A&P Goes to War!

Probably not the war you’re thinking of, although World War II fits in at roughly this point in the timeline. No, this was a war of A&P’s own – one that started earlier and ended much later.

As far back as the mid-1920’s, there were grumblings about the growing power of “the chain stores”. Most of this concern, understandably, was on the part of independent grocers, who by the mid-1930’s were looking at a full third of their potential market going to one competitor – A&P. Predictably, it wasn’t long before politicians on a variety of levels took notice. As a result, throughout the 1930’s, over half of the individual states passed laws regulating the operation and expansion of chains, and in nearly all cases a “chain store tax” was levied for good measure. By necessity, A&P took these as they came, complying quietly in nearly all cases.

As far as A&P’s business was concerned, they had weathered the Depression far better than most companies. Their aggressive pricing policies accounted for one reason, but another key factor was George L. Hartford’s insistence on short-term leases for all A&P stores. Very short term, in fact – the typical A&P store lease was for one year with nine one-year renewal options. In later decades this policy would come back to bite A&P in a big way, costing them many prime early shopping center locations, but the flexibility it gave the company to close or relocate unprofitable stores was an asset in the darkest days of the 1930’s.

Another development was the conversion to supermarkets. Faced with upstart competition from the likes of Michael Cullen, a former A&P employee who had started a chain of giant, self-service food stores called “King Kullen”, and others, it became evident to John Hartford that A&P would have to jump into the fray in order to remain competitive in their key New York/New Jersey markets and elsewhere. After considerable egging on by his brother, George Hartford, the conservative one who controlled the purse strings, agreed to a 100-store experiment with the newfangled supermarkets in 1936. Success soon caused the experimental number to be upped to 300. Before long, the “experimental” designation was dropped altogether, and supermarkets became the way forward for A&P.

In early 1938, according to the 1970 Progressive Grocer A&P Study, while supermarkets constituted just 5 percent of their store base at that point, they were contributing 23 percent of sales and nearly half of the company’s profits. As author William I. Walsh points out in his history of the company, “The Rise and Decline of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company”, although A&P didn’t come up with the supermarket idea, the fact that the company opened the first supermarkets to be seen in many locales often led people to credit A&P with the concept.

Further adding to the excitement, A&P decided to enter the publishing business. For some years the company regularly issued an illustrated giveaway recipe booklet, called simply “Menus”, but would now introduce a full-fledged women’s magazine, to be entitled Woman’s Day. The decision was spurred on in part by the success of another magazine, The Family Circle, which was then reaching nearly 1.5 million households through five major grocery chains, according to an October 1937 Time article. A&P’s new magazine would carry “menus and home hints”, but “no fiction or film gossip as does Family Circle”, according to Time. Twenty years later, A&P would sell the magazine off to an independent publisher, who made it available to all grocery outlets and other retailers. Of course, Woman’s Day and Family Circle remain staples of supermarket checkouts everywhere, alongside some distinguished longtime competitors and some shall we say “less uplifting” publications. (Personally, I miss the “Weekly World News”. You just can’t find solid news reporting anymore!)

On a more somber note, the “anti-chain store movement” was rapidly growing in intensity by the late 1930’s. By this time, the movement had an official face. Congressman Wright Patman, a firebrand who was aptly nicknamed “the fighting Democrat from Texas”, had taken the issue up as his personal crusade, and his sights were set directly on the good old A&P. In 1936, he had won passage of the Robinson-Patman Act, still a cornerstone of U.S. commercial policy today, which essentially prohibits manufacturers from selling the same item at different prices to different entities, in effect leveling the playing field for smaller retailers who are unable to purchase at the volume level of their larger competitors. (I’m massively oversimplifying this, for space reasons. And in the interest of keeping you awake.)

Two years later, Patman introduced a new bill to curb the influence and spread of chain stores, (accurately) nicknamed the “Death Sentence Bill”. The centerpiece of the bill was a national chain store tax of $1,000 per store, but “with a final clincher”, as the Progressive Grocer study put it – “the total tax would be multiplied by the number of states in which the chain operated”, a provision that would have meant utter devastation for A&P. The numbers in A&P’s case would have added up to a half a billion dollar tax for the company for 1937 – 60 percent of total sales and a mere 6,000 percent of profits. Bye, bye Tea Company, along with Safeway, Kroger, Woolworth and host of other household names. Even cooperative organizations such as IGA would have been under threat, according to the study. Fortunately, Patman’s bill never made it out of committee.

It wouldn’t remain quiet for long, however. In the early 1940’s, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division filed two landmark lawsuits against A&P, one in Dallas in 1942 and a second in Danville, Illinois, in 1944. For the second suit, the list of charges filled ten pages, which Progressive Grocer condensed to a page and a half and I’ll further boil down to a few lines (This is “Web 2.0”, right? Whatever the heck that means.) as follows. The main points of the lawsuit alleged:

· That A&P purposely ran stores at a loss to drive out competition.
· That A&P held a “partial monopoly”, because of “illegal” practices in manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing.
· That A&P was able to obtain preferential allowances and discounts in violation of the Robinson-Patman Act.
· That A&P took profits from its manufacturing plants and used them to subsidize its retail stores.
· That A&P’s produce subsidiary, The Atlantic Commission Company, which sold to other chains as well, dominated or controlled markets, overcharging or selling inferior products to competitors.

A&P lost the case and a subsequent appeal, eventually agreeing to pay a $175,000 fine and to dismantle the Atlantic Commission Company. The judge who handled the case still had words of praise for A&P: “To buy, sell and distribute to a substantial portion of 130 million people (the U.S. population at the time) one and three-quarters billion dollars worth of food annually, at a profit of 1.5 cents on each dollar, is an achievement one many be proud of.”

Yet it wasn’t over. In September 1949, less than a year after the previous case finally ended, the Attorney General of the United States filed a new lawsuit – this time calling for no less than the Breakup of The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Rumors were floating that the government was proposing a plan to split A&P into seven separate regional companies. (For those of you who are at least my age or maybe a few years younger, this may “ring a bell”. Get it? Ok, I’ll stop.)

A&P had used advertising to a limited extent in their previous struggles to help rally public opinion to their side. Exasperated that they were facing this situation yet again, they declared an all-out P.R. war this time around. In late 1949, a series of full-page newspaper ads were taken out in (according to Time Magazine) some 1,800 papers across the country, laying out A&P’s side of the story in painstaking detail.

By far, the most intriguing of these ads appeared on November 11, 1949, featuring testimonials from several of the company’s competitors, undertaking an impassioned defense of A&P. “Who hollered for Uncle?” “We Agree With A&P” “We Don’t Want the A&P Put Out of Business”, and so on, followed by detailed explanations of their positions. The motivations were wide-ranging –including a genuine respect for A&P as a major food supplier for millions, and concern for their tens of thousands of employees. Several of them started their careers with A&P before striking out on their own, the sentimental ties still evident. And then there were the objections on principle – as a “threat against our system of free enterprise”, a threat to growth aspirations of their own. Or perhaps the objections stemmed from a sense of being exploited, regardless of the potential financial gain for them should A&P go down.

The strategy worked. Before long, letters began pouring into Washington D.C. from hundreds of consumers, upset that the government was threatening to mess with “their A&P”. It soon became evident that a majority of people were convinced that the government’s case against A&P lacked merit. The case slowly faded away, ending in 1953 with a consent decree that called for a handful of wholly inconsequential changes at A&P.

Sadly, the one person who no doubt did the most to help A&P weather these storms passed away before their final legal victory. At age 79, John Hartford was still as active as ever, running A&P along with his brother and sitting on a number of other corporate boards. On September 20, 1951, Hartford collapsed and died moments after attending a Chrysler Corporation board meeting in their famous namesake building in New York City. It would be years before the full magnitude of the loss to A&P, in terms of ingenuity, judgment and fine-tuned empathy for the customer, would be completely realized.

At least now, though, A&P was finally free from all of the legal distractions and could chart its own destiny again.

The photos above are all from Chain Store Age, and from top to bottom, show – an unknown exterior from 1941, the meat counter from the Rockville Centre, Long Island, NY store from 1937, an exterior view from Birmingham, Alabama in 1939, an interior from Pittsburgh in 1937, exterior and interior views from Asbury Park, New Jersey (Or is that Granada I see? No, just Asbury Park.) in 1937, and finally two views of another Birmingham unit from 1939, from the Five Points shopping center, with Scott 5 and 10 next door.

Pictured below are John and George, the brothers Hartford, in contrasting styles of dress and matching Bakelite telephones, as photographed for Life Magazine in 1949. Two of the 1949 ad campaign newspaper pages can be seen in the background. (Thanks to Richard of the great Viewliner Ltd. site for the tip on the Google Life Magazine archives. Some fine stuff there!) Lastly, for your reading pleasure, are the two ads pictured behind the Hartfords. Click to enlarge and read.

From Mayfair to Murphy's Mart

Seven long years after their largest variety store competitors had launched discount store formats, S.S. Kresge’s Kmart and F.W. Woolworth’s Woolco, the G.C. Murphy Company was now in the thick of planning for a discount store venture of its own. The following year, 1970, the first two “Murphy’s Marts” would open.

One of the most interesting aspects of Murphy’s planning, as detailed in the book “For the Love of Murphy’s” by Jason Togyer, was the process of selecting a name for the new line of stores. A number of different possibilities were considered along the way, including “M-mart”, which was rejected quickly, presumably due to its obvious similarity to Kmart. Then there was “Murphy’s Merchandise Mart” which could be nicknamed “M-M-M” or “Three-M’s”, but that one would have risked infringing 3M Company’s trademark, which itself was shorthand for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. (I’m thinking four M’s would have been the charm – just toss “marvelous” or “magnificent” in there!) A mascot was even considered, in this case a “big lumberjack guy holding a sign that said ‘Big Murph’”, which would have been the new chain’s name. Murphy officials “didn’t go for it”, according to the book. Ultimately, the “mart” idea prevailed, and since “Murphy’s” was common parlance for the company’s stores as it was, the path of least resistance was to combine the two. “Murphy’s Mart” it would be.

Murphy’s corporate architect, Ralph Barlow, developed a very nice design for the new Murphy’s Mart’s, making excellent use of color and texture within the fairly restrictive parameters of discount store design. “Inside, he painted the marts in deep, rich shades of green, gold and orange; outside, the facades received deeply sculptured metal panels in the same bold colors” went the description in the Togyer book, which contrasted them with the “plain white Kmarts”.

The stage was set for a mid-1970 opening of the first store in Harmar Township, Pennsylvania, a “semi-rural” area north of Pittsburgh, near the Allegheny Interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike that was evolving into a suburb. The store was even named “Store #801”, signifying its status as the first Murphy’s Mart. As fate would have it, however, the Harmar Twp. location ended up being the chain’s second unit to open due to a unique opportunity that presented itself.

Three years earlier, in 1967, a giant (for the time) department store complex called Mayfair South Shoppers’ Forum had opened in Bethel Park, a south suburb of Pittsburgh. (There was also a “North” version of it in north suburban McCandless Township.) Within a couple of years, the Mayfair business failed and the large, attractive, one-story department store building (160,000 square feet) sat empty. Despite some reservations, Murphy management saw the opportunity not only to launch “the Marts” several months ahead of the original plan, but also the benefit of having coverage in two key suburban areas from the near get-go. A deal was struck to acquire the Mayfair property, the necessary renovations were carried out, and Barlow’s interior decor package was implemented. The first Murphy’s Mart, Store #802, opened in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania on May 27, 1970. Togyer’s book cites the designated grand opening giveaway for the early Marts – a plastic laundry basket (good to fill up with other stuff, no doubt!).

The Bethel Park store was unique in that it was an entire shopping complex, which according to an article in the Uniontown Morning Herald-Evening Standard article featured a greenhouse/garden center called “Arcadian Gardens”, a Firestone Tire Center and a Winky’s Drive In, the latter two of which are visible at the front edge of the parking lot. Inside the store were departments that would be common to all Murphy’s Marts, as listed in the same article – “Fashion Accessories; Fashion Apparel; Men’s and Boys’ Furnishings; Sweets n’ Eats; Music – TV’s – Photo; Writings and Wrappings; Knit n’ Stitch – Home Furnishings – Domestics; Housewares and Home Improvements; Toys and Hobbies; Tobacco Shop; Sporting Goods and Accessories. (I think I’ve used up this site’s entire allotment of semicolons in that last quote – great, I’ll probably have to pay for some “premium” version of Blogger now!) Oh, and “a full-line major appliance department (was) planned”.

Just under two months later, on July 22, the Harmar Twp. Store opened. This was the first “true” Murphy’s Mart prototype, and over the first couple of years of the banner’s existence, most of the Marts were cast in its mold. Typically, the “Murphy’s Mart” portion ranged from 80,000 to 100,000 square feet, but the buildings also contained another 30,000 square feet or so to be leased out to a “national or strong regional food chain for supermarket operations”, as the company put it in their 1973 annual report. In the Pittsburgh area, Giant Eagle was the preferred partner, and later on when the Marts entered Baltimore, an Acme Market usually rode shotgun. Other areas featured other chains – the Defiance, Ohio Murphy’s Mart, for example, was paired with an A&P.

Two and a half years after the first Murphy’s Mart opened, there were ten stores in total – eight in the greater Pittsburgh area and two in the Youngstown, Ohio area. In next few years, the pace of new openings would increase and the geographic footprint of the Murphy’s Marts would be significantly expanded. Along with that, however, would come major changes in the Murphy’s Mart format to address the tough mid-70’s American economy and to rectify some faulty assumptions the company made that only became apparent after time. They had finally made their start, though.

In a way, I think it’s a shame they didn’t go with “Big Murph”- that would have been memorable. I can envision a costumed Big Murph standing there, Disney World style, handing out laundry baskets to customers on opening day. Scary, no doubt, but memorable.

The photos above are from 1970. First is an aerial view of the first Murphy’s Mart in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, followed by one of the second location in Harmar Township. The third and fourth photos, showing excited (and a few dazed) shoppers with death grips on their free laundry baskets and a view of the checkouts are from the Bethel Park location. I believe the rest of the photos, showing various departments (note the targets in the sporting goods section, something that’s in evidence in several similar photos from other chains on this site – was archery that big back then?) are from the Harmar Township store.

G.C. Murphy - Dime Store Pioneer

From the moment of its founding in 1899 until the curtain came down nearly 90 years later, the G.C Murphy Company was first and foremost one thing – an operator of variety stores. Known colloquially as “five-and-tens” or “dime stores”, variety stores were giant forces in American retailing throughout most of the 20th century. Virtually every retail chain that sells general merchandise at “less than full price”, from one end of the spectrum (Walmart) to the other (any chain with the word “dollar” in its name) can trace part of its heritage, either directly or by influence, to the variety stores.

George Clinton Murphy was a native of Indiana County, Pennsylvania, an area located about 60 miles west of Pittsburgh, known best today as the boyhood home of actor James Stewart. Born there in 1868, Murphy would leave the area as a young man to go to work for J.G. McCrorey (the “e” was soon discarded) in McCrory’s Jamestown, New York variety store, some 150 miles north of Murphy’s hometown. Not long after Murphy joined the firm, McCrory sold Sebastian Spering Kresge, a salesman who had called on his store, an interest in the firm. Murphy was put in charge of mentoring Kresge in the business, traveling with him to Memphis to help Kresge open a new McCrory-Kresge store. Obviously, Murphy did a good job of showing him the ropes, as Kresge would later go on to become one the all-time retailing legends. In early 1899, Murphy left the McCrory-Kresge firm to start up his own store in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a town much closer in to Pittsburgh. (A few short years later, Kresge and McCrory would part ways, running their own namesake firms afterward.)

Within five years, the G.C Murphy Company would have 14 stores in the greater Pittsburgh area, all reporting to the McKeesport home base. Before long, Murphy’s ascendancy came to the attention of the then 76-store strong F.W. Woolworth organization, a company that was expanding rapidly into several major American cities (at that point mostly in the Northeast) through acquisition. In 1911, Woolworth would consolidate those many acquisitions into what would become the modern F.W. Woolworth Company, which, like S.S. Kresge Co. would become a 20th century American retailing titan. In mid-1904, Murphy sold his young chain to Woolworth, who insisted on the proviso that Murphy would not operate a five and ten cents store in their territories.

Note that the agreement said “five and ten cents store.” It did not say “five through twenty-five cents store”, which is exactly what Murphy proceeded to open, just down the block from one of his old stores that was now a Woolworth’s. Soon, Murphy’s new company had ten stores, one in downtown Pittsburgh and the rest in surrounding towns.

Tragically, Murphy would not live to see his company’s greatest successes. In 1909, he passed away suddenly at the age of 41. With no succession plan in place and a failed public offering of the stock, the company floundered for the next couple of years.

At this point, J.G. McCrory reentered the picture, at least briefly. Considering a possible buyout of the Murphy company, McCrory sent his deputy (and cousin) John Sephus “Seph” Mack to look into the possibility. Mack returned with a most enthusiastic recommendation in favor of a buyout. When McCrory balked for no apparent good reason, Mack began to formulate plans to acquire Murphy himself, enlisting the help of friend and fellow McCrory manager Walter Shaw. Of course, this would entail their resignations from McCrory, which took place in short order. In February 1911, the two men closed the deal to acquire the G.C. Murphy Company, and for the next nearly 60 years, either a Mack or a Shaw would be running the show.

Mack and Shaw had "complementary" personalities, with Mack called “the architect” and Shaw “the engineer”, according to the book “For the Love of Murphy’s”, a wonderful history of G. C. Murphy written by Jason Togyer, that serves as the source of most of the information in these Murphy posts. Mack’s hard driving personality and Shaw’s people skills made for a powerful combination that would help facilitate dramatic growth for Murphy in the ensuing years.

Murphy pursued some interesting policies that set them apart from their dime store compañeros, including the implementation of a much higher “price ceiling” in many of its stores, both literally and figuratively. As far back as the early twenties, many Murphy stores had a second floor which featured all manner of goods priced from 25 cents to a dollar, while down below the normal 5-to-10 cent price point was the rule. After some years of back-and-forth on this policy, the company was finally convinced it was a winner with customers and made it permanent, going so far as to move everything down to the main floor. By contrast, Woolworth’s price cap remained at twenty cents until 1935.

Another point that found Murphy at odds with the competition was the company’s store location strategy. Whereas Woolworth sought to establish coverage in such major markets as New York, Philadelphia and Boston, Murphy expanded their geographic base far more slowly, avoiding the “jump and backfill” approach, preferring instead to shore up their base in the industrial towns of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, long before the “rust belt” was rusty. Despite the intervention of a major depression and then a world war, these towns came through for Murphy year after year. By the mid-30’s, with nearly 200 stores in the chain, Murphy’s average per store sales and profits were far higher than Woolworth’s.

The 1940’s saw several leadership transitions within the company. Seph Mack passed away in 1940, and the chairmanship passed to his cousin Edgar Mack. Upon his death six years later, the top job went to Walter Shaw, Seph Mack’s original partner in the business. Despite these transitions, Murphy’s continued to grow, with the average store size increasing significantly through the 40’s.

In 1951, G.C. Murphy acquired the Morris 5 & 10 Cent Stores, a Bluffton, Indiana-based chain of 71 variety stores. This proved to be an excellent move for Murphy, giving them a leadership position right out of the box in Indiana, a state that adjoined their existing market area. It was timely as well, as it provided a hedge against some major labor strikes that occurred around this time near their highly manufacturing and mining-based home turf. If there was a downside to Murphy’s store location strategy, it was a particular vulnerability to strikes, which of course affected the purchasing power of their loyal, largely working-class customer base.

Another leadership change took place in 1953, when the second generation took over. Jim Mack, son of Seph Mack, had his father’s hard driving style combined with a Harvard education, but according to the Togyer book had a presence that a number of Murphy employees found intimidating. Also Mack’s philosophy was very conservative in respects that would take their toll on Murphy over time. For example, Murphy was exceedingly slow to convert to self-service. Many of their fellow variety chains (along with most major supermarkets) had already done this, and the practice was met with overwhelming acceptance from consumers. Secondly, Mack was utterly disdainful of discounting, even banning the use of the word in Murphy’s stores. In the early 50’s this wasn’t a big problem. Ten years later, with Mack still in place, resolute and attitude unchanged, it certainly became one, given the 1960’s startlingly different retail climate.

In contrast, Mack spearheaded an interesting development for Murphy – the acquisition of several chains in the Southwest, far outside of the company’s traditional operating areas. The largest was the 1959 buyout of Morgan & Lindsey, a Monroe, Louisiana based chain of 92 variety stores in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Then there were a slew of “junior department store” (along the lines of a medium-sized Penney’s, for lack of a better description) acquisitions in Texas over the next several years - Cobb’s - four stores in west Texas, Bruner’s - 28 stores in San Antonio, Morris Dept. Stores – 13 stores in Dallas, and Terry Farris, with 17 stores in McAllen, Texas, just above the Mexican border.

The latter acquisitions proved to be disastrous, due to Murphy’s lack of understanding of the nuances of the shopping culture in Texas cities, and the very different requirements of operating junior department stores as opposed to variety stores. (Wait, did I just say “nuances” and “Texas” in the same sentence? Ok, we’ll call this one a “draft”. No offense, fellow Texans!) Worse yet, many name brands that had been longtime suppliers of these chains, including such mainstays as Levi Strauss, bailed when they learned of the new ownership by Murphy. They feared that their products would somehow end up in the Murphy dime stores, as Togyer mentions in his book. Murphy elected to supply its own house brands to the stores as a replacement, including their “Big Murph” jeans (I’m really hoping there wasn’t a “Lady Murph” brand, but it takes a lot to surprise me these days!). This practice “more or less ruined (the stores)”, a former executive told Togyer.

The Morgan & Lindsey stores, being true 5-and-10’s, fared better, but there was a fair amount of animosity between longtime M & L local store operators and the McKeesport-based Murphy brass that took some years to quell. Wisely, Murphy opted to keep the Morgan & Lindsey name, probably based on their experience with the smattering of G.C. Murphy stores opened in the Southeastern states, where the company’s poor name recognition put a damper on sales.

By the late 50’s, the standard G.C. Murphy stores were well-oiled machines. Downtown stores in their core Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic markets continued to sustain the company. As with other “five and ten” chains, the store cafeterias, without a doubt among the most beloved aspects of the Murphy stores and the subject of some of the fondest anecdotes in the Togyer book, were a major source of profits and an all-important traffic driver for the stores.

This was especially true in the company’s “flagship” stores, a class that included gigantic G.C. Murphy stores on Fifth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh (“Store #12”, pictured first above) and Washington, D.C. (“Store #166", located at between Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets). The Pittsburgh store, for example, took up an entire block, and was remodeled at least ten times between 1931 and 1950 according to the Togyer book. In the 1960’s, this store was the site of a number of exciting promotions, including live in-store broadcasts by local DJ’s. Also, they leased space to a “full-time” fortune teller and all manner of other sideshows. Murphy even leased out one corner of the store a meat market. By virtue of their great locations in bustling sections of town and their well-earned “ local landmark” status, these stores were excellent performers for the chain well into the 1980’s, years after the company’s other stores began to struggle.

By the early 1960’s, however, it was another story for the rank-and-file small town and suburban G.C. Murphy stores. The discounting trend was in full swing, and the greatest pinch was being felt from their direct competitors – F.W. Woolworth’s Woolco stores, and to a much greater extent, S.S. Kresge’s Kmarts. Sensing an opening wide enough to drive a (hundred-thousand square foot discount store) through, Kresge invaded Murphy’s backyard and “erected Kmarts at all four compass points around Pittsburgh”, as Togyer puts it. Did Murphy defend their turf by opening large discount stores of its own? No. Not yet, at least.

Instead, Murphy sought to redefine the variety store concept, modernizing it to fit the changing lifestyle of the 1960’s consumer. The new stores would be called “A-A” (double-a) stores, featuring upgraded lighting and signage and bolder color schemes, but most importantly would employ a radically different approach to merchandising. Departments would be reorganized into “themed groups” to create a “boutique store” feeling, as described in the Togyer book, which describes a typical department – the “Entertainment Center”, as including “not just records, radios and television sets, but books, magazines craft supplies, musical instruments, and cameras”. The A-A stores would be larger but would actually carry fewer items than the typical Murphy store, and managers were required to ax items that fell below a certain sales threshold. Also, the A-A stores would be allowed to sell at deeper discounts than the standard Murphy stores. The bold new plan caught the attention of Chain Store Age, whose December 1967 issue consisted almost entirely of Murphy coverage. The magazine’s cover photo featured Murphy’s top executives huddled around a set of A-A store concept drawings, a banner headline excitedly proclaiming “G.C. Murphy’s On the Move Again!”

By the time Murphy had converted 10 percent of its 500-plus stores to the A-A format, they realized they had a bomb on their hands. Customers resented the fact that prices were higher at regular Murphy units than at the A-A stores, causing a public relations headache. More than that, they resented the fact that their beloved Murphy store carried far “less variety” than before. Even though the A-A stores carried more stock, they had fewer individual items (in today’s retail terminology, fewer stock keeping units or “SKU’s”). Beyond this, the A-A program offered little in the way of a panacea for the hammering the company was taking at the hands of the discounters.

Sadly, it took the 1968 death of Jim Mack, Murphy’s chairman, before the company embarked on a real solution to that problem. Unbeknownst to Mack or almost anyone else in the company, plans were surreptitiously being drawn up for a Murphy-owned discount concept. The very day after Mack’s passing, according to the Togyer book, the discount store plans came out of the drawer. The battle was about to be joined.

These are vintage G.C. Murphy publicity shots. First up is Store #12, the downtown Pittsburgh flagship, circa Christmastime 1973. Originally opened in 1930, the store was wrapped in the pictured “handsome streamlined façade” sometime in the late 40’s/early 50’s. The second photo, from 1968, shows the Annandale, Virginia store with an arcade-style facade that brings to mind some of the Memco stores that would open not far from there a few years later. Third, also from 1968, is a more conventional store from Beckley, West Virginia. Fourth, from 1973, a beautiful store with a fine colonial look from the quaint western Pennsylvania borough of Ligonier. Fifth, 1973 as well, is the interior entrance of the Monroeville, Pennsylvania store, a very inviting sight indeed. With fresh popcorn and pretzels beckoning, this one would have been hard to pass by. For sure, they knew what they were doing!

Pictured below, in 1968-dated photos, are two interior scenes from Murphy’s new “A-A” stores. The A-A concept may not have flown, but in my opinion, the designs represent a very nice updating of the variety store idea, and I particularly like the abovementioned lighting, bolder colors and modern (for the time) signage font. Immediately below is the wonderful candy department, scales at the ready.

Last is the “Entertainment Center” section, where I would have been guaranteed to waste a great deal of time. Portable record players were obviously a hot item (Sure hope the 45 adapters were built in!), and the white-framed portable television sets bring back memories. These rarely had remote control units, and I don’t believe that my family owned a TV with remote control until I was at least in high school. The silver lining to this was it gave people like me a great “hardship story” to use in the future – the modern-day version of Grandma and Grandpa’s “trudging through the snow for five miles to school every day, in worn-out shoes, uphill both ways” kind of thing. For me, it’s “Whenever we wanted to change the channel, we had to actually get up and go do it! It was horrible! You guys don’t know how lucky you are!” My kids shudder.

Then of course there was the records section, the main attraction for me from about age seven on. I’ve spent a good bit of time squinting at this photo trying to identify the album covers. (My personal area of expertise is covers of the 1970’s and 80’s, but I’m reasonably competent with the few years before and after that range. It’s too bad I couldn’t have minored in this in college – my GPA would have been greatly enhanced!) I’m embarrassed to say I’ve only been to call one so far, but it’s a great one – the 1968 blockbuster “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison”, fourth album from the far left on the top row. I’ve been a Cash fan for years - he was an artist who refused to ever let himself be bracketed. And much of his best work was done in the last ten years of his career, an enviable feat. If anyone can squint harder than me, let me know if you figure any of the other covers out!

Winter Sunset On Murphy's Mart

The sun sets on the Appalachian Mountains on a crisp, beautiful evening in early 1971. In the foreground is the Murphy’s Mart (yes, there’s an apostrophe-s in there, mind you) at Laurel Mall, which was located on Route 119 South between Uniontown and Connellsville, Pennsylvania. This store was the third Murphy’s Mart, opening on February 24th of that year.

“Murphy” of course was the G.C. Murphy Company, “The Pride of McKeesport, (Pittsburgh area) Pennsylvania” – a well-loved variety store chain with over 500 locations at the time, predominantly in the Eastern and Midwest states, but with a sizable base in the South as well, mostly due to a number of buyouts of existing chains. Murphy was a late entrant into the discounting world, having opened the first Murphy’s Mart in 1970, eight years after a couple of its main competitors, Kresge and Woolworth, jumped in. For the next twenty years the Marts would operate, with varying levels of success. Eventually most became Ames Department Stores, and eventually most of those became......er, history.

Including this one, which stands vacant today to the best of my knowledge.

But in 1971, all was bright. And this store would definitely qualify for the ever-growing list of stores I wish I’d seen in their prime. (As the sun sets after a deep snow, that is. Click to enlarge this beauty, if you haven't already.) I’m thinking of putting out bids for someone to design a time machine. Any takers?

All Together Now at Fisher-Fazio's

The Fisher-Fazio family is gathered together for this “family photo” from 1975. Even Uncle Ralph from Chicago drove in, with his bag of groceries from Dominick’s. (Just seeing that 70’s Dominick’s bag makes my arms hurt, when I think back on how many hundreds of those things I lugged from the family gas guzzler’s trunk to our kitchen back then. Definitely more good memories than bad of those days, though…) Along the wall are displays of Heritage House canned goods, Fisher-Fazio’s house brand, that were big sellers in the Ohio and Chicago stores.

Things began to unravel at Fisher-Fazio in the late seventies, with most of their divisions not faring well in the “price wars” of that era. In 1976, the company lost its number one slot in their core Cleveland area to Pick-N-Pay. The California stores, which had never really taken off under Fisher-Fazio leadership, proved to be a drain on the company’s profits and as mentioned were sold off to Albertsons that year. Within a couple of years, they would trim the sails in markets closer to home, including Youngstown and Columbus among others.

In October 1980, the company found itself in serious legal (and public relations) trouble when it was charged in a price-fixing scheme along with competitors Stop-N-Shop and First National Stores, owner of Cleveland’s Pick-N-Pay chain. Executives from the three companies, including Fisher CEO John Fazio, were indicted. Fazio received probation in 1982, and his sentence was commuted two years later. The three companies were ultimately forced to make restitution to Northeast Ohio customers, sending out coupons for $20 worth of free groceries to some one million households.

The company lost one of its major (and only) bright spots in 1981. Unhappy with Fisher's direction, Dominick DiMatteo Jr. bought back Dominick’s, the company his father founded, for nearly $100 million. By that time Dominick’s had grown to 71 stores and second place (behind Jewel) in Chicago market share.

In 1983, Cincinnati-based American Financial Corp., headed by Carl H. Lindner, purchased an interest in Fisher Foods. Lindner is a well-known Cincinnati industrialist, whose interests have included Chiquita Brands International (yep, the banana company is actually based in Cincinnati), United Dairy Farmers (a chain of dairy/convenience stores) and for a time, a major interest in the Cincinnati Reds. In 1984, Lindner’s company would buy out the Fazio family’s holdings in Fisher Foods, ending an era.

The economic difficulties – loss of manufacturing jobs, population decline, etc., which plagued the Cleveland area made for a difficult operating environment, and in 1987 American Financial decided to sell their controlling share in Fisher Foods to a group of familiar names in the Cleveland grocery industry. A new entity, named for a Bedford Heights, Ohio address - “5300 Richmond Road Corporation”, was put together by American Seaway Foods, Rini’s Stop-N-Shop and Rego’s Stop-N-Shop. In a way, the forming of this consortium was reminiscent of the process that reconstituted Fisher Foods back in the sixties. The “5300” company would fold into Riser Foods, the name of which incorporated (sort of) the first initials of the Rini, Seaway and Rego names. In 1997, Riser was absorbed into Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle.

The fabulous fazio's

By the early 1960’s, Fisher Foods was in trouble. The company began losing ground in the late 1950’s, posting a net loss for 1959. The losses would grow, topping $300,000 in 1963. By 1964, with 90% of Fisher’s stores now losing money, the company was ripe for a takeover. In January of that year, a group of Cleveland investors (which, importantly, was made up of career supermarket operators) bought shares in Fisher totaling approximately 55% of the value of the company.

The group was composed of members of the Stop-N-Shop Super Markets Association (no relation to the New England or California Stop and Shops), a Cleveland-based supermarket cooperative. Several members of the Stop-N-Shop group were previously part of another Cleveland-based cooperative, Foodtown Supermarkets, which was formed in 1948 and sold to ACF-Wrigley supermarkets in 1956. (Thanks to "Traveler" for straightening out my facts on this. See the comments section for this post for more interesting details.) The individuals leading the buyout were Carl and John Fazio and Joe Fana of Fazio’s Stop-N-Shop, Sam and Frank Costa of Costa’s Stop-N-Shop, and Seaway Foods, an Aurora, Ohio-based wholesale grocer. Joining the new management group would be Julius (Julie) Kravitz, the executive director of the Stop-N-Shop association. Interestingly, the prospective new ownership group owned only seven supermarkets between them, compared with Fisher’s over 70 stores at the time. The Fisher name would be maintained for the new corporate entity and for a time on the stores as well.

In February 1965, the group made an offer to buy out the remaining shares of the company from the Fisher, Salmon and Conway families. A stockholders meeting was set for the following month, and despite some very public objections from a few relatively small stockholders, the transaction went through. Fisher Foods had a new, energized group of leaders and a new lease on life.

Right away, the Fisher-Fazio team set about modernizing and upgrading the stores, and placing an increased emphasis on meats, deli, produce and wines. It didn’t take long for sales results to improve, and within the first year profits began to rebound as well. The company began to expand into other Ohio markets, including the Akron area, where the first Fazio’s “Family Center”, a 60,000 square foot food and general merchandise combination store, would open in 1968.

In 1968, Fisher made its first acquisition outside the Ohio market with the purchase of Chicago's Dominick’s Finer Foods, an 18-store chain with locations throughout the city and in the (mostly north) near suburbs. A family owned business with an excellent reputation and strengths comparable to Fazio’s, Dominick’s was still a relatively small player compared to Chicago market leader Jewel Tea, a still fairly strong National Tea, and a still-participating A&P, but that would change in the coming years as Dominick’s would grow tremendously, eventually taking the number-two spot in the market. Dominick DiMatteo, Jr., company president and son of Dominick’s founder, would be named a vice president of Fisher Foods.

Fisher also entered the fast food business in 1969 when it acquired a stake in Columbus-based National Fast Food Corporation, owners of the Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips chain. Famous British actor that he was, I remember ol’ Arthur best as the Constable in the movie Mary Poppins, though he played many other film roles. As part of the agreement, Fisher took over territory rights for Arthur Treacher’s in the Cleveland and Chicago markets, totaling at the time over 100 restaurants. One more company Fisher took over during the late sixties was Clabers, a seven store chain of “junior” department stores in the Pittsburgh area.

The new Fazio’s stores sported a fresh, interesting appearance that to my mind preceded the “70’s look” for the industry as a whole by at least a couple of years. In 1967, Fisher opened a 36,000 square foot Fazio's store in the new Midway Mall in Elyria, Ohio, that received very favorable reviews in the supermarket industry press and would set the style for Fazio’s stores into the next decade. This store featured a dark red brick façade, with a cedar-shingled mansard roof above the store entrance and relatively small wood-framed windows. The cedar-shingled motif continued inside the store with rooflike awnings above the delicatessen and bakery departments. Freezer cases were an elegant burnt umber, a contrast to the pastel colors that were popular in years past.

The first five photos were taken between 1969 and 1972 and are typical of the Fazio’s stores of that period. The exterior photo is extremely similar in appearance to the Elyria store mentioned above, and the interior shots show minor differences, but are fairly close as well. Some of you may remember the very 70’s Kraft “Squeez-A-Snak” tubes which are shown in the foreground of the second photo. These were among my Grandmother’s favorites. If I remember right, they came in about four or five flavors, some much less appetizing than others.

The sixth photo, from 1968, shows the entrance to the first Fazio’s Family Center in Akron, Ohio.