Food Fair's Philly Trifecta - 1966

On the same day in April 1966, Food Fair opened three stores in greater Philadelphia of this exact prototype, shown first in an artist’s rendering, than in a photo of the real thing (or one of the three real things, I guess). Look at it – an ordinary supermarket, transformed into something pretty special with the addition of the superb, Calder-esque metalwork out front. Food Fair as a company was

The Fields of Food Fair

As mentioned before, in the later fifties and early sixties, many successful supermarket chains eagerly sought to branch out into non-food discount retail. There were a number of reasons for this, including the desire to leverage a management and merchandising approach that had already proven successful in foods. Another reason was that by this time, many of the larger chains were developing

Food Fair's Finest Hours

A fantastic night view of a Food Fair supermarket, circa 1960, when the company cracked the ¾ of a billion dollar mark in sales and had more than 400 stores. To me, this store shines for a number of reasons, including the superb signage and metalwork and the “open ‘til” digital clock. All were hallmarks of Food Fair in the late fifties and sixties (in prior years the stores featured a neon clock

The Food Fair Phenomenon

For much of the 20th century, one of America’s most prominent supermarket chains was Philadelphia-based Food Fair Stores, Inc. A powerhouse in their primary Eastern Seaboard markets - Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania, Eastern New York, Northern New Jersey and Baltimore, the Food Fair empire would become a significant market factor in Florida and eventually extend as far away as

Vornado to the West

The old adage “Go West, young man” has applied for generations not only to people but to businesses as well. For many retail chains, once they achieved a measure of success in their home markets, becoming a coast-to-coast operation became their burning goal. Oftentimes, as history has shown time and time again, this has proven to be extremely difficult to achieve. By the mid 1960’s the Two Guys

Two Guys Discount Stores '64 edition

The pictures above are exterior views from 1964, when Two Guys was certainly in the top echelon of America’s fastest growing discount department stores. The first two photos are of the chain’s standard 135,000 square foot prototype, the first being the Cherry Hill, New Jersey store in the Camden County Plaza shopping center (as mentioned in the previous post), the second a new store in Dover, New

Two Guys, Many Girls, No Pizza Place

Here are some more photos of Two Guys Department Stores from the early 1960’s, the era in which the chain experienced its most impressive growth. The first photo, from 1962, shows a great-looking New Jersey store exterior and sign. The full parking lot is a pretty good indicator that business must have been robust. The second through fifth photos show department views from various Two Guys

A Tale of Two Guys

A familiar sight in Eastern Seaboard cities from the 1950’s through the very early eighties, the Two Guys discount store chain was founded in Harrison, New Jersey by a pair of brothers, Herbert and Sidney Hubschman, with a single 600 square foot store in 1946. The brothers soon established a reputation for selling radios, televisions and household appliances at razor-thin margins, much to the

An Ideal Selection

Here’s a nice display of Acme Markets products, circa 1965/6 - an era when many supermarkets were just beginning to recognize the revenue potential of house brands and thus began sprucing them up to maximize sales. The “eye” logo on the packaging of some of these items preceded the stores’ new image (as featured in the previous post) by a couple of years. I notice that some of the products are

Acme's Swingin' Sixties Look

Acme’s stores of the nineteen-sixties could scarcely have looked more different from those of the previous decade. In 1960, a new design was implemented that featured a peaked roof with a full façade of glass. The “Acme” script was discarded in favor of a block-lettered logo at first. After a year or so, a new Acme logo (that to me, at least, still looks modern) with a unique “eye” shape was