It’s a good article (and not just because it cites me, thank you) about the history and future of Canadian supermarkets by food writer Corey Mintz. I’ll inclue the part that feeds my ego, but you should read all of it.

In the early twentieth century, there was no such thing as a one-stop shop for food. “You’d go out in the morning to the grocery store, for canned goods and bulk stuff,” explains David Gwynn, a librarian at the University of North Carolina and a supermarket historian. While there, you would speak with a shopkeeper to obtain your items; they filled your order behind the counter, weighing out dried goods from barrels. Customers would know the shopkeepers by name—and, often, vice versa. Other kinds of foodstuffs required trips to separate shops as part of this daily ritual: butchers and fishmongers, greengrocers and bakeries. These stores were much smaller than the ones we’re used to—maybe 1,000 square feet or less, says Gwynn—and were everywhere in our cities.

Transformed by a childhood visit to an old A&P, Gwynn is a grocery obsessive who maintains ­groceteria.com, a database of US and Canadian supermarkets past and present. Want to know the years that the Piggly Wiggly at 384 Academy Road in Winnipeg became a Shop-Easy (1950) and then a Tom Boy (1961)? Gwynn has answers. His vacations always include visits to older stores, ­ancient outlets like Pay’n Takit treated like ­houses of worship.

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

Atlanta

276

270366

102.08

Washington

485

486869

99.62

Detroit

1499

1568662

95.56

Cleveland

706

900429

78.41

Pittsburgh

509

669817

75.99

Buffalo

427

573076

74.51

Baltimore

473

804874

58.77

Portland OR

167

301815

55.33

Newark

395

772337

51.14

San Francisco

318

634394

50.13

Kansas City

191

399746

47.78

Denver

132

287861

45.86

St Louis

373

821960

45.38

New Orleans

155

458762

33.79

Read it here: Krogering in Greensboro.

As a companion to my recent feature on the history of local A&P branches, I have just added a new photo essay detailing the story behind every Kroger location in my hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, from the first in 1952 to the mass exodus in 1999.