Grocery Archaeology

Original Grocery Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 24 Main Ave, Hawley, PA Opened:  1950s Closed:  1994 Later Tenants:  Insalaco's (1994-1995) > Dutch's Market (1995-2006) > IGA (2006-2014) > Dollar General (2015- ) Photographed:  December 18, 2019 and May 28, 2023 Hawley, PA is a delightful quaint little town on the shores of Lake Wallenpaupack, a very interesting manmade lake (where you can also take a beautiful boat tour). This 13,000 square foot store was built in the 1950s by ACME and then closed in 1994, but here's where it gets interesting. Insalaco's was apparently here for just a year, opening in 1994 and closing in 1995. Dutch's Market, which has another location in Greentown which we'll be touring in a few days, was here from 1995 to 2006, at which point the store closed and was sold to the owners of the other supermarket in town, the Lake Region IGA. It operated as an IGA until 2014 (after it was beginning to close in 2011, but extended briefl...

Original Grocery Tenant:  Golden Key IGA Address: 493 Delaware Ave, Palmerton, PA Opened:  ca. 1960s Closed:  ca. 2010 Later Tenants:  vacant Photographed:  December 22, 2018 A very brief look today at the former Golden Key IGA in downtown Palmerton! It's just kind of diagonally across the street from Country Harvest, and was owned by the same people who own Country Harvest. My guess is that when ACME closed, they moved in there but decided to keep the older store too, which lasted for around 10 years beyond the opening of Country Harvest. In fact, in the 2009 street view , you can catch a glimpse of the Golden Key IGA in business. Notice the shopping carts in the window! These days, the former Golden Key is a Chinese restaurant, which appears to fill only the front half or so of the 7,000 square foot space, but as of 2021, the Golden Key IGA sign was still up ! Just west of this store in the same block is another former grocery store, where we're headed tomorr...

Original Grocery Tenant:  ACME Markets Address: 250 S Courtland St, East Stroudsburg, PA Opened:  1970s Closed:  ca. 1990 Later Tenants:  Mignosi's IGA (1990s) > CVS (2001- ) Photographed:  November 29, 2019 You can't miss that pitched-roof building, even if it's hidden by a new boring CVS facade! This CVS is built around an original 17,500 square foot ACME, later expanded to around 24,000 square feet. It looks like the CVS might take up only the space that was the original ACME, and the rest has been repurposed. This ACME closed around 1990, and was a Mignosi's IGA for around 10 years (same owners as the current Foodtown of East Stroudsburg ) before becoming CVS in 2001. In the back, we can definitely tell this building was an ACME! I didn't spend too much time looking around but the bones are definitely fully intact. Tomorrow, we're moving on to a very new store here in East Stroudsburg, which is just about a block south of here, on The Market Report !

Original Grocery Tenant: George's IGA Address: 2305 Schoenersville Rd, Bethlehem, PA Opened:  1973 Closed:  early 1990s Later Tenants:  King's (early 1990s-1994) > Weis Markets (1994-2021) Photographed:  January 13, 2022 I visited the Westgate Weis right after it opened in late 2021, and mentioned that it replaced a much older and smaller store in the same mall. This roughly 35,000 square foot store was originally an IGA, then the King's Market of Westgate, later being acquired by Weis and converting in 1994. I visited the store one time, probably back in around 2015 or 2016. It had the Fresh Market decor inside and wasn't that bad, but the Westgate Mall was really sad. Although the new Weis seems to be driving a bit of new traffic to the mall, there's still a lot of vacancies in the mall. Here we can see the rest of the mall, looking down to the new Weis at the far end. Here's one of the entrances to the indoor hallway portion of the mall, which seems to...

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 1841 S 4th St, Allentown, PA Opened:  1956 Closed:  1982 Later Tenants:  Hersh's IGA (1982-1990) > subdivided Photographed:  January 8, 2021 Just around the corner from yesterday's Superfood is this former A&P. It was constructed in the 1960s as an A&P centennial, then closed in 1982 when it was sold to Hersh's IGA. In 1990, Hersh's merged with Traub's IGA which was in what is now the Superfood, and closed this location. Traub's later sold to Valley Farm Market and then they sold to Superfood. Here's my source on that history. Don't forget the name Hersh's, by the way, we'll be seeing more of them as we pass through Allentown. A&P and ACME were direct competitors for a very long time and this location was no different, with a former ACME just up the street. That one, however, is still a supermarket, and we're going to check it out tomorrow on The Market Report !

 Oh yes. It's four days of matches and four days of matching bad puns. Ha! Get it? Jell-O? Oh, no. This is IGA brand Jell-It! Just like grandma always made. Judging from the IGA logo used here, these are certainly from before 1976. And if IGA brand Jell-It isn't for you, maybe you want A Royal Feast of IGA brand canned whole chicken. I have never had a canned whole chicken in my life and I'm not sure I'm interested in trying it. Anyone here ever tried one? Sadly, it's basically impossible to tell what IGA store these were from since they could be from anywhere across New England where there were hundreds of IGA stores over many decades, and they don't have any store-specific information on them. Canned chicken for dinner, Jell-It for dessert, and maybe a cup of Royal Guest coffee to go along with it... So who makes these matches? Well, you might have noticed a few different names on the various packages, but it looks like one of them was from a familiar place......

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 215 N Hermitage Ave, West End, Trenton, NJ Opened:  1961 Closed:  1970s Later Tenants:  Vereen Thriftway (1970s-1980s) > Vereen IGA (1980s) > Super Thrift (1980s-1997) > Foodtown (planned, never opened) > Supreme Food Market (early 2000s) > Supreme Shop n Bag (early 2000s-late 2000s) Photographed:  January 2021 The Westside Plaza in the West End neighborhood of Trenton is 50,000 square feet of retail space, with 34,000 square feet originally occupied by an early A-frame or pitched roof ACME that opened in 1961. You can read a lot of detail on the history here , and I summarized the progression above. Plainfield, NJ-based Supremo Food Markets most recently took over the space, around 2000 or shortly thereafter, but chose to call the store Supreme Food Market instead of Supremo. Within the first few years, the store became a Shop n Bag under the same owners, before closing between 2005 and 2010. Unfortunately, bec...

Original Tenant:  Jack's Super IGA Address: 659 US-46, Kenvil, Roxbury, NJ Opened:  ca. 1995 Closed:  ca. 2000 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  May 2020 The Kenvil IGA, owned by Jack Shakoor's HAJ Supermarkets, opened in the 1990s and closed by around 2000. We had a bit more detail on HAJ Supermarkets back in Boonton , and this store was short-lived enough that it never became a Foodtown when the other HAJ stores switched (North Arlington, Caldwell). I am unsure exactly how the IGA would've been set up or whether they would've taken up the entire 30,000 square foot building, and I certainly have never seen a picture of the IGA in business. I'm also unclear on whether the building was built new for IGA or was previously a different tenant. And another thing I'm unclear on... why did this store fail so quickly? HAJ's other stores seem to do rather well and when there are closures, such as Boonton, they're usually directly due to a competitor open...

Original Tenant: Boonton IGA (?) Address: 600 Myrtle Ave, Boonton, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Jack's IGA > Drug Fair > Walgreens Photographed:  July 2021 Today we have three stores in Boonton which we'll be passing through from east to west! Our first is this 13,000 square foot store which JoshAustin610 posits may have been a 1960s-era ShopRite. Later, it became the Boonton IGA which seems to later have transitioned into Jack's Super IGA no later than 1991. By the middle of that decade, Jack's Super IGA also opened the Kenvil IGA in Kenvil and Boonton closed at the time of the opening of the A&P next door (which would've been around 1997). Caldwell opened around 96, North Arlington around 98, and Kenvil closed around 2000. About that same time, shortly after Kenvil closed, Jack Shakoor switched over to Foodtown. Here's what this store would've looked like almost 10 years ago (looked better, in my opinion). Anyway, I me...

Original Tenant:  Finast (First National Stores) Address:  1303 N Broad St, Hillside, NJ Opened:  ca. 1960 Closed:  Unknown Later Tenants:  Hillside IGA (??-??), Drug Fair (90s-09), Walgreens (09-18), Save-A-Lot (18- ) Although this store is located within the city limits of Hillside, a suburban town tucked in between Elizabeth and Newark, two of New Jersey's largest cities, it's in the far southeastern corner of the municipality. Therefore, it's actually closer to the Twin City Supermarket in Elizabeth than the ShopRite of Hillside, which was posted yesterday on The Market Report. The store's rather unusual facade comes from its years as a Drug Fair and is not unlike other former Drug Fair locations in Verona  (formerly A&P) and Belleville . Other views are quite difficult from Google Maps due to the trees surrounding the building. The store backs up to the Oheb Shalom Cemetery (to the right above) and borders the Evergreen Cemet...