These are the latest blog updates. Click on the title to read the full article.
More regular updates can be found on the Twitter Feed and the Message Board.
Message Board Offline
The message board is currently offline due to hacking attempts and repeated issues with spiders and bots that have taken its content down several times in recent months.
I will work to restore it as quickly as possible, or at least to get a read-only archive in place. I cannot, however, say how soon that might happen. I do have a database backup made today (6 January 2020) so all the content has been saved; it’s just not accessible right now.
Older content can be seen at the Internet Archive.
Today’s strange coincidence
I visited Charlotte this afternoon because I needed a quick change of scenery and I had some errands I could just as easily do there.
While driving around, I snapped a photo of this former A&P on Freedom Drive, which I often do when I’m in the area:
I came home and got started looking at some old video from 1999.. It turns out I was also in Charlotte exactly twenty years ago today (on a visit home from San Francisco, where I lived at the time) and just happened to shoot video of this same former A&P for what was then the very new Groceteria.com:
So there you have it: the oldest and newest pictures I have of the former A&P on Freedom Drive, coincidentally shot exactly twenty years apart to the day.
I’m not sure when the tree burst forth from the asphalt…
The “official” anniversary
Groceteria.com began its life as a freestanding website twenty years ago today, following the foreshadowing contained in blog post on another site four months earlier.
Originally, the site was more about specific chains and photos, and the location lists were limited to a few cities in California (where I lived at the time) and North Carolina (where I was born and raised and where I currently live). I added a message board early on and upgraded it significantly in 2007. The blog came in 2005. By 2009, I had moved the site into WordPress and also scrapped the “Did you bring bottles?” tagline, which referred to the question supermarket checkers used to ask when you bought soft drinks in the days of returnable bottle deposits.
Unfortunately for the site (but fortunately for me) I began a new career as an academic librarian in 2009, and the site languished to some extent as I got settled in my new position and eventually became a tenured faculty member who gets to work on things like this. Starting around 2014, I began to focus on the site again, but turned my attention more toward documenting locations in individual cities over time. This had been a feature since the beginning (San Francisco was the first) but it eventually became the primary focus for me. Earlier this year, the location list for Wilmington, Delaware marked the moment where every U.S. state and Canadian province was represented on the site.
Over the years, I’ve done a surprising amount of press based on the site, from neighborhood newspapers to major dailies, to NPR stations. I’ve been featured in both Progressive Grocer and Supermarket News. I’ve been cited in any number of academic articles, theses and dissertations, and National Register applications. In fact, I have far more citations based on this site than I probably ever will on anything I do in my actual academic career, which frankly amazes me.
For the record (and for those of you who want to see it in the Wayback Machine), the site didn’t have its own domain name in the beginning. That came a year later, and I was only able to obtain Groceteria.net. I scored Groceteria.com in 2003 when its previous owner abandoned it.
And I’ve met a lot of really interesting people, heard a lot of great stories, and had an amazing time over the past twenty years. Working on this site has taken me to cities and neighborhoods and libraries I might never have seen otherwise. In many ways, the site was also responsible for an entire new career for me as my work with digitized resources and websites made me realize that libraries were where I needed to spend my days, creating the very types of resources I’d been using.
Thanks for stopping by. It’s been fun. Stick around and I hope it will continue to be.
Message board down
UPDATE: Things seem to be OK for now.
The message board is currently offline while I deal with some very problematic Chinese bots. No ETA on when it will be back online. Maybe tonight. Maybe not.
More updates. More additions.
Again, lots of new additions and updates to the location lists. I’m also slowly adding additional material (clippings, photos, other documents) to existing pages.
If you’re not following on Twitter or accessing the Message Board, you’re not getting these as quickly as you could be!
Recent additions:
- Alameda County CA (new section, more to come)
- Athens GA Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1923-2015
- Barrie ON Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1927-2019
- Lindsay ON Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2019
- Orillia ON Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1927-2019
- Owen Sound ON Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1968-2019
- Rapid City SD Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1930-2015
- South Bend and Mishawaka IN Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015
- Sudbury ON Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2019
- Thunder Bay ON Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1975-2019
- Toledo OH Area
- Wilson NC Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015
Recent updates:
- Beckley WV Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1929-2010
- Boise ID Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015
- Dearborn MI Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1930-1988
- Miami FL Area
- Missoula MT Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015
- Montgomery Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015
- Portland OR Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1932-1987
- Reno/Sparks NV Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015
- Salem OR Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1930-1988
- Sioux Falls SD Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015
Chain store density in 1930
Interesting bit of quick research I put together about the number of chain stores per capita in some American cities in 1930. I was inspired to do this as I started working on the Detroit listings. It seemed to me that there was an inordinately high store count relative to the population, and when I compared Detroit with several other large cities, I realized I was right. Of my semi-random sample, only Atlanta and Washington had higher per capita numbers of chain stores (defined here as companies that had three or more locations) in 1930.
This is unscientific and a not very controlled “quickie” but I may do more detailed research on this over time, because I find it pretty fascinating. It wouldd be interesting to dive into the “why” at some point as well.
City |
Chain Stores (1930) |
Population (1930) |
Per 100000 People |
276 |
270366 |
102.08 |
|
485 |
486869 |
99.62 |
|
1499 |
1568662 |
95.56 |
|
706 |
900429 |
78.41 |
|
509 |
669817 |
75.99 |
|
427 |
573076 |
74.51 |
|
473 |
804874 |
58.77 |
|
167 |
301815 |
55.33 |
|
395 |
772337 |
51.14 |
|
318 |
634394 |
50.13 |
|
191 |
399746 |
47.78 |
|
132 |
287861 |
45.86 |
|
373 |
821960 |
45.38 |
|
155 |
458762 |
33.79 |
New additions and upcoming things
Recent additions:
There have been some major urban areas added over the past two months as well as some smaller cities and towns:
- Wichita KS Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1920-2015
- Kansas City MO Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-1992
- St Louis MO Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1933-1975
- St Thomas Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2019 (via Andrew Turnbull)
- Brainerd MN Chain grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1927-1959 (via Andrew Turnbull)
- Woodstock ON Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1926-2019 (via Andrew Turnbull)
- Sault Sainte Marie ON Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2019 (via Andrew Turnbull)
- Port Huron MI Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-1992 and 2019
- Muskegon MI Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1930-1997 and 2019
Recent updates:
- Abilene TX Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1926-2015
- Dallas TX Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1928-1986
- Lincoln NE Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015
- Green Bay WI Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2004 (via Andrew Turnbull)
- Ypsilanti MI Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1928-2019 (via Andrew Turnbull)
- Ann Arbor MI Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2019 (via Andrew Turnbull)
Upcoming:
- I’ll be doing a roadtrip to Detroit, Toledo, and Windsor later this week, which will result in research and pictures. Follow @GroceteriaWeb on Twitter to keep up (and to get site updates a LOT quicker).
- I’m in the process of adding links and random materials all over the site. A major photo upgrade is still on the way as well.
- The Queue: Upcoming additions.
It was twenty years ago today…
On 5 July 1999, this store at 647 Irving Street, which I mistakenly believed might have been the first Safeway in San Francisco, became the first bit of chain grocery history I featured on the web (albeit at a different website) thereby launching what would become Groceteria.com a few months later — and indirectly launching my career as a librarian as well.
Here’s the specific quote:
Last, how many people know (or care) that the humble store on Irving Street pictured above was most likely the first Safeway store in San Francisco, way back in 1927? Even better, how many people will believe me (or care) when I say that there used to be Piggly Wiggly stores here in the 1930s?
I’d ventured to the San Francisco Public Library a few weeks earlier to look at city directories and satisfy my curiosity about the history of Safeway stores in the city where I lived at the time, and my surprising and fascinating discoveries led me to do research on the locations of all chain grocers in San Francisco. I then started taking pictures, eventually started doing this research in other cities, and an obsession was born. Now in its twentieth year, the website — which didn’t go live until 8 November 1999, so I guess I get to celebrate another twentieth anniversary in a few months — documents cities in all fifty U.S. states and all ten Canadian provinces.
Incidentally, I also found myself working in libraries so much and accessing digitized materials that I eventually decided I wanted to make providing access to historical materials my life’s work as well, so ten years later I found myself with a master’s degree and a new career. The latter put the site on the back burner for a few years, but once I got tenure, I returned with a vengeance.
Anyway, thanks for hanging around so long!
More new stuff
Updates coming fast and free (literally) and as always you can see them more quickly via Twitter:
Major updates:
- Anchorage AK
- Phoenix AZ
- Redding CA
- Honolulu/Oahu HI
- Grand Rapids MI (includes new archival material and location updates)
- Columbus OH (includes new archival material with more to come)
- Spokane WA
New pages: