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.

Thriftimart - The Tall T

Burning bright above the L.A. Basin at dusk were the red, 40-foot tall "T's" - the iconic logo of the late, great Thriftimart supermarket chain. A fondly-remembered sight of Angelenos (and selected San Diegans and Vegas-ites), these gigantic signs emerged on the local landscape through the 50's and 60's.

The company that would eventually be named Thriftimart, Inc. was created in 1930 when a group of former A&P managers headed by Roger Laverty, Sr. purchased a company called Fitzsimmons Stores, Ltd. (the name the company would bear until well into the 1950's). In its earlier years, the company grew through acquisitions, including the 9-store "Thriftimart" and the 17-store Roberts Markets chains in the 1940's. In 1955, the company purchased the Smart & Final Iris Company, which at the time was strictly a wholesale operation.

By 1961, the company had over 60 stores and had renamed itself after its famous trademark. This photo is circa 1965.

Alpha Beta - The Early Acme Years

In the early 1960’s, a number of interesting trends took hold in the grocery industry. First, the progression (which began in the 1940’s) towards ever larger footprints for new stores continued at an intensified pace. Most new stores built in the early sixties were at least 15,000 square feet, with many upwards of 20 or even 30,000. Secondly, supermarket chains began to diversify into new businesses – including drugstores, general merchandise discount stores, quick-service restaurants and other ventures not directly related to their original business.

A third major trend that several large supermarket chains participated in was an expansion into far-flung territory through buyouts of other chains. Some examples are the 1964 merger of Boston-based Star Market into Chicago’s Jewel Tea Company and the purchase of the Los Angeles-based Market Basket chain by Kroger the previous year. Both of these acquisitions established their parent companies in new territory, far from home. Both parent companies, in these cases, wisely chose to maintain the original name and identity of the organizations they purchased.

Philadelphia-based American Stores Company, with a history dating back to 1917, was a major player on the East Coast, with 789 Acme Markets located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington D.C. by 1961. In January of that year, American (the company would change its name to Acme Markets, Inc. in 1962, and then revert to its original name in the mid-70’s) became a bi-coastal operation with its purchase of La Habra, California based Alpha Beta Food Markets, a 51-store grocery chain with a devoted customer base throughout Southern California. The new subsidiary was renamed Alpha Beta Acme Markets.

At the time Alpha Beta was acquired by American Stores, the company was aggressively expanding (as were most SoCal area chains) through the construction of new stores and major renovation of many existing stores, a policy that would continue under Acme. Many of the “streamline moderne” facades that were standard issue for AB through the forties and fifties were giving way to a new mid-century modern look – mosaic tile and aggregate facings with gold-anodized mesh screens hanging from the front awning. Alpha Beta’s mascot “Alphy” was given a place of honor on huge neon (or backlit, in some cases) signs that towered above the stores.

Pictured here are three stores from the early Alpha Beta Acme years – Harbor Avenue/Costa Mesa, La Mesa (San Diego) from 1964, and La Habra from the following year.