Former Big Star/Colonial Locations Still Selling Groceries

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myrose

Re: Former Big Star/Colonial Locations Still Selling Groceri

Post by myrose »

My sister (who loves to cook) use to live with me - but moved out 12 years ago ... in 2000. Today I had this urge to clean out my kitchen cabinets. Imagine my surprise when I ran across a bottle of sauce from "Big Star." I had forgotten that we had that store here in Lumberton, NC. No one seemed to remember where it was located. So I went to Ask.com and ended up on this message board. This is pretty cool. Thanks for helping me to remember that Big Star was in the old K-Mart shopping center. I wonder how long ago it closed? I purchased my home here in Lumberton in 1999. I've included an image (or attempted to). Talk about going way back --- wow. I really must do something about purging my home of old items!!! As an educator, it has truly been hard for me to let things go. I always figured there would be a way to re-purpose a given object.
Attachments
Picture of the sauce purchased from Big Star years ago - with a Big Star tag.
Picture of the sauce purchased from Big Star years ago - with a Big Star tag.
Big Star.jpg (21.72 KiB) Viewed 7196 times
alphakilo470
Member
Posts: 7
Joined: 24 May 2007 18:13

Re: Former Big Star/Colonial Locations Still Selling Groceri

Post by alphakilo470 »

On the corner of Concord and South Conb in Smyrna, GA, there's a Food Depot that was obviously a Big-Star from the Grand Union era. The lighting system, layout, and the color red on most of the interior doors and fixtures gives it away. It even has a bunch of Big-Star signage including on the entrance. There are also a few fixtures and sections of the store accented in the light green color A&P had a fancy for at the same time most of these stores were bought out. The store is clean and in good condition but is showing its age. Also, the metal frames around the outside doors and windows have paint flaking off to reveal the original red color. If I remember right, the color red was used quite extensively with the 80s Big-Star stores.

Also, fwiw, not far from this location, on the other side of the same intersection, there's a former A&P centennial store.
rt22306
Member
Posts: 6
Joined: 18 Sep 2011 15:35

Re: Former Big Star/Colonial Locations Still Selling Groceri

Post by rt22306 »

myrose wrote:My sister (who loves to cook) use to live with me - but moved out 12 years ago ... in 2000. Today I had this urge to clean out my kitchen cabinets. Imagine my surprise when I ran across a bottle of sauce from "Big Star." I had forgotten that we had that store here in Lumberton, NC. No one seemed to remember where it was located. So I went to Ask.com and ended up on this message board. This is pretty cool. Thanks for helping me to remember that Big Star was in the old K-Mart shopping center. I wonder how long ago it closed? I purchased my home here in Lumberton in 1999. I've included an image (or attempted to). Talk about going way back --- wow. I really must do something about purging my home of old items!!! As an educator, it has truly been hard for me to let things go. I always figured there would be a way to re-purpose a given object.
As I remember, that Big Star operated until the late 1980's (I moved in 1988); the K-Mart moved to its new spot near I-95 roughly about that time. I think it was vacant for a while before Bo's reopened it. Growing up, my mother used to go to different stores most of the time (whoever had a better sale on) but usually it was to the old A&P in North Elm, or what used to be Swain's Supermarket. Our grandparents lived nearby, and we children would be dropped off...some times we had a little change and could go to the old Tastee Freez on Pine Street. In the '70s, she usually went to the old Food World next to Nichols' (in part due to it being close to the KFC, where she'd usually get that evening's dinner).

I'm not sure how their archives are, but The Robesonian may be of some help in pinning dates down better.
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