nor do I know if it ever did. But presumably zoning regulations or the like prevented CVS from installing a service prescription department. Does anyone know of any other big-chain drugstores without prescription counters...