Grocery Stores in the Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA Area

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StoreLiker2005

Grocery Stores in the Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA Area

Post by StoreLiker2005 »

Hi Gang,

Does anyone know about how many independent, national and regional grocery store chains there were from the 1950s to the 1990s???

Simply put, I believe Fred Meyer had operated over 70 stores in Portland in the early '80s.

Benjamin (StoreLiker2005)
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tesg
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Post by tesg »

70 stores? I don't know about that. MAYBE if you counted every Fred Meyer Jeweler and every other little offshoot as a store...

The dominant brands in the seventies through nineties were:

Safeway
Thriftway (which is what most of the "Independents" really were)
Albertsons
Fred Meyer
Kienows

EDIT: I forgot about Waremart and Cub Foods (WinCo). And at least a Prairie Market or two in the seventies.

There were some others who existed on a short-term basis. I remember a chain called Food Connection for awhile, and there were a few Food 4 Less around as well.

As a child, my regular Thriftway was "Ernie's" on Walker Rd east of Cedar Hills Blvd. It became a fabric store which I assume to still be Jo-Ann Craft at 12330 SW Walker Rd. My grandmother got all her meat there, much of it custom cut by the butcher.

Seems to me that Ernie's burned once and was rebuilt.
StoreLiker2005

Post by StoreLiker2005 »

Do you know anything about Sentry and AG Foods? They were other independent food chains as members of United Grocers.

IGA was another contender in the independents, though not under UG membership. Two Thriftway stores were converted to IGAs in 1993. Both of them were run by the Dieringer family. The stores' addresses were 4242 SE King Rd. in Milwaukie (the overall shopping center opened in 1959 and is currently undergoing a major reconstruction for a Safeway) and 4515 SE Woodstock Blvd. in Portland (currently a Safeway, the latter of which moved in this 1965-dated building from its original Marina building in 1996).

--Benjamin (StoreLiker2005)
Randal

Portland grocers in the 1970s and 1980

Post by Randal »

I don't think Fred Meyer ever had more than about two dozen stores in the Portland area. They were big, though, so I was surprised when I found that Safeway's market share was larger.

You can get information about stores and market shares from the "Chain Store Guide," available at the Food Marketing Institute library in Washington DC. They are open to the public in the afternoons; best to make an appointment as their facilities are limited.

I visited the library a few years ago and collected some information about market shares in various urban areas. I did not have time to get all years and the earliest year I got was 1990. In 1990, Safeway had a 27.9-percent market share in Portland; Fred's was 17.8 percent, Albertsons 18.4, Kienows 3.7, Waremart 3.7, Danielson 3.1, Hanks 2.1, RAL 1.8, Cub 1.4, IGA 1.0, Nature's 0.6.

I don't know who Danielson (7 stores), Hanks (2 stores), or RAL (5 stores) are. Maybe one of them is Thriftway.
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Post by Super S »

There were several Danielson Thriftways in Vancouver, Camas, and Washougal, all of which have closed down in the last few years. I think Danielson no longer operates any grocery stores.
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Post by Super S »

A few people have told me about a chain called Keil's which went away during the late 70s or early 80s. How big were they?

As a side note, I was told one of the former owners of that chain owns the Fourth Plain Center in Vancouver, which is home to a Safeway that closed last year that started life as a Keil's.
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