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Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 1891Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | in
Headquarters | , United States |
Number of locations | 159 [1] |
Key people | Tom Lofland (President) |
Products |
|
Parent | Independent (1891–1917) American Stores (1917–1998) Albertsons (1999–present) |
Website | acmemarkets |
Acme Markets Inc. (stylized as ACME Markets) is a supermarket chain operating 161 stores throughout Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, the Hudson Valley of New York, and Pennsylvania and, as of 1998, is a subsidiary of Albertsons, and part of its presence in the Northeast. It is headquartered in East Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania, near Malvern, a Philadelphia suburb.
Acme Markets has 162 supermarkets [2] in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland.
After many decades of being the largest grocery retailer in the Delaware Valley, Acme fell to No. 2 behind ShopRite in 2011. [3] As of 2013, Acme was No. 3 behind No. 1 ShopRite and No. 2 The Giant Company in the region. [4]
Irish immigrants, Samuel Robinson and Robert Crawford, founded what is now Acme in south Philadelphia in 1891. [5] In 1917, Robinson and Crawford merged Acme Markets with four other Philadelphia-area grocery stores, including English immigrant S. Canning Childs New Jersey–based American grocery chain; the new company was named American Stores. In 1927, smaller rival Penn Fruit began operating in Philadelphia's Center City. In the late 1920s, supermarkets under the American Stores banner rapidly sprouted throughout the Philadelphia region, rivaling New Jersey–based A&P, which then featured downtown stores throughout the East Coast, and as far west as New Orleans. American Stores first introduced self-service stores in shopping centers in the early 1950s.
In 1961, the American Stores company acquired southern California's Alpha Beta chain of supermarkets. Many of Acme's stores in the 1960s and 1970s were paired with a regional drugstore chain, a PLCB liquor store (in Pennsylvania), a Kmart, or Woolco (earlier centers had a Woolworth), and in rarer cases a department store such as Sears or JCPenney. American Stores also bought the Philadelphia franchise rights to the then fast-growing restaurant chain Pizza Hut in 1968. Acme would also acquire a number of stores from Kmart Foods (as did A&P, Safeway, and Kroger); however, in the late 1970s, many recently closed 1950s-era supermarkets in Philadelphia and close suburbs were reopened as independents IGA or Thriftway/Shop 'n Bag. Starting in the 1980s, these independents were overtaken by family chains Genuardi's (later acquired by Safeway and now defunct) and Clemens (also defunct) along with Giant-Carlisle and Giant-Landover in newer suburbs, and modernized Acme, Super Fresh, and Pathmark stores in the city and older suburbs not long after.
From 1978 to 1982, Acme acquired many stores during Food Fair's bankruptcy, including both ex-Food Fair (by then known as discount grocer Pantry Pride) and Penn Fruit units. The bulk of these dated to the 1950s. The former Food Fair/Pantry Pride stores were replaced by or remodeled into stores with the standard Acme prototype of the 1970s, as were many expanded A-Frame buildings and a few former Pathmark (these were former ShopRite) stores. Former Penn Fruit buildings, with their trademark barrel roof, could not be adapted to this model. Even many A-Frames were replaced by the often older but larger acquired stores.
In the early 1970s, Acme introduced a discount chain, Super Saver, in an effort to compete in densely populated areas. [6] Both chains had the slogan "Acme and Super Saver - you're going to like it here!" The brand Super Saver was retired in the 1980s, only to be resurrected in the 1990s in the West. Some isolated stores retained the signage into the early 1990s, however.
American Stores were sold in 1979 to the Skaggs Companies which took the American Stores name, moving its headquarters to Salt Lake City. Also in 1979, American Stores announced that it would be closing most of its stores in New York state. In the 1980s, American Stores undertook various acquisitions (including Chicago metropolitan area chain Jewel Food Stores) which ran the Jewel-T chain; it operated in many former urban Acme buildings. In 1995, Acme sold 45 stores in northeastern Pennsylvania to Penn Traffic. [7] American Stores was acquired by major Western and Southern chain Albertsons in November 1999.
In 2006, Albertsons' supermarket holdings were bought by Cerberus Capital Management and SuperValu and divided between the two companies, with Acme going to SuperValu. In 2013 Cerberus, which was operating the Albertsons stores it owned under the name Albertsons LLC, agreed to purchase Acme from SuperValu.
In July 2016, it was announced that Albertsons had entered into a purchase agreement with Ahold and Delhaize Group to replace a Giant store in Salisbury, Maryland as part of the divestiture of stores to gain clearance from the Federal Trade Commission for the impending Ahold/Delhaize merger. The store was rebranded under the Acme banner in September 2016. [8]
Acme is the third-largest food and drug retailer in the Delaware Valley, [3] where it competes with such chains as Ahold's Giant-Carlisle, Giant-Landover, Food Lion, and Stop & Shop; Wakefern Food Corporation's ShopRite; Walmart and its warehouse club subsidiary Sam's Club; BJ's; Costco; natural/organic products retailer Whole Foods Market; Wegmans Food Markets; Trader Joe's and Aldi; and various smaller chains. Acme was the regional sales leader in the Philadelphia area for decades, and only lost its lead to ShopRite in 2011.
Acme offers online grocery shopping [9] for orders that can be picked up at the store. Before 2009, Acme also delivered to customers through online orders. In 2004, Acme introduced self-checkout stands, where shoppers could scan and bag their own groceries; however, many stores (including acquired stores - see below) have had their self-checkouts removed in an effort to expand customer service. In 2008, many Acme stores began adding hot food bars to the deli section.
In July 2015, Acme's competitor A&P announced it would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in three years and ceasing operations after 156 years. A&P began placing many of its stores up for auction shortly thereafter, and Acme placed bids on 76 of them, eventually taking the leases to 71 stores in all from A&P's namesake brand and its subsidiaries Pathmark, Waldbaum's, Superfresh, and The Food Emporium. [10]
Albertsons Companies, Inc. is an American grocery company founded and headquartered in Boise, Idaho.
Pathmark is a supermarket brand owned by Allegiance Retail Services, a retailers’ cooperative based in Iselin, New Jersey, USA. Pathmark currently has one location in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, which it has operated since 2019.
Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, delicatessen, floral and pharmacy, as well as Starbucks coffee shops and fuel centers. It is a subsidiary of Albertsons after being acquired by private equity investors led by Cerberus Capital Management in January 2015. Safeway's primary base of operations is in the Western United States, with some stores located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern Seaboard. The subsidiary is headquartered in Pleasanton, California.
Weis Markets, Inc., or doing business as Weis and stylized as weis, is an American food retailer headquartered in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. It currently operates 200 stores with over 23,000 employees in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, Virginia, and Delaware.
The Stop & Shop Supermarket Company, known as Stop & Shop, is an American regional chain of supermarkets located in the northeastern United States. From its beginnings in 1892 as a small grocery store, it has grown to include 406 stores chain-wide.
ShopRite is an American retailers' cooperative of supermarkets with stores in six states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
SuperValu, Inc., was an American wholesaler and retailer of grocery products. The company, formerly headquartered in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, had been in business since 1926. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of United Natural Foods (UNFI).
Shaw's and Star Market are two American supermarket chains under united management based in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, employing about 30,000 associates in 150 total stores; 129 stores are operated under the Shaw's banner in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, while Star Market operates 21 stores in Massachusetts, most of which are in or near Boston. Until 2010, Shaw's operated stores in all six New England states, and as of 2021 Shaw's remained the only supermarket chain with stores in five of the six, after it sold its Connecticut operations. The chain's largest competitors are Hannaford, Market Basket, Price Chopper, Roche Bros., Wegmans, and Stop & Shop. Star Market is a companion store to Shaw's, Shaw's having purchased the competing chain in 1999.
SuperFresh is a supermarket brand owned by Key Food Stores which operates in New York City and its New Jersey suburbs. The company currently operates twenty supermarkets.
Super Saver Foods was an American price-impact grocery franchise. It was owned by Albertsons LLC. It was a no-frills grocery store where the customers bagged their own groceries at the checkout.
American Stores Company was an American public corporation and a holding company which ran chains of supermarkets and drugstores in the United States from 1917 through 1998. The company was incorporated in 1917 when The Acme Tea Company merged with four small Philadelphia-area grocery stores (Childs, George Dunlap, Bell Company, and A House That Quality Built) to form American Stores. In the following eight decades, the company would expand to 1,575 food and drugstores in 38 states with $20 billion in annual sales in 1998.
Genuardi's Family Markets L.P. was a chain of supermarkets located in the Northeastern United States. The store was family-owned. In 2000, it was purchased by Safeway. Its headquarters was in East Norriton Township, Pennsylvania in Montgomery County.
The Giant Company is an American regional supermarket chain that operates in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia under the Giant and Martin's brands. It is a subsidiary of Ahold Delhaize, and headquartered in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. As of September 2020, the company operated 190 stores, 133 pharmacies, and 105 fuel stations. The chain also provides online shopping and delivery to New Jersey through Giant Direct.
Giant Food of Maryland, LLC is an American regional supermarket chain with 166 stores located in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. It is a subsidiary of Ahold Delhaize, and headquartered in unincorporated Prince George's County, Maryland, near Landover.
Farm Fresh Food & Pharmacy is a supermarket chain with four independently owned stores, all of which are in Virginia. At its peak, Farm Fresh called itself "Virginia's Grocery Store" because it had stores spanning the state. Its headquarters were located in Virginia Beach and its largest presence was in the surrounding Norfolk/Virginia Beach metropolitan area. The company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based SuperValu. On March 14, 2018, it was revealed that parent company, SuperValu, would be selling 21 stores to Kroger and Ahold Delhaize. Currently, three Farm Fresh stores remain in operation under different ownership.
AppleTree Markets was a supermarket chain in Texas formed in 1969 when Safeway opened its first stores in Houston, which were spun off under the AppleTree name in 1988. The division once had 100 stores in Greater Houston and Greater Austin. By January 21, 2002, AppleTree had reduced its holdings to two stores in Bryan, Texas, where it had shifted its headquarters. One of the remaining locations was sold in 2009 and the final location, in Bryan at Highway 21 and Texas Avenue, closed in early 2012, marking the end of the chain.
Clemens Markets was a supermarket chain in the Philadelphia area, founded in 1939. It was family-owned from the founding of its first store in Lansdale, Pennsylvania to the sale of the company in 2006.
Stop & Shop/Giant-Landover was a combined supermarket chain owned by the American subsidiary of the Dutch retailer Ahold. The company took its form in 2004, after Ahold decided to combine the operations of its New England–based Stop & Shop chain with its Landover, Maryland-based Giant Food chain to create the largest supermarket company in the Mid-Atlantic States. Giant's headquarters relocated in Landover, Maryland, and Stop & Shop kept their headquarters in Quincy, Massachusetts. This combination failed, as Mid-Atlantic market area shoppers grocery needs did not align with those of Stop & Shop's offerings. In 2011 the two companies were separated and now operate independently. The separation of Stop & Shop/Giant-Landover, also brought the separation of the Stop & Shop Supermarket into two separate operating divisions, Stop & Shop-New England and Stop & Shop-New York. Both Giant Food and Stop & Shop's two divisions continued to share the same fruit basket logo until 2018 when Stop & Shop reintroduced their stoplight logo.
Philadelphia is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region of the United States. Philadelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. Five Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the city. As of 2021, the Philadelphia metropolitan area was estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479 billion, an increase from the $445 billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth largest U.S. metropolitan economy. Philadelphia was rated by the GaWC as a 'Beta' city in its 2016 ranking of world cities.