Vornado to the West

The old adage “Go West, young man” has applied for generations not only to people but to businesses as well. For many retail chains, once they achieved a measure of success in their home markets, becoming a coast-to-coast operation became their burning goal. Oftentimes, as history has shown time and time again, this has proven to be extremely difficult to achieve. By the mid 1960’s the Two Guys department store chain was a dominant force throughout its geographic market, and their parent company, Vornado, Inc., was ready to make their move.

In July 1967, Vornado announced its intention to merge with Southern California-based Food Giant Markets, Inc. Only ten years had passed since Food Giant’s founding, and by that time the chain had grown to include 69 supermarkets, 14 Unimart membership discount stores, and 14 Builders Emporium home centers. Food Giant also owned Meyenberg Milk Products and its subsidiary, Foster’s Freeze, a 200-plus store franchised ice cream shop operation. The existing Food Giant management remained in place, with their top two executives taking seats on Vornado’s board.

Almost immediately, there were problems. Profits from the new West Coast operation were less than expected, creating a drag on the entire company. Trading stamps were dropped in favor of a discount pricing approach, offending many loyal customers. Well known local brands were replaced with those from the Two Guys stores, which of course were largely unfamiliar to California customers. Steps were taken to correct the problem, including replacement of the Food Giant leadership with Vornado veterans from New Jersey. At the same time, changes were made to the Unimart stores, including dropping furniture lines (yet curiously adding carpet departments), and remerchandising along the lines of the Two Guys approach. New Unimart units constructed by Vornado would be of a much larger footprint, another similarity to Two Guys. Eventually, even the Unimart name would be discarded in favor of the name “Two Guys”.

Ultimately, these measures fell short, leading to a decision to sell the supermarkets to various buyers in the very early seventies. Vornado’s West Coast discount stores were sold to Fed-Mart in 1977.

The photos above are of a typical Food Giant and Unimart as they appeared at the time of the 1967 buyout.

A Tale of Two Guys

A familiar sight in Eastern Seaboard cities from the 1950’s through the very early eighties, the Two Guys discount store chain was founded in Harrison, New Jersey by a pair of brothers, Herbert and Sidney Hubschman, with a single 600 square foot store in 1946. The brothers soon established a reputation for selling radios, televisions and household appliances at razor-thin margins, much to the consternation of their competitors, one of whom dubbed them “Those two b@5#@rds from Harrison”.

Choosing to wear the putdown as a badge of honor, the Hubschmans adopted a sanitized version of it as their company name. The company was legally known, in fact, as “Two Guys From Harrison, Inc.” until 1959 when they acquired O.A. Sutton Corporation, a manufacturer of electric fans, air conditioners and heaters, who would become a major supplier to Two Guys and eventually to other chains as well. Sutton’s fan product line had the flashy-sounding name of “Vornado”, which became the name of the combined entity. The store moniker had been shortened by this time to “Two Guys”.

Through the 1950’s into the early sixties, the company built ever larger stores, averaging between 135,000 and 190,000 square feet by 1964. The stores initially had leased soft goods departments in addition to the core appliance and electronics offerings, along with a large supermarket area. By the mid-60’s, Vornado had taken over most of the leased departments and ran them as in-house operations. The company was early to join the trend towards building near controlled-access highways, standard practice for those that followed, right up to today’s Wal-Mart Supercenters.

In 1964, Vornado told a New York Times reporter that they would no longer include supermarket departments in new Two Guys stores (though in actuality they did on several more), citing poor profitability in food operations. Two Guys’ arch-competitor E.J. Korvette was plagued with a similar problem, and would ultimately decide to dump food stores altogether. Ironically, Vornado would purchase a supermarket chain on the West Coast, Food Giant, in 1967.

Sadly, by the end of 1964, both Hubschman brothers were no longer part of the “Two Guys” organization. Sidney resigned from the company in November, 1963, and Herbert, company chairman at the time, passed away in September of the following year.

The photos, showing a typical Two Guys store exterior and several department views are from 1962.

Many thanks to Steve, who identified this store's location as on Rt. 10 in East Hanover, NJ and sends the following memories:

After a closer examination of the "TWO GUYS" main entrance photo, I can say that the store was located in East Hanover, NJ.

I remember shopping there many times as a kid and that to the right of the store was the attached liquor store. (You will see blue panels about waist high where the car is parked in front, with a man standing by an open car door.) Over the doors window panels read "BAR" "BEER" "SODA". That’s where my Dad would take me to buy Brookdale soda.

To the left of the main entrance there is another length of blue panels, where the shopping carts where kept. Notice there are automatic side doors as in the front. The liquor store did not have the automation doors.

The interior photos look to be from the same store as I remember.

For a short time my Dad used to work at the liquor store part time. The store had a separate entrance from the Main Store. I don't believe it was affiliated with "TWO GUYS" in any way.
Your picture of the Grand Union Meat Dept. looks identical to the Two Guys Meat Dept. I can remember those diagonal 2 way mirrors! They also use to slide open for the butchers to load the display shelves below.

One thing not mentioned is that TWO GUYS had a Lumber Dept. building located on the highway before the main store. The building had a fire back the early-mid 70's and a new one was built next to the main store. The original Lumber Dept. store was gutted and made into a Goodyear Tire Center. Too bad though the building was demolished 2 months ago and I don't know what's being built now.The buildings are still there along with Vornado Warehousing in the back.

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Safeway's Windmill?

This photo (from 1963, location unknown) is intriguing to me for a couple of reasons – first, because it shows the “March of Progress” – a classic 50’s Safeway about to realize its destiny as a parking lot for the brand-new, gleaming Safeway/Super S store seen under construction in the background. On the new store, the plastic insert for the round, red “S” logo isn’t even installed yet!

Secondly, because of the famous Van de Kamp’s windmill sign on the pylon of the older store. Out of the many vintage Safeway photos I’ve seen, this is a first. As anyone who grew up in pre-1970 Southern California knows, the windmill signs were a fixture (literally) of grocery store facades all over the region. Vons, Thriftimart, Market Basket, A & P (before they cleared out of L.A. in the early 60’s), Food Giant and many others all featured Van de Kamp’s bakery departments and thus sported the familiar sign. In the couple of vintage film clips I’ve seen of them, the windmill blades really did turn, though I’m not sure if it was purely from the wind or with the assistance of a small electric motor.

I’ve always assumed that Safeway did their own baking for their stores. If someone knows the backstory on this, please let us know!

(Thanks to the sharp-eyed PFS reader who identified this store's location - at the corner of 3rd and Vermont in L.A. - now a Vons.)