A grocery store (AE), grocery shop (BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, and is not used to refer to other types of stores that sell groceries. In the UK, shops that sell food are distinguished as grocers or grocery shops.
Piggly Wiggly is an American supermarket chain operating in the American Southern and Midwestern regions run by Piggly Wiggly, LLC, an affiliate of C&S Wholesale Grocers. Its first outlet opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, and is notable for having been the first true self-service grocery store, and the originator of various familiar supermarket features such as checkout stands, individual item price marking and shopping carts. The current company headquarters is in Keene, New Hampshire. A total of 499 independently owned Piggly Wiggly stores currently operate across 18 states, primarily in smaller cities and towns.
Golub Corporation is an American supermarket operator. Headquartered in Schenectady, New York, it owns the chains Market 32 and Price Chopper Supermarkets. The company opened its first supermarkets in New York's Capital District in 1932, and changed its name from Central Market to Price Chopper in 1973. Also, In the 2010's the Golub Corporation announced that they would be converting all 131 stores Price Chopper locations into Market 32 locations. On June 2, 2010, Price Chopper dedicated its new headquarters, on Nott Street, in Downtown Schenectady. It operates 131 stores in six states: Upstate New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
Wakefern Food Corporation is an American company that was founded in 1946 and is based in Keasbey, New Jersey. It is the largest retailers' cooperative group of supermarkets and the fourth-largest cooperative of any kind in the United States. Wakefern was the largest private employer in New Jersey in 2018, with 40,200 employees. As of 2021, Wakefern has fifty member companies who own and operate 362 supermarkets, under the brands of ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer, Dearborn Market, Gourmet Garage, and Fairway Market in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
IGA, Inc., is an American chain of grocery stores that operates in more than 41 countries. Unlike the chain store business model, IGA operates as a franchise through stores that are owned separately from the brand. Many of these stores operate in small-town markets and belong to families that manage them. It was founded in the United States as the Independent Grocers Alliance in 1926. The headquarters is in Chicago, Illinois.
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.
Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc. (AWG) is the United States's largest cooperative food wholesaler to independently owned supermarkets and grocery stores. It serves more than 4,000 locations in 36 states and from 8 full-line wholesale divisions. The consolidated run-rate sales for AWG is close to $10 billion. In addition to its cooperative wholesale operations, the company also operates subsidiary companies which provide certain real estate and supermarket development services, digital marketing services, and is a wholesale supply provider of health and beauty care, general merchandise, specialty/international foods and pharmaceutical supplies. It was founded in 1924 as Associated Grocers of Kansas City and is based in Kansas City, Kansas. Associated Wholesale Grocers distributes four private-label brands of grocery products, Best Choice, Clearly Organic, Always Save, and Superior Selections along with IGA.
Affiliated Foods is a grocery wholesaler. It was founded by the 1968 merger of South Plains Associated Grocers of Lubbock, Texas and the Panhandle Associated Grocers of Amarillo, Texas, and is a retailers' cooperative serving Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Panhandle Associated Grocers was founded in 1946. The company has 700 member stores.
Associated Grocers of Maine was a retailers' cooperative serving independent supermarkets in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, USA. It was founded in 1953 and was a member of Retailer Owned Food Distributors & Associates. It distributed Shurfine products in its stores. It went into receivership on April 26, 2011.
Grand Union Supermarkets, later known as Grand Union Family Markets and often referred to simply as Grand Union, is an American chain of grocery stores that does business in upstate New York and Vermont, and used to do business throughout most of the northeastern United States. It operated stores in other areas of the country including the midwestern and southeastern states, and internationally in the Caribbean and Canada. The company was founded and headquartered in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and moved to Brooklyn, New York in the early 20th century. Grand Union moved again to Elmwood Park, New Jersey and finally to Wayne, New Jersey before the company was forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2001 and sold to C&S Wholesale Grocers.
Foodtown is a northeastern United States supermarket cooperative founded in 1955 by Twin County Grocers in New Jersey. Currently, there are 66 Foodtown stores in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and eastern Pennsylvania. Foodtown's corporate offices are located in Iselin, New Jersey.
C&S Wholesale Grocers is a national wholesale grocery supply company in the United States, based in Keene, New Hampshire. In 2021 it was the eighth-largest privately held company in the United States, as listed by Forbes. C&S owns the Piggly Wiggly grocery brand, which is independently franchised to store operators, the Grand Union (supermarket) brand, as well as several private label brands, including Best Yet.
Hannaford is an American supermarket chain based in Scarborough, Maine. Founded in Portland, Maine, in 1883, Hannaford operates stores in New England and New York. The chain is now part of the Ahold Delhaize group based in the Netherlands, and is a sister company to formerly competing New England supermarket chain Stop & Shop.
Morton Williams Supermarkets, founded in 1952, is a family-owned and operated food retailer with sixteen stores in the New York City Metropolitan area.
Belle Foods, LLC was a family-owned chain of American supermarkets headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. The company had a relatively short lifespan. It began operating its rebranded Bruno's and Food World and Piggly Wiggly Stores on July 1, 2012, but filed for bankruptcy just one year later. Before owners Bill White and Jeff White purchased the stores from Southern Family Markets in mid-2012, the 57-store grocery chain employed approximately 3,000 people.
The Fresh Grocer is a supermarket chain based in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania that operates thirteen stores in the Greater Philadelphia region of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Founded in 1996 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as an independent company, the company became a member of the Wakefern Food Corporation, a retailers' cooperative, in 2013.
