The Three Faces of Lucky

In 1959, Lucky began to expand upon their basic 20,000 square foot grocery store footprint with the opening of the first “Lucky Discount Center”, a new concept which added a variety of non-food items – clothing, small appliances, outdoor products and more in combination with their regular supermarket departments. Many of the Discount Centers featured liquor and pharmacy departments as well. These stores ranged from roughly 30,000 to 65,000 square feet.

The following year, Lucky purchased the forerunner of their Gemco membership store division. Lucky proceeded to open several more Gemcos through the ensuing years in their California market, eventually expanding in the later 60's and into the 1970's to Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Maryland, Virginia, Texas and the metropolitan Chicago area. In the eastern states and Chicago, the stores were operated under the slightly different name “Memco”. These stores sold the above-mentioned items, along with greatly expanded apparel offerings plus several leased operations – including shoe, jewelry and automotive departments, gas stations and snack bars, a cleaners and an optometry shop. The Gemco and (and later Memco) stores averaged 100 to 110,000 square feet.

These photos show nice examples of each of the three faces of Lucky. They date from 1966, a year in which the chain grew to 166 standard supermarkets, 18 discount centers and 11 Gemco stores.

Late Fifties Lucky

By the late 1950's, Lucky had moved away from the use of gigantic pylons and the classic Loewy look and began to employ a wide variety of interesting designs, including this great "zig-zag" from Livermore, California in 1959. The "three squares" theme, however, continued to appear from time to time in modified form.

Thanks to Scott of the great BIGMallRat site for identifying the location of this store - "2930 Pacific Ave., which was the site of Nob Hill Foods up until recently. At some point, Lucky's moved downtown. Nob Hill came in and added onto the building and the exterior was remodeled (the entire shopping center was remodeled)".

Lucky Stores 1950's - Three Squares

I've often wondered if the famed 65-foot tall Lucky Stores pylons, designed by the great Raymond Loewy, were meant to signify "three square meals a day". The materials for subject meals, of course, were available at everyday low prices from your friendly neighbor - the local Lucky supermarket. Oh, well. Someone please fill us in if you know the story.

Raymond Loewy was arguably the preeminent industrial designer of the 20th century, having designed everything from the famous WWII era Lucky Strike bullseye cigarette pack, to the Pennsylvania Railroad's streamlined steam locomotives to Evinrude outboard motors. By the 1960's, the Loewy firm seemingly had a hand in everything - automotive design, consumer products design and of course, retail store design. In effect, everything we retro-nuts love today. In 1947, Lucky Stores commissioned Loewy to design a new store prototype, as a Time Magazine article put it, "to see if barnlike, depressing super markets can be imbued with some beauty”. A Wall Street Journal article called the design “ten years ahead of its time”, a phrase used to no small extent in the chain’s press releases.

These new stores were a far cry from the chain's early stores. Lucky Stores, Inc. was founded in 1931 as “Peninsula Stores, Ltd.” with the assumption of (Piggly Wiggly founder) Clarence Saunders' grocery stores - in Burlingame, San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto and San Jose. By 1935, seven more stores had been added, including the company’s first stores in the East Bay, in Berkeley and Oakland.

The photo above was taken circa 1953-56. 1956 was a banner year for Lucky, in which the company entered new geographic markets through the acquisition of three chains – thirty-two Cardinal stores in the Sacramento area, six Food Basket stores in San Diego and ten Jim Dandy stores in L.A., through a merger with Dolly Madison International Foods. Lucky also built nine new stores that year.

I’m not sure of the location of the store pictured, but it very strongly resembles the McHenry Shopping Center Lucky store which opened in 1953 in Modesto, as pictured in a newspaper photo at the time of opening. It shares major design elements (although the arrangement varies) with many other Luckys of the period, including Palo Alto’s Alma Plaza Lucky, the subject of a heroic, yet sadly failed preservation effort.

Every Day's A Special Day

One more look at Thriftimart for now, this time a set of great interior views. These 1964 photos are from a brand new Thriftimart, which was located at 4030 Centinela Avenue in Culver City, California. I love the shield above the liquor department. Must have focus-grouped yellow tones for this one.

Thriftimart Class of '63

By the early 1960's, some new Thriftimarts featured toned-down "T's", possibly owing to zoning or cost reasons. Even so, the stores provided very nice examples of mid-century modern supermarket design, as these photos of new units from 1963 attest. The first photo is of a Santa Ana store (1308 Edinger Street), the second is from 1117 Los Angeles Ave., Simi Valley.