Last updated on 30 April 2025.
Pennsylvania chain with distinctive store designs. Over-expansion and aggressive competition drove the chain out of business in the mid-1970s. Not affiliated with Penn Traffic, owner of Big Bear.
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Article:
The following article is from Philadelphia Magazine, circa 1978, and contains an extensive history of Penn Fruit, particularly its final years. Alas, I cannot remember who sent me the article, nor do I have the specific date/issue of the magazine.
article quite good i have the mag from back then. my dad and i delivered fresh french bread to them. one big downfall was the joint bread ,roll and cake bakery they joint owned with horn and hardart.they were starting to decline penn bought pantry pride and overextended. they were the largest supermarkets store size in the 1960s in philadelphia
Thanks for reproducing the whole article, it’s great to have a detailed history from someone who was so closely involved with the business.. The article is from the July, 1977 Philadelphia Magazine.
As a young boy, I loved going to the Penn Fruit with my father every Saturday. The expansive facade, soaring roofline, and cavernous inside fascinated me.
The store was founded by my great uncles, Morris and Isaac Kaplan, along with their friend, Sam Cook. My father, their nephew, was groomed to be in the business, and was a VP in his 30s; we lived near their new headquarters in NE Philadelphia. My father was computerizing their inventory system in the 60s, and took me as a child to the giant computer room with the tape machines and card punch readers. He saw that they couldn’t compete with the larger chains like A&P and Shop-Rite as a medium sized chain, and lobbied for changes that his uncles, old school men that didn’t know how to translate their earlier success to a modern competitive environment didn’t want to accept. He left in the mid-sixties, predicting their demise, which came 10 years later.
My dad was Don Atkins, who began in payroll after WWII and he liked Sam Cooke. Dad left in 1964 as controller – he got as far as a gentile could get in the company and was passed over once too many times. He landed a better job as Treasurer of a growing supermarket chain in the Midwest to show them how to grow without overdoing it as Penn Fruit did. Your father must have known my dad as the chain-smoking accountant in the NE Philly headquarters.