Humbled...

Most regional areas are flooded with regional food store chains.....around here, Stop & Shop & Shaw's are the biggies, but we also have Star Market (owned by Shaw's) Hannaford's, Roche Brothers, Johnnie's Foodmaster, and Market Basket. Most if not all of those names are likely unknown to most people outside of New England, or at least the Eastern seaboard.

BTW MC....unless your enemies have a thermonuclear weapon, revealing your general location isn't harmful to your health. :bandit:

 

You're seeking privay and anonymity on the internet... how dare you! What's this online world coming to...











:laugh:

 

Perhaps it would help to pay the cable bill. Or the ISP. Or the newspaper delivery person. Or the library card. (Oh, wait, that's free.)

 

You're right. I've never heard of any of them.

 

You mean Piggly Wiggly isn't the largest grocery chain in the WORLD??? at:




Shop the pig!!! Piggly Wiggly :fest30:

 

Food Lion, Farm Fresh and Harris Teeter seem to be big in my neck of the woods. We used to have some Winn Dixies, but they closed.

There was a chain of Ukrops stores, which were AMAZING! They got bought out by Martin's, which is owned by Giant.

Personally, I always think it's fun to go to the ACME stores when we visit my wife's parents up in Delaware. One of these days I'm going to ask the Customer Service desk which aisle the black holes are in.

-Matt

 

Very cool. Thanks for taking this tongue-in-cheek!

During the Bush era they were the "internets," but they've been consolidated into one. Surf away!

 

It isn't always clear, because supermarket chains often operate under different names in different areas.

For example, the #1 supermarket chain in the US is "Kroger". That name is basically unknown on the West Coast. But "Ralphs" is the top grocery chain in southern California, everyone in the Pacific Northwest relies on "Fred Meyer", and "Food 4 Less" is probably the leading warehouse grocer throughout both California and the Northwest. And those are all Kroger operations.

 

I'm not surprised to find that there are chains I've never even heard of before. I usually go to Stop&Shop. Sometimes I go to Price Chopper and sometimes to Big Y (I don't know what the Y stands for but they give out these cute little coins that you turn back in as credits). A month or two ago I mentioned Dunkin Donuts and was surprised to find that people outside New England knew about that chain. I'm guessing that within the next 10-20 years there will be more consolidations and the world of retail foods will shrink so that many more of us are buying from the same retailer.

 

Here's another interesting trivia question:

What's the biggest grocery store company operating in the US -- if you include international operations ?

Turns out to be a funky, but rapidly growing, chain of smaller stores called "Trader Joe's". TJ's was historically associated with California, but is now expanding nationwide.

TJ's doesn't seem like a big corporate player. But in fact they are a division of Aldi, a German company that is one of the largest grocery retailers on the planet. They operate thousands of stores across Europe and Australia, as well as a growing number of TJ's in the US. Aldi is bigger than any of the largest US chains (Kroger, Safeway, SuperValu, etc). That's how you can get deals at TJ's, especially on products from Europe, that major US grocers can't match.

 

Within my (largish) driving range there is both a Trader Joes and an Aldi store,

 

Well, I just learned something then. I didn't realize that there were Aldi-branded stores in the US; I thought their only US operation was Trader Joe's. But it looks like there are plenty of Aldi stores east of the Rockies.

Further west, there are tons of Trader Joe's, but no Aldi stores.

 

Yeah, with 6679 locations, it's hard to believe anyone outside of New England has heard of Dunkin Donuts. Except for New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Quebec, there's hardly any trace of them outside of New England. Oh, and Oklahoma. Oh, and Washington. Whoops, there's Hawaii, too! Ahhh, but Alaska is free and clear.

The Shaw's in Williston, VT is great, but that's probably OT.

 

Was that 1989-1993 or 2001-2009?

 

In my part of Ohio, Aldi has stores operating under the Aldi name.

 

I had the "pleasure" of living in NC for a year. I was in Charlotte and the nearest DD was 30 miles away! The one in Charlotte shut down and never reopened. In NC/SC Krispy Kremes are all there is. Honestly, people that did know about DD (and there were not many) thought of them as "the other donut"

 

Dunkin Donuts has never been able to get a secure foothold on the West Coast. They have opened a number of test locations in CA, OR, WA, and HI over the years, but they have never succeeded. They do seem to be making it in NV and AZ.

There is currently a grand total of one DD outlet operating in California, and it's not even open to the general public. It's on a military base, and is accessible only to base personnel. It was only opened a few months ago, and is probably another "test location". It doesn't seem to be an indicator of further expansion plans: