St. Thomas, ON chain grocery/supermarket history, 1925-2019
Posted: 07 Jul 2019 10:42
Another day, another list:
St. Thomas, ON chain grocery/supermarket history, 1925-2019
St. Thomas is a bit bigger than Woodstock and Stratford, and it completes the ring of smaller cities around London (since I doubt that directories for Strathroy or Ingersoll ever existed).
St. Thomas' downtown is clustered around the historic streetcar strip of Talbot Street, and Talbot Street makes up two-thirds of the addresses on the list! Even today, all of the city's supermarkets are within a block or so of Talbot, although they've migrated eastward to the outskirts of the city.
Some other interesting finds, notes, and take-aways:
* Chain development in St. Thomas predictably followed the progression in other nearby cities: Dominion entered by 1925, A&P and Loblaws followed by 1930, and all of them consolidated multiple neighbourhood stores into a single city supermarket by 1945.
* Strangely, A&P was listed in the 1930 directory, but no locations were given. The line printed in the book says only this: "A & P Stores Ltd, gros"
* Loblaws played the name game it's so prone to do by rebranding a recently-opened Loblaws Superstore as Zehrs around 1990.
* A new Food Basics store opened this year on the same site as an older A&P, and the exterior of the store is decorated with historical images. (None of which are of supermarkets, unfortunately.)
* The newer the St. Thomas directory, the less accurate its listings are. The 2012 book gave "Sobeys" and "Price Chopper" parallel listings at the same address...an address that was doing business as Fresh Co. by August of the same year. The 2012 book also listed an older Zehrs location as still being open, even though Google Maps imagery proves that the store in question had closed and been replaced by a Real Canadian Superstore several blocks away by 2009!
St. Thomas, ON chain grocery/supermarket history, 1925-2019
St. Thomas is a bit bigger than Woodstock and Stratford, and it completes the ring of smaller cities around London (since I doubt that directories for Strathroy or Ingersoll ever existed).
St. Thomas' downtown is clustered around the historic streetcar strip of Talbot Street, and Talbot Street makes up two-thirds of the addresses on the list! Even today, all of the city's supermarkets are within a block or so of Talbot, although they've migrated eastward to the outskirts of the city.
Some other interesting finds, notes, and take-aways:
* Chain development in St. Thomas predictably followed the progression in other nearby cities: Dominion entered by 1925, A&P and Loblaws followed by 1930, and all of them consolidated multiple neighbourhood stores into a single city supermarket by 1945.
* Strangely, A&P was listed in the 1930 directory, but no locations were given. The line printed in the book says only this: "A & P Stores Ltd, gros"
* Loblaws played the name game it's so prone to do by rebranding a recently-opened Loblaws Superstore as Zehrs around 1990.
* A new Food Basics store opened this year on the same site as an older A&P, and the exterior of the store is decorated with historical images. (None of which are of supermarkets, unfortunately.)
* The newer the St. Thomas directory, the less accurate its listings are. The 2012 book gave "Sobeys" and "Price Chopper" parallel listings at the same address...an address that was doing business as Fresh Co. by August of the same year. The 2012 book also listed an older Zehrs location as still being open, even though Google Maps imagery proves that the store in question had closed and been replaced by a Real Canadian Superstore several blocks away by 2009!