Madison, Wisconsin chain grocery/supermarket history
Posted: 20 Jun 2018 20:43
I lived in Madison, Wisconsin from 2012 to 2017. I had a dispassionate and tortured relationship with the city, and never mustered up the enthusiasm to do much local history research while I was there. I hate to leave a place undocumented, however...so here's a CSV that may be of interest for the site: Madison Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1921-1985.
From a supermarket standpoint, Madison is interesting. Its history is more chain-dominated than that of other upper midwest cities, and virtually every chain that had a presence in Wisconsin (A&P, Copps, Cub Foods, Kohl's, Kroger, National, Pick 'n Save, Piggly Wiggly, Red Owl, Sentry...) operated there at one point or another.
Getting the data was a bit interesting. Like David, I have consortial access to online directory archives...but the Madison directories cut off after 1960, leaving a huge swath of history uncovered. Making matters worse, all the post-1940s directories were incomplete, often cutting off halfway through the alphabetical section and leaving threads dangling!
Fortunately, I discovered that I had run off copies of the grocery classified listings from 1950, 1972, and 1985 city directories in the midst of a library trip years before! I was then able to reconstruct the other missing chunks of data by combining 1955 and 1956 directories, and by relying on period newspapers for 1960 Kroger and Piggly Wiggly location lists. The data is in fairly good shape now...
From a supermarket standpoint, Madison is interesting. Its history is more chain-dominated than that of other upper midwest cities, and virtually every chain that had a presence in Wisconsin (A&P, Copps, Cub Foods, Kohl's, Kroger, National, Pick 'n Save, Piggly Wiggly, Red Owl, Sentry...) operated there at one point or another.
Getting the data was a bit interesting. Like David, I have consortial access to online directory archives...but the Madison directories cut off after 1960, leaving a huge swath of history uncovered. Making matters worse, all the post-1940s directories were incomplete, often cutting off halfway through the alphabetical section and leaving threads dangling!
Fortunately, I discovered that I had run off copies of the grocery classified listings from 1950, 1972, and 1985 city directories in the midst of a library trip years before! I was then able to reconstruct the other missing chunks of data by combining 1955 and 1956 directories, and by relying on period newspapers for 1960 Kroger and Piggly Wiggly location lists. The data is in fairly good shape now...