Groceteria.com is a site about the history of American and Canadian urban chain grocers from the 1920s through the present, with an emphasis on buildings and locations.
- Places: The geography of chain grocery retailers in the U.S. and Canada since the 1920s.
- More history: Brief histories and related material about a very few selected chains.
- Methodology: What I study and how this all works.
- About the site: More about the history of supermarkets, your humble host, etc.
- Message board: Discuss.
- Bluesky: Updates and random thoughts.
What’s new?
Updates, testing, and other things
I haven’t really left the house much this weekend, not wanting to multiply the evil effect pollen has had on me this year. That said, I probably would have risked leaving the house for a 25th anniversary sale at Safeway in Vancouver. Plus it seemed like time to move the April Fool’s gag out of the top position.
So you get updates. You’re welcome.
Page layouts:
After almost a year, I have finally finished my project to re-format all the location lists on the site (which took longer than I planned). For the past ten-plus years, these pages were generated with a Google spreadsheet in an IFRAME. This simplified lots of things for me but also had some negatives. To start, it was absolutely horrible on mobile devices. Also, since the sheets were externally hosted by Google, none of the data showed up when you searched this site. Both of those problems are now solved. And for those of you who would rather see the lists in tabular format (which really is the best way unless you’re on a phone) you can still view them in Google Sheets, as a CSV, or as a PDF.
If you’re interested in geeking out and learning how I (sort of) automated this using OpenRefine, let me know!
Search options:
Another thing I started on quite a while back was adding a function to search both the main site and the message board simultaneously. This is harder than it sounds; these are two different platforms (WordPress and phpBB) using two different databases. There are plugins and paid options to cross-search, but I’m cheap (and don’t receive any compensation from the sites) so I opted for a Google-based option that I had used before. I finally have them reasonably well implemented on both sites. I have not (yet) replaced the traditional search functions on either; the Google option is an additional search box while I’m still testing and tweaking. Let me know how it works for you!
Latest updates:
Since March:
WEO!
The Key Food cooperative, which purchased the Superfresh and Food Emporium tradenames during A&P’s bankruptcy announced today that it will also be resurrecting the A&P WEO brand on selected stores to better compete with Aldi and Lidl.
This news comes exactly one year to the day after last year’s relaunch of the Pay’n Takit banner by Albertsons/Safeway.
Message board issues
I’m seeing significant message board outages over the past few days, probably stemming from bot intrusions. I can’t tell you when or if the situation will improve. I have a support ticket filed with the hosting provider, but this can’t really be my top priority right now. I’m sorry for the inconvenience; this is happening on so many sites now and this is apparently the price we have to pay for all that AI slop.
What’s semi-new?
Since it will soon be Daylight Savings Time and I’ll be too much of a zombie to type… New additions since December: Santa Maria CA… Back from my annual road trip to Southwestern and Southern Ontario and other places along the way. This trip included one of my periodic runs… Just a quick list of recent additions (which you’ll see quicker on Bluesky or in the Message Board: Fort Worth Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-1991 Slidell…
All updates…