WNY? We had a Bells too, but not Park Edge.
No, but back in the eighties most of the major supermarkets had an s in their name. Sainsbury’s, Safeway, Savacentre, Somerfields (and more I’ve forgotten), plus Tesco and Asda.
M&S always had a food hall but was never a supermarket back then. It isn’t exactly one now either; it would be very unusual to do your whole weekly food shop at M&S. Iceland only started to spread in the UK in the 80s and was not a full supermarket where you can get everything you need; to some degrees it is now. Co-op stores were and are mostly small stores, like general stores more than supermarkets. Lidl and Aldi are European imports from the late 90’s onwards.
I think it was just coincidence, really, but it was notable for a while.
Yup! WNY. Park Edge was a local chain I think. It had a lot of the kosher foods my parents bought.
I worked as a cashier at Bells in high school. What a nightmare.
It seems the NYC crowd hasn’t checked in here yet. 
Here are some supermarket chains located primarily in NYC -
- D’Agostino
- Gristedes
- Morton Williams
- Fairway (more of a “specialty” supermarket - Lots of great produce, gourmet, imported, etc.)
Some others:
- Waldbaums is mostly on LI, Brooklyn, and Queens.
- Key Food used to be more common in the 'burbs, but now I mainly see them in run-down “urban” areas of NJ.
- Stew Leonard’s has only 4 stores but seems to be slowly expanding. That’s another specialty supermarket.
Two more to add to the scrap heap of defunct supermarkets
- Foodtown
- Edwards
St louis, in addition to Schnucks has Dierbergs and Aldis…and my fave a small urban grocer “Pete’s Shur-Sav”…I kinda wonder who taught them to spell? Petes is good if you need a whole or quartered hogs head.
In Southern Illinois, just South of Carbondale is my all time favorite market; Arnold’s Market…posted on the door: “No Shirt, No Shoes…No Problem”. They had, hands down, the best meat department I have ever experienced.
We also shopped in New Orleans at Breaux Mart and Dorignac’s pronounced, of course, Bro Mart and Door-n-yak’s.
Stores I have shopped at through the years (trying to omit those already named above):
Foodmaster
Star
Shaws
P&C
Shur Save
Big Y
Big M
Price Chopper
Humpty Dumpty
Roche Bros
and the best supermarket EVER - WEGMANS
Yay, I feel vindicated. I was there from 1979 - 1994. By the way, the person who told me about the S’s (and Iceland counts, even though I never heard of it until now) was someone with an unfortunate speech impediment who slurred his S sounds.
Some other big stores in NYC are Associated (perhaps the dullest store name listed so far) and Pathmark. (As well as Trader Joe’s & Whole Foods.)
Foodtownis still around.
We have a Cash Saver, which as I understand it isn’t so much a chain but a brand that independent groceries can license, like IGA. It works on what it calls the “cost plus” model, where they put something they claim to be “their cost” on the price tag and you’re charged 10% more at the register. I’m surprised it’s legal to put up fake price tags like that, but they haven’t been shut down yet…
In the Southwest, Furr’s was a dominant chain in the 1980s-1990s. Once Walmart began opening the smaller neighborhood grocery stores, they seemed to evaporate.
Albertsons still goes strong in that area.
HEB is one of the best things about Texas. I also prefer their Whole Foods clone (Central Market) to Whole Foods.
And Penn Fruit (there was one a few miles away during my youth), lost in the mists of time along with some of the things that replaced it like Food a Rama.
Food Lion started off as Food Town grocery stores. They were small and the first one I remember was beside a K-Mart in the same shopping center.
By the late 80’s/early 90’s here in rural Virginia they had adopted the Food Lion name and some developer(s) started building Food Lion shopping centers that usually had a Food Lion as the anchor store, and (pick any 3 or 4) a drug store, a dollar store, a video store, a Subway, and almost always a Chinese restaurant. These little shopping centers are still standard in many small towns in VA.
We have also had Farmer’s Foods and Food Depot (terrible name IMO), which are offshoots of SuperValu I believe.
There was Gateway, Carrefour, Bejam, Fine Fare, etc back then. it’s never been true.
I wonder if the person making the original claim might have been joking about the tendency for people to append an S on the names of stores - even now, I hear people saying "I got it at Alidi’s… or was it Lidl’s? "
Like EVERYTHING-arama. There was a hairdresser (“beauty parlor”) near us called the Glamorama. Oh, those were the days.
I remember Co-ops being a little dirty. But it was the first ever store I went to, when I moved there in 1979, so I remember it fondly.
Carrefour…c’est French, non? Pretentious, moi?
Great American (The Late Great, at least around here) had a store brand called. “The Best Yet” which always seemed a bit of an overstatement.
Co Op was a big supermarket in the 1980s, as far as I’m concerned - the one nearest me at that time is in this photo - http://eastleighso50.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/ew20.jpg.w300h315.jpg
It was the same size as Tesco and Sainsburys - the only one bigger back then was Carrefour, which was known as a ‘Hypermarket’
Oh, no picture for me, Mangetout! Aargh…
The ones I visited were very small (first one was in Oxford). Is/was Carrefour a chain? I don’t remember it, and I love food shopping. I never cared for Tesco, and usually went to Sainsburys, but the best of all was Waitrose (Newmarket).
Of course there was always Harrods or Fortnum & Mason, but I don’t think I ever actually bought anything there.
When i first landed in Pittsburgh, for many months, I couldn’t get the name Giant Eagle right.
“Hey, can we go to Great Eagle tonight? I need to pick up some stuff.”
blank stares
“Um, the grocery store?”
“It’s Giant Eagle.”
“Oh”
I have called it Great Eagle, Golden Eagle, and (as a joke) Green Eagle.