Page 2 of 3

Re: old store brands

Posted: 23 Jul 2008 17:46
by runchadrun
klkla wrote:That sounds similar to Knudsen. Weren't they 50% owned by Hughes Markets and 50% owned by Stater Bros at one point? I think this happened after Kraft bought them out but spun off the SoCal milk operation.
Kraft and Hughes bought them in 1986 after Knudsen filed for Chapter 11. Their milk plant was located at 1965 Santee Street and the milk operation at some point was renamed Santee Dairy. Stater Bros bought out Kraft's interest in 1987. Kraft kept the non-milk side of the business.

Stater Bros bought out the Santee operation outright using the windfall from the 2003-2004 strike, buying out Kroger's 50% stake, which they picked up from the Hughes/Ralphs/Fred Meyer merger. The company is now Heartland Farms but they license the Knudsen name.

Re: old store brands

Posted: 24 Jul 2008 00:15
by Brian Lutz
runchadrun wrote:
Brian Lutz wrote:By any chance, would these products be related to the Jerseymaid milk that is sold at Target stores??
Vons phased out the Jerseymaid name in favor of Lucerne about 5-6 years ago but Safeway has been using their Lucerne Foods division to reuse some of its historic brands to sell to third parties. For example, I've seen Crown Colony OJ at the 99 Cents Only store that looks exactly like the OJ they sell at Vons. If you look at the milk and the name is Lucerne Foods or has an address in Pleasanton (PO Box 99--how sad is it that I know that?) then that's the case.

I would have to look to see when Vons bought out Kroger's interest in Jerseymaid, but I'm guessing it wasn't long after Market Basket pulled out of Socal in 1982.

My Target sells Swiss Dairy (an independent dairy) and Market Pantry, a Target brand.
Sure enough, I went over and took a look, and the Jerseymaid products do in fact show as being distributed by Lucerne Foods. I don't think the Target store sells any store-brand (Market Pantry) milk here, and since there's a Safeway dairy plant (as well as a soda bottling plant, industrial bakery and distribution center) just a few miles from here in Bellevue, I'd imagine that's probably the most convenient source they have for it.

Image

I grabbed a photo of the Jerseymaid packaging being used. I don't know how this compares to the original packaging used in Vons stores though, but it seems reminiscent of some of the older Lucerne branding (I can't be certain of that though, since I don't shop at Safeway all that often these days.)

Re: old store brands

Posted: 24 Jul 2008 01:41
by jamcool
klkla wrote:Another now extinct chain (or will soon be when their final store in Hollywood officially becomes a Gelson's in a couple of weeks) was Mayfair Markets. Their house brand was "mayfresh".
Mayfair switched to Springfield in the few years before they went kaput. El Rancho, which was Mayfair's AZ division, used Springfield as its house brand in the 1980s

Re: old store brands

Posted: 24 Jul 2008 11:13
by Daniel
I seem to recall the milk maiden being used on Jerseymaid cartons in the mid 80's. The only old Lucerne packaging I recall was the cartons with the big "L" and the flower on top of it.

Re: old store brands

Posted: 25 Jul 2008 17:03
by klkla
jamcool wrote:
klkla wrote:Mayfair switched to Springfield in the few years before they went kaput. El Rancho, which was Mayfair's AZ division, used Springfield as its house brand in the 1980s
Sort of.... as the company grew smaller and smaller they no longer had the buying clout to get good deals on some products and started using Cergro's Springfield line more and more. But even as they got down to 25 or so stores they still kept the Mayfresh brand on some high volume items like paper towels, canned vegetables, eggs and some other dairy items. They also had a private label in liquor they kept but I can't remember the name.

Re: old store brands

Posted: 28 Aug 2008 01:56
by klkla
klkla wrote:They also had a private label in liquor they kept but I can't remember the name.
Was digging through some old papers today and found a Mayfair ad that listed 8 stores in Orange County from the mid 70's (has the logo introduced in 1976 but the exact date is cut off). Included in the ad was "Royal Occasion" Tequila and Whisky... both for $3.99! That's the damned name I couldn't remember: Royal Occasion.

I had some interesting stuff that I had forgotten about:
a) Mayfair Market ad for the Seattle area in 1973 (15 locations)
b) Market Basket corporate store list from 1981 (65 locations)
c) Mayfair Markets corporate store list in 1986 (22 stores in CA and NV)
d) Mayfair Markets ad from mid seventies Los Angeles area (31 stores)
e) Pantry Markets corporate store list with no date (assuming late 80's) with 11 stores

Re: old store brands

Posted: 23 Feb 2009 17:43
by Dean
runchadrun wrote:
Brian Lutz wrote:By any chance, would these products be related to the Jerseymaid milk that is sold at Target stores??
Vons phased out the Jerseymaid name in favor of Lucerne about 5-6 years ago but Safeway has been using their Lucerne Foods division to reuse some of its historic brands to sell to third parties. For example, I've seen Crown Colony OJ at the 99 Cents Only store that looks exactly like the OJ they sell at Vons. If you look at the milk and the name is Lucerne Foods or has an address in Pleasanton (PO Box 99--how sad is it that I know that?) then that's the case.

I would have to look to see when Vons bought out Kroger's interest in Jerseymaid, but I'm guessing it wasn't long after Market Basket pulled out of Socal in 1982.

My Target sells Swiss Dairy (an independent dairy) and Market Pantry, a Target brand.
Noticed that the 99 Cent Only Store is carrying LUCERNE FOODS' Busy Baker bread items.

Safeway had a spice factory next to their corporate offices in the Bay Area. Is it still there?

Re: old store brands

Posted: 24 Feb 2009 10:50
by runchadrun
Dean wrote:Noticed that the 99 Cent Only Store is carrying LUCERNE FOODS' Busy Baker bread items.
I saw 1-liter bottles of Cragmont ginger ale and tonic water at the 99 Cent Only Store over the weekend. Of course the label said it was from Lucerne Foods.

Re: old store brands

Posted: 21 Mar 2009 08:59
by mike t. whittier ca
I remember a brand that the Ralphs Grocery store carried. It was called the plain wrap brand,the packaging on the products were white with a light blue stripe around the product. They stocked many products under this brand label, the best selling item under that brand was the vodka. You could find just about anything under that label.

Re: old store brands

Posted: 11 Aug 2009 16:03
by Dean
Notice 99 Cent Only Stores is carrying JERSEYMAID milk...made by Lucerne.

Re: old store brands

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 19:49
by TJguy
runchadrun wrote:I also remember the ads with the singing cows: "All us cows/do our best/for Jerseymaid"

Jerseymaid's plant opened in 1936 at 1040 West Slauson in South LA and it closed after the 1992 riots. Jerseymaid later became part of a joint venture of Vons/Shopping Bag, Market Basket, Thriftimart/Fitzsimmons, and a small chain called Alexanders in order to avoid state-imposed dairy price controls. In 1962 Vons owned 32% and Thriftimart owned 22%.

Sometime betwen 1985 and 1990 Vons took complete control of Jerseymaid after all the other chains disappeared.
When Von's bought Safeway's Southern California division in the mid '80s the Boxford Street (City of Commerce) dairy plant was part of the acquisition and the production eventually moved over there.

TJ Guy

Re: old store brands

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 21:58
by Larcor
Hi Bud, Being one of those old-timers, I would like to offer the following regarding
the definitions of grocery labels in the fifties, sixties and seventies.

PRIVATE LABEL: This was a product that was made by a manufacture to the exact
specifications of the retailer. ie Lucky Detergent. This product also would have
wording such as "Distributed by Lucky Stores, Inc. Buena Park, California".

Controlled Label: This product was produced by a manufacture for the exclusive
use of a particular retailer. ie: Market Basket's Pet's Pride Cat Litter. "Distributed by
Panamint Earth Corp. Anaheim, California". This item could only be sold by the
Market Basket Grocery Company.

House Label: This product was made by a particular manufacture who sometimes
had a nationally recognized and heavily advertised label, but wanted to compete
with a non-advertized item available at a lower price. ie Kitty Korner Kat Litter
"Distributed by Pyrotronics Corporation., Anaheim, California. This item was available
to all retailers.

Manufactures Label: This of course was a national advertized product ie: Tide Detergent,
"Distributed by Proctor & Gamble, Cincinnati, Ohio

Hope this helps when discussing these categories.

Larry Corbett

Re: old store brands

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 21:00
by Buckethead
Anyone know the story behind the yellow generic brand of the 70s-80s? Obviously these items were name brand products disguised as generic, best example being the bags of cookies being Grandma's cookies but I was curious who actually ran the operation.

Re: old store brands

Posted: 18 Dec 2011 00:56
by jamcool
The "generics" era was the time of double-digit inflation, they were supposedly even cheaper than the store brand and were basically slightly lower in quality than the store brand. There was even a generic "beer" which was made by the infamous Falstaff brewery

Re: old store brands

Posted: 20 Dec 2011 21:51
by Bearhawke
jamcool wrote:The "generics" era was the time of double-digit inflation, they were supposedly even cheaper than the store brand and were basically slightly lower in quality than the store brand. There was even a generic "beer" which was made by the infamous Falstaff brewery
I remember the 'generic' craze as well.........it was dying out by the beginning of the 1980's.............