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Jewel-Osco

Jewel-Osco is a regional supermarket chain in the Chicago metropolitan area, headquartered in Itasca, a western suburb. In 2007, the company had 188 stores across northern, central, and western Illinois; eastern Iowa; and portions of northwest Indiana. Jewel-Osco has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Boise-based Albertsons since 1999. The company originally started as a door-to-door coffee delivery service before it expanded into delivering non-perishable groceries and later into grocery stores, and supermarkets. Prior to its 1984 acquisition by American Stores, Jewel evolved into a large multi-state holding company that operated several supermarket chains and other non-food retail chain stores located from coast to coast and had operated under several different brand names.

Beginnings with home deliveries
In 1899, Frank Vernon Skiff founded Jewel in Chicago as a door-to-door coffee delivery service. In 1902, Skiff partnered with his brother-in-law Frank P. Ross, renaming the venture the Jewel Tea Company. By 1903, they had six routes, then 12 routes in 1904 with expansion into Michigan City, Kankakee, and Kewanee. There were 850 routes by 1915. In the late 1900s, it ran a "coffee train" of 40 cars carrying coffee beans exported from South America.

During WWI, the company faced soaring costs for materials and production. Compounding this, the US government commandeered a key Jewel production facility. As a result, by 1919 the company was experiencing severe financial setbacks. Within a few years, it returned to profitability through the leadership of new company officials: retired Commanders John M. Hancock and Maurice H. Karker, who had both gained extensive logistics experience as US Navy supply officers during the war.

In 1929, the company built a new office, warehouse, and coffee roasting facility in suburban Barrington, Illinois, creating hundreds of local jobs despite the Great Depression. The Barrington location served as the headquarters and main warehouse facility for both the home delivery and food store divisions until the completion of the new warehouse and office complex at Melrose Park in 1953.

In 1949, deliveries were provided on 1876 routes in 43 states to customers mostly in small towns. Customers in cities could visit 154 company-owned grocery stores.

Later, the service expanded to include 350 grocery and 10,000 general merchandise items by 1981 when Jewel sold its "Jewel Home Shopping Service" division to its employees and divest itself from its roots. At the time of the divesture, the division provided service to customers in mostly small towns located along 1000 routes in 42 states. The division became a 700-member owned cooperative called "J.T.'s General Store" in which route sales persons were independent agents.

In October 1994, a group of the company's managers acquired the assets of "J.T.'s General Store" and "created J.T. Dealers Sales and Service". By 1995, "J.T. Dealer Sales and Service" was providing service to 60,000 customers along 250 routes in 35 states.

Grocery stores
The company's expansion continued throughout the mid-20th century. In 1932, Jewel acquired the Chicago unit of the Canadian firm Loblaw Groceterias, Inc., then a chain of 77 self-service stores, as well as four Chicago grocery stores operated by the Middle West Stores Company, and began operating them under the name Jewel Food Stores. In 1934, Jewel Food Stores merged with Jewel Tea Company. In 1937, Jewel Tea Company purchased an eight-story building in Chicago's Central Manufacturing District, which served as Jewel Food Stores' headquarters until 1954.

The name of the parent company remained "Jewel Tea Company" until 1967 when the stockholders voted to change the name to Jewel Companies, Inc. to better reflect the expansion of the company into different markets. In 1967, the company went public and its stock was traded on the Midwest Stock Exchange.

Eisner acquisition and expansion south
In 1957, Jewel acquired the Champaign-based Eisner Food Stores, located in downstate Illinois and later in west central Indiana (Lafayette, West Lafayette, and Bloomington). This acquisition was significant since it was the first time Jewel maintained the new acquisition as a separate division within the Jewel organization with the acquired stores keeping their original names, setting the pattern for future acquisitions.

After Jewel's hostile takeover by American Stores in 1984, American Stores decided to save money by merging Eisner directly into Jewel, converting all stores to the Jewel name and slowly started to sell off the former Eisner properties. One of the first properties to let go was the former Eisner warehouse facility in Champaign in 1986. With the Champaign warehouse facility gone, many former Eisner locations became less profitable since they had to be serviced from the more distant Jewel warehouse at Melrose Park, justifying the elimination of those locations. The west central Indiana stores, three in Lafayette and two in Bloomington, were sold off in 1990. Jewel also closed central Illinois locations that were formerly Eisner in Decatur (in 1995), Champaign-Urbana (in 1998), and Springfield (2006).

Non-food retail expansion
In 1961, Jewel acquired two growing non-food related retail chains, Chicago-based Osco Drug stores, and Brighton, Massachusetts-based Turn Style discount department stores, to complement their food store division when building one-stop shopping destinations, such as the new Family Centers and Jewel-Osco (Eisner-Osco, Star-Osco, Buttrey-Osco) food-drug combinations. The acquisition of both Osco and Turn Style allowed Jewel to expand into non-food related retailing that would complement their existing food retailing business and also to expand the geographic range of its main food distribution business since the non-food companies had a different geographical footprint.

Jewel expanded into the home improvement retail market by acquiring Republic Lumber in 1972.

1960s–1970s expansion
During the 1960s, Jewel expanded by acquiring several chains.

Jewel expanded their food store holdings by acquiring Cambridge-based Star Market in 1964 and the Great Falls-based Buttrey Food Stores in 1966 to add to their existing Jewel and Eisner food store chains.

The acquisition of Star Market also gave Jewel control of Brigham's Ice Cream, which had been a part of Star since 1961. Jewel later sold off Brigham's in 1982.

In 1965, Jewel expanded into the convenience store business by opening Kwik Shoppe, a chain that was quickly renamed White Hen Pantry within a few months.

Before 1970 Jewel stores were typically located on arterial city streets. Between 1970 and 1990, Jewel moved or expanded most of its stores to be freestanding buildings with ample parking. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Jewel built and operated many Jewel-Osco side-by-side stores, but most construction after 1983 consolidated Jewel and Osco stores together as one large store under one roof. Today, the two stores present to the customer as one unit. For instance, a customer can check out any items at Jewel or Osco registers, find Jewel and Osco merchandise commingled throughout the store, and can call one telephone number to reach their Jewel-Osco. Each operating unit retains its own public identity as a "food store" or a "drug store".

The first Jewel-Osco food-drug combination stores were built in 1962.

Jewel opened five stores in Michigan in the 1970s, but closed all five in 1996.

In 1971, Jewel expanded their brand into Wisconsin by acquiring eight failing stores from Kroger and rebranded the stores Jewel. After a decade of operations, Jewel closed all their stores in Wisconsin in 1980. Those locations were sold to Sentry Foods. Jewel did not return to Wisconsin until 1995.

Until 2010, Jewel and Osco stores under the same roof have had separate operations, managers, ordering and receiving procedures, budgets and employees. A 2010 cost-saving measure brought both Jewel and Osco oversight under one store director for each site.

In 1978, Jewel Companies, Inc. attempted to acquire Skaggs Companies, Inc. through an exchange in stock in which Jewel would have been the surviving company and still based in Melrose Park instead of Salt Lake City. A few months later, Skaggs turned down the merger offer. At that time, Skaggs had 229 stores.

After six years, Jewel suffered many losses due to failed marketing concepts and general mismanagement while Skaggs became larger and strong enough to perform a hostile take over of Jewel under its new name: American Stores.

American Stores
American Stores made an offer to acquire the Jewel Companies in 1984. The Jewel Companies, Inc. chairman Weston Christopherson was opposed to a merger and Sam Skaggs subsequently engineered a hostile takeover. On June 1, 1984, American Stores tendered an offer worth $1.1 billion for 67% of Jewel's outstanding shares at $70 per share.

For two weeks, Jewel's management refused to comment on the offer, maintaining its silence even at a stormy shareholder's meeting before which Jewel shareholder groups controlling 20% of the company's stock were in favor of negotiating with American Stores. On June 14, Sam Skaggs and Jewel president Richard Cline reached an agreement after an all-night bargaining session. American Stores raised its bid for Jewel's preferred stock, increasing the total bid to $1.15 billion in cash and securities. In return, Jewel dropped plans for a defensive acquisition of Household International Inc. (parent company of California supermarket chain Vons) and accepted American Stores' offer. American Stores soon sold Buttrey Food Stores (in 1990), Star Market (in 1994), and White Hen Pantry (in 1985), to pay off debt and for other reasons.

1990s expansion under American Stores
In 1989, American Stores expanded to Florida using the Jewel-Osco name, but operating as a separate division distinct from the Midwestern Jewel-Osco operations. The Jewel name returned to Florida five years after the company closed all of its Jewel-T discount food stores in 1984. Florida was considered a good market for Jewel because of the high number of Chicagoans who had relocated to that state. After three years of operations, American Stores closed those Jewel-Osco stores and sold them to Albertsons in 1992.

To consolidate the names of some of its subsidiaries under one title with nationwide recognition, American Stores renamed some of its Skaggs-Alpha Beta stores to Jewel-Osco in mid-September 1991. American replaced the Skaggs-Alpha Beta name with that of Jewel-Osco on all 76 stores in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arkansas, expanding the chain toward the southwestern states. Within six months, American Stores sold all of the Jewel-Osco locations in the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Florida to Albertsons but kept the locations in the state of New Mexico for a few more years.

In 1998, American Stores rebranded the Jewel-Osco stores in New Mexico to Lucky/Sav-on, a grocery store/drug store brand which American Stores had used in neighboring Arizona. After the acquisition of American Stores by Albertsons just a few months later, the New Mexico stores were rebranded again to Albertsons Sav-on in 1999.

Under American Stores, Jewel returned to Wisconsin by opening a Jewel-Osco store in a new shopping center in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1995. Jewel returned to Milwaukee in 1998 by purchasing a Pick 'n Save store and four Cub Foods stores and converting them into Jewel Osco stores.

Albertsons and SuperValu
Albertsons acquired American Stores' holdings, including Jewel and Jewel-Osco stores, in 1999.

Seven years later, parent company Albertsons and its stores would be taken over by two separate groups. On May 30, 2006, shareholders approved the break-up of Albertsons. All Jewel-Osco and Jewel Food Stores outside of Springfield, Illinois were now wholly owned by SuperValu. The Springfield stores were acquired by an investment group led by Cerberus Capital Management. Both of those have since been sold to Niemann Foods, an independent operator of grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores in Central Illinois which now operates them under the County Market brand. All free-standing Osco drugstores are now owned by CVS Pharmacy. The Osco name is still used for pharmacies within Albertsons, Jewel, Shaw's and Star Market.

SuperValu announced on January 5, 2007, that it would offer for sale its Jewel-Osco stores in the Milwaukee area. Pick 'n Save agreed to take 5 of the 15 stores. Two other stores were purchased by Lena's Food Market. SuperValu announced to its workers that the remaining stores, if unsold, would close at the end of March.

In 2008, the headquarters for the Illinois-based Jewel-Osco division was moved from Melrose Park to Itasca.

Jewel Express
In 1997, Albertsons added gas pumps and a small convenience store in front of a store in Eagle, Idaho. Since the experiment was successful, Albertsons decided to expand this concept to all stores that would be able to support it and was allowed by local government. The new concept was called Albertsons Express.

After Albertsons acquired American Stores in 1999, Albertsons wanted to expand the Albertsons Express concept to the former American Stores chains. The first Jewel Express was opened in front of a Jewel-Osco in South Elgin in October 2000.

In attempt to increase revenue in 2009, Supervalu enhanced the Express concept by enlarging the convenience store, added more marketing tie ins with the main store and added a car wash. This change did not help Supervalu's bottom line so in 2011 Supervalu announced that it was exiting the fuel business and that it would sell or close all fuel stations that it received when it purchased Albertsons which includes the 29 Jewel Express stations that it received. The same announcement said that 27 of the Jewel Express locations would be sold to Alimentation Couche-Tard, the parent of Circle K, and all remaining unsold locations would be closed. Some of these new Circle K locations were paired with the Shell fuel brand.

Not all Jewel Express locations closed or converted to Circle K. Two Expresses, one in East Moline, Illinois and the other in Moline, Illinois continue with the Jewel Express concept.

Urban Fresh
In 2008, SuperValu converted one of its closed Sunflower Market stores on Clybourn Avenue to an Urban Fresh by Jewel, a smaller store than the usual Jewel, with more upscale and organic products. This store closed on October 31, 2009, and no other stores were opened under this banner.

LEED certified
In October 2008, Jewel-Osco opened its first LEED certified store at Kinzie and Des Plaines in Chicago. This new store was built with recycled materials and recycled 98% of its construction debris. It featured a rooftop garden, used water-saving devices, had non-ozone-depleting refrigerants in cooling equipment, used a refrigerant detection system, and had energy efficient lighting.

Today
Jewel-Osco employs more than 45,000 associates. Its customer base gave it a 45% share of the grocery market in Chicago, trailed by the Safeway Inc.-owned Dominick's chain (ranking second at 15 percent) before its closure. Consumers from 80% of all households in the Chicago metropolitan area visit a Jewel-Osco store at least once a month.

On January 10, 2013, SuperValu announced the sale of Jewel food stores to Cerberus Capital Management in a $3.3 billion deal. The deal closed on March 21, 2013.

Acquisition of Strack & Van Til
On May 15, 2017, Jewel-Osco made a bid to purchase all 19 Strack & Van Til grocery stores for $100 million. The Jewel-Osco bid was ultimately unsuccessful and the stores were sold in the bankruptcy auction to the Strack and Van Til families and the Indiana Grocery Group.

Past ventures
Over the years, Jewel has tried other concepts. It is credited with selling the first generic brand product line in 1977. The packaging had no name or pictures—just a list of contents, UPC, and required nutritional information on a white package with a pseudo-army olive-green stripe. The generic line was given the brand "Econo Buy" in the early 1990s.

Jewel Grand Bazaar
In 1973, Jewel Companies opened an experimental Jewel Grand Bazaar, on the southwest side of Chicago; a store that encompassed an entire city block at the northwest corner of 54th Street and Pulaski Road. This store featured bulk packaging, free samples on weekends, and 24-hour service. See photos: photos This experimental store was in service from 1973 until the 1980s, when it was reformatted as a standard Jewel-Osco combo store. A second Grand Bazaar was opened in 1974 at 87 W. 87th St in Chicago and in 1977, a "Jewel Grand Bazaar" was opened at 6505 W. Diversey in the Brickyard Mall. A fourth location was opened in Franklin Park in 1975.

During the 1990s, the Diversey Avenue Grand Bazaar was reformatted to a regular Jewel grocery store, but continued to carry some of the traditional "Grand Bazaar" features such as bulk foods. With the reconstruction of the Brickyard Mall in 2003, the Grand Bazaar store was demolished and replaced with a smaller Jewel grocery store. Rockford, Illinois also had a Jewel Grand Bazaar that opened in 1976 and was converted to a non-union Magna store in 1983. That store closed in 1997. There was also one on Grand Ave. and Kostner Ave. on Chicago's West side. The last "Grand Bazaar" format store was opened in 1975 at Grand ave. and Mannheim road in Franklin Park, Illinois. This building is currently being operated as a Jewel-Osco. Neither the Chicago Tribune nor the Chicago Sun-Times record when these stores were actually converted or closed.

Turn Style
In 1961, Jewel Companies (then Jewel Tea) acquired a chain of discount stores in the Chicago area called Turn Style. This chain was moderately successful throughout the 1960s. Some locations were combined with Jewel's supermarket brands to form Family Centers. In 1978, 19 of 22 locations were sold to May Department Stores and converted to the Venture format. Other stores were converted into large Osco Drug Stores.

Jewel T
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jewel Companies operated a no-frills grocery chain called Jewel T (phonetically pronounced "Jewel Tea", as a nod to the former name of the company). The typical store tends to be rather small, 8,000 square feet instead of the typical 30,000 for a full-service supermarket, with a selection rather limited to canned and dry foods and non-perishable with everything sold at a steep discount.

To avoid cannibalizing sales from their existing markets in the Midwest and North East Atlantic States, the first Jewel T location was opened in New Port Richey, Florida, in 1977, quickly followed by 2 other stores in the St. Petersburg area during the same year. Jewel T expanded into Pennsylvania in 1978 and many suburban Philadelphia kids in this gas crisis era remember mom driving the Vega or Pinto out to Jewel T, and bringing back powdered milk, frozen pretzels, and bulk frozen cherry pielettes. They expanded to Atlanta in 1979. Jewel T had approximately 30 stores in two states at the beginning of 1979 and 44 stores in four states by the following June.

By the end of 1979, Jewel T had 87 stores located in the states of Florida, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Alabama. In the first month of 1980, Jewel T opened eight stores in highly competitive Southern California. In 1981, Jewel T opened stores in Atlanta and its 150th store in Louisiana.

At its height in 1981, Jewel T operated 150 stores in 10 states located mainly in the Mid-Atlantic, South East, the Gulf Coast, the Deep South and Southern California. At the same time it encountered problems competing against the full service supermarkets which fought back by dropping prices, in some cases at or below costs, on the same limited items that Jewel T and other discount food stores specialized in stocking. Within a few years, the company began to sell unprofitable locations. By the beginning of 1984, approximately 131 locations remained.

In March 1984, the company closed all 21 Jewel T stores in Southern California. Seven of the leases and most of the inventory was sold to the 99 Cents Only Stores.

A few months later, 105 stores remained when the chain was finally sold off in two separate transactions in June 1984, 28 stores in Texas were sold to a group of managers while the other 77 stores in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey were sold to Save-A-Lot.

Republic Lumber
Jewel Companies expanded into the hardware and home improvement business by acquiring Republic Lumber in 1972. In 1979, Jewel, under the Osco division, sold four of its five Republic Lumber locations to R & L Lumber, parent company of Handy Andy Home Improvement Center, and closed the fifth. They were located on the west side of Chicago at 4052 W. Grand Ave (a former Jewel opened in 1957 to celebrate the chain's 25th anniversary), Oak Lawn, Arlington Heights and Chicago Heights. A fifth location in Norridge was closed early in 1979 when the lease was not renewed, which later became a Joseph Lumber location.

President's Choice house brand
While as a subsidiary division of American Stores, Jewel-Osco began offering the Canadian staple President's Choice branded products in 1992. President's Choice is a house brand created and distributed by Loblaw Companies Limited of Toronto, Ontario. Loblaw makes extra money by offering their President's Choice to other retailers who do not compete in their home marketing areas. Under American Stores' marketing agreement with Loblaw, American Stores were the exclusive distributor of the President's Choice brand within each American Stores, marketing area. The marketing agreement between Jewel and Loblaw ceased when Albertsons acquired American Stores. In 2011, Supervalu replaced the house brand at Jewel with their own Culinary Circle and Wild Harvest private label brands.

Organizational philosophy
A 1972 book written by Jewel senior leaders, The Jewel Concepts, stressed good citizenship within the community, "watching the horizon", and sponsorship of young people.

In an Illinois Retail Merchants Association online article, retired Jewel-Osco chairman Don Perkins reflects, "Jewel has a tradition of people orientation." One of these traditions came in the form of the "first assistant" philosophy of management. Each higher-level manager was to see himself or herself as serving the employees he or she managed. On the store level, this would mean that the manager would be the "first assistant" to the employees by making personal contact and taking personal interest, solving problems, suggesting solutions, and using flexibility in order to best serve the employees' concerns. Then the floor employees' duty was to be in service as the "first assistant" to the customers.

Jewel also was progressive in creating partnerships with vendors, at a time when the practice was rare.

Current stores

 * Albertsons LLC owns these Jewel-Osco stores:
 * Jewel-Osco and Jewel stores (168 stores), located in Chicago metro area, including northwestern Indiana.
 * Jewel-Osco and Jewel stores (10 stores), located in Central and Western Illinois and Clinton, Iowa.

Former stores

 * These former Jewel-Osco or Jewel stores are now owned by Niemann Foods and were rebranded as County Market
 * Jewel-Osco (2 stores) located in Springfield, Illinois (originally acquired by Cerberus).
 * All freestanding Osco drugstores (90 stores in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Wisconsin) were sold to CVS and rebranded as CVS/pharmacy.
 * The two locations in southern Wisconsin, located just north of the border in Kenosha and Racine, have both closed.

title: Jewel-Osco


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Osco Drug and Sav-on Drugs

Osco Drug and Sav-on Drugs were the names of a pair of chain pharmacies that operated in the United States. Osco Drug was founded by the Skaggs family. Alpha Beta grocery store was purchased by American Stores in 1961. Skaggs Drug Centers bought American Stores in 1979 and assumed the American Stores name. Sav-on Drugs was a California-based pharmacy chain that was acquired by Osco's parent company in 1980. Both Osco and Sav-on stores eventually came under the ownership of American Stores, then Albertsons, and finally SuperValu before the stores were sold off.

The Osco and Sav-on brands survive today as brandings for in-store pharmacies in the Albertsons chain of stores. Osco pharmacies can be found in Jewel stores, which are co-branded Jewel-Osco, as well as in Shaw's and Star Markets. Sav-on pharmacies are found largely in Acme stores. Pharmacies in Albertsons stores are called Osco in Arizona and Montana stores, and Sav-On in other markets, in Nevada and predominantly in Texas for example.

Roots
In 1915, S.M. Skaggs, a Baptist minister, opened a grocery store in American Falls, Idaho, with lower prices on goods. In 1917, O.P Skaggs started a chain of self-service stores, and later sold the franchise in the western states to Christian Call. In 1926, the Skaggs brothers merged the chain with Sam Seelig stores, which had become Safeway in 1925. L.J. Skaggs retired from Safeway in 1932, and in 1934, he opened the first self-service drugstore in the US in Tacoma, Washington.

First store
Loronzo L. (L.L.) Skaggs owned a controlling stock in a company called Quality Food in Minnesota and subsequently left the Safeway business. L.L. opened a chain of self-service drugstores in the Midwest similar to his brother L.J.'s stores in the west. The first store opened in 1937 in Rochester, Minnesota, and was named "Pay-Less" (different from the drug chain Payless founded later in the century), and was managed by George Hilden. The store remained in operation until 1987, when it closed due to redevelopment in downtown Rochester.

In 1937, while in the process of opening a second store in Mason City, Iowa, it was learned that another company had already registered the name "Payless" in the state. L.L changed "Payless" to "Self-Service Drug, Inc." and formed a new corporation.

Name change to Osco
In 1942, the corporation "Self-Service Drug, Inc." was dissolved and succeeded by "Owners Service Company", a partnership of L.L Skaggs, H.B. Finch, Paul Stratton and George Hilden. From this company 'Osco' was coined. That year Osco moved its headquarters from Waterloo, Iowa, to the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, Illinois.

The Jewel Companies, Inc.
In 1961, The Jewel Companies, Inc. acquired the 31 Osco Drug stores in six Midwest states. In 1962, Osco's headquarters was moved from Chicago's Merchandise Mart to Melrose Park, Illinois, and the first side-by-side "Jewel-Osco" store opened. The early Jewel-Osco combination (combo) stores were two individual stores, separated by an interior wall (and in some locations, a half-wall), allowing a customer to go back and forth between each store without having to go outside.

After the merger, all of Jewel's subsidiaries soon had an Osco Drug. Some Eisner Food Stores locations were re-branded "Eisner-Osco". When Jewel acquired Star Market in 1964, the first Osco Drug in New England was opened, and some were next to Star Market locations and were branded as "Star-Osco". By 1968, Osco grew to 168 stores in sixteen states. During most of the 1960s, Osco operated as two divisions – 'City Osco', comprising the Chicago, Illinois, and Chicago suburb stores and 'Country Osco' (all the other Oscos). These two divisions were combined in 1968 and formed Osco Drug, Inc. Also in 1968, Osco's headquarters relocated from Melrose Park, Illinois to Franklin Park, Illinois. Later that year, the Jewel Imports procurement group was established to import a broad range of general merchandise from around the world to sell in Osco stores.

When The Jewel Companies Inc. acquired Buttrey Food Stores in 1966, many of the stores were converted to a combination store format and bannered as "Buttrey-Osco" with common checkout stands but separate store management, all under one roof. By the early 1980s, Buttrey eventually operated 60 stores in Montana, North and South Dakota, western Minnesota, Wyoming, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, Utah, and Idaho. Stores were spread thinly over a 2000 mi wide territory.

Outside of the Chicago metropolitan area, Osco operated stand-alone pharmacies (or free standing stores). In the early years, many of the Jewel and Osco combination stores maintained different operating hours from one another and on certain days such as holidays, one side of the combo store would be open, while the other would be closed. By the early 1980s, new and remodeled combo stores had the 'wall' removed and the store became one, and to this day, Osco retains control over drug, general merchandise, pharmacy and liquor departments in the Jewel Osco combo stores.

In the late 1960s, Osco was seeking to purchase or build a photofinishing plant to service its stores. At the time, the company was using outside vendors, and the film developing quality and service was inconsistent. In 1970, working with Kodak, Osco built a photofinishing lab in Elgin, Illinois. The facility, Crest Photo Lab opened in 1971, and serviced Osco's Chicago, Central and Eastern region stores. The Elgin photo lab expanded several times over the years. As both Osco and its photofinishing market share grew, three more photo plants were added: Alves Photo Service Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1980, Rich Photo Lab Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1984 and Drewry Photocolor Burbank, California, in 1987 (renamed Crest Photo in 1988). The photo labs were sold to Kodak's Qualex photo processing division in 1996, prompted by the emergence of in-store one-hour photo labs and digital photography technology.

In 1974, Osco's headquarters were relocated from Franklin Park, Illinois, to a new facility at 1818 Swift Drive in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Acquisition of Sav-on Drugs
In November 1980, The Jewel Companies Inc. purchased Sav-on Drugs, Inc. which was headquartered in Anaheim, California, and had 150 stores in California, Nevada and Texas. The Sav-on chain became Osco's 'Western Region'.

American Stores Company
In 1984, American Stores Company, which consisted of Alpha Beta, Acme Markets, and Skaggs, acquired The Jewel Companies Inc.

American Drug Stores, Inc.
In 1989, a new subsidiary, American Drug Stores, Inc., was formed and consisted of American Stores drugstore holdings of Osco Drug, Sav-on Drugs, the Osco side of the Jewel-Osco food-drug combination stores and RxAmerica. RxAmerica began earlier in 1989 as a mail service prescription fulfillment center with a facility in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sav-on re-branding and relaunching
American Stores had a strategy to build a nationwide network of pharmacies, streamline operations and advertising to gain national recognition for the brand, especially for the high-margin private label products. The name Osco Drug was chosen as the national chain banner because of the large number of stores which already had that name and existed in various parts of the US. The name change was completed for the Skaggs drugstores in 1985 and then for the Sav-on stores in 1986. The name "Osco" did not resonate well with Sav-on's Southern California customer base. American Stores eventually made the decision to change the name of the former Sav-on stores back to Sav-on Drugs. Rumors circulated at the time claiming that the reason for the name change back to ‘Sav-on’ was due to "Osco" having the same pronunciation as the Spanish word "asco" (oss-ko), which means "nausea" or "disgust", a considerable factor within Southern California's heavily Hispanic market. This explanation for the name change was refuted by American Stores.

The name change on all stores was completed in 1989, and the Sav-on Drugs brand was re-launched in Southern California and Nevada.

Sav-on Express, Reliable Drug, Clark Drug
At the same time that the company was making major divestments in the early 1990s, American Stores also looked for opportunities to make strategic minor acquisitions that would enhance its position in the main markets where it needed to strengthen market share.
 * The company's California drugstore operations were enhanced through the early 1992 $60 million purchase of 85 CVS Stores (63 CVS Pharmacy drugstores and the rights to operate 22 CVS health and beauty aid stores) from the Melville Corporation. These stores converted to the Sav-on Drugs and Sav-on Express banners. Later that year, 30 Thrifty and Rx Plus drugstores in Arizona and Nevada were acquired.
 * The following year Reliable Drug (a 55 unit chain) in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri was bought. These stores were soon re-bannered as Osco Drug stores.
 * In February 1995, American Stores spent about $37 million for 17 Clark Drug stores in southern California, which were then converted to the Sav-on Drugs name.

Consolidation of operations
In 1992, American Stores shifted its strategy from that of a holding company to a centralized operating company. As a result of the decision, common functions among American Stores' operating divisions (procurement, distribution logistics, payroll, human resources, etc.) were removed from the operating divisions, consolidated and run centrally. From 1992 through 1998, American Stores consolidated operations and moved responsibilities of their division offices to their headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. Although 'American Stores' food divisions retained an operating presence in their geographical locations and other centralized marketing, merchandising and other staff functions were relocated between 1992 and 1998 from Oak Brook, Illinois, to Salt Lake City to occupy the then-new American Stores Tower. Pharmacy operations were relocated to Scottsdale Arizona with certain pharmacy systems-related resources continuing to operate from the Chicago area after being relocated to 3030 Cullerton Drive in Franklin Park, Illinois.

After American Drug Stores' move to Salt Lake City, Utah, was complete in 1998, Osco's Oak Brook, Illinois, 1818 Swift Drive headquarters was sold to the Follett Corporation.

Osco Foodmarts
In 1994, American Stores converted 25 Jewel Food Stores in Chicago, Illinois, to Osco Drug free-standing stores. These older and smaller Jewel stand-alone stores were closed so that American Stores could focus on the combination formats only for Jewel and to expand Osco's presence in Chicago as a response to Walgreens increasing market dominance. The Osco stores replacing the Jewel stores contained expanded food and produce presentations and were coined 'Osco Foodmarts'.

Health 'n' Home
To extend its core drugstore business, in November 1995 American Drug Stores launched a new format called Health 'n' Home, which was a 28000 sqft, 18,000-item home health care superstore. The first Health 'n' Home opened in Phoenix, Arizona, and by late 1997 there were 20 Health 'n' Home stores in four states.

RxAmerica
In 1998, American Stores RxAmerica division and Longs Drug Stores Integrated Health Concepts (IHC) division agreed to merge their Pharmacy Benefits Management (PBM) ventures. Under terms of the joint venture, RxAmerica and its former corporate partner, Geneva Pharmaceuticals, parted ways, and RxAmerica combined with Longs' IHC division in a 50/50 partnership. The alliance created a national PBM of nearly 1,400 Longs and American Stores pharmacy outlets and a nationwide network of 40,000 pharmacies serving some 3 million patients under contract. Longs and Albertsons remained equal partners up though 2001, when Albertsons sold their 50% interest to Longs.

Albertsons, Inc.

During 1999, the drugstore operations division and general merchandise procurement functions were moved from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Scottsdale, Arizona, operating as Albertsons Drug Region.

In 2002, Albertsons sold its 84 free-standing Osco Drug stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine to the Jean Coutu Group, a Canadian drugstore company. Jean Coutu re-branded the acquired Osco stores as Brooks Pharmacy. Also in 2002, Albertsons, due to financial difficulties, closed several of its stores across the country including all stores in the Des Moines, Iowa, metro market.

In March 2005, Albertsons re-introduced the Osco brand name to the New England region by way of its Shaw's and Star Market pharmacies.

SuperValu, CVS Corporation, and Cerberus
On June 2, 2006, the sale of Albertsons essentially split the company into three parts.

 * CVS Corporation purchased the 700 free-standing drug stores (Osco Drug and Sav-on Drugs). By 2007, these stores were rebranded as CVS Pharmacy.
 * A Cerberus-led group of investors (who included Kimco Realty Corporation, Schottenstein Stores Corp., Lubert-Adler Partners, and Klaff Realty) purchased the Albertsons stores in Northern California, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, and New Mexico forming a new company called Albertsons LLC. Many of these stores have since been sold to other grocery chains or closed altogether.
 * SuperValu purchased the Jewel, ACME, Shaw's divisions and the remaining Albertsons stores not acquired by Cerberus. SuperValu retains the Osco and Sav-on drug trademarks allowing the pharmacies in their grocery stores to remain branded as Sav-on Pharmacy or Osco Pharmacy.

The SuperValu owned Albertsons stores and the chains it acquired were in turn sold to Cerberus in 2013 and Osco and Sav-On pharmacies moved their operations to the base of Albertsons LLC in Boise, Idaho. Certain store support functions exist in the Franklin Park, Illinois, office.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Osco Drug and Sav-on Drugs


text:
Supermarket

A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market. In everyday United States usage, however, "grocery store" is often used to mean "supermarket".

The supermarket typically has places for fresh meat, fresh produce, dairy, deli items, baked goods, and similar foodstuffs. Shelf space is also reserved for canned and packaged goods and for various non-food items such as kitchenware, household cleaners, pharmacy products and pet supplies. Some supermarkets also sell other household products that are consumed regularly, such as alcohol (where permitted), medicine, and clothing, and some sell a much wider range of non-food products: DVDs, sporting equipment, board games, and seasonal items (e.g., Christmas wrapping paper, Easter eggs, school uniforms, Valentine's Day themed gifts, Mother's Day gifts, Father's Day gifts and Halloween).

A larger full-service supermarket combined with a department store is sometimes known as a hypermarket. Other services may include those of banks, cafés, childcare centers/creches, insurance (and other financial services), mobile phone sales, photo processing, video rentals, pharmacies, and gas stations. If the eatery in a supermarket is substantial enough, the facility may be called a "grocerant", a portmanteau of "grocery" and "restaurant".

The traditional supermarket occupies a large amount of floor space, usually on a single level. It is usually situated near a residential area in order to be convenient to consumers. The basic appeal is the availability of a broad selection of goods under a single roof, at relatively low prices. Other advantages include ease of parking and frequently the convenience of shopping hours that extend into the evening or even 24 hours of the day. Supermarkets usually allocate large budgets to advertising, typically through newspapers and television. They also present elaborate in-shop displays of products.

Supermarkets typically are chain stores, supplied by the distribution centers of their parent companies, thus increasing opportunities for economies of scale. Supermarkets usually offer products at relatively low prices by using their buying power to buy goods from manufacturers at lower prices than smaller stores can. They also minimize financing costs by paying for goods at least 30 days after receipt and some extract credit terms of 90 days or more from vendors. Certain products (typically staple foods such as bread, milk and sugar) are very occasionally sold as loss leaders so as to attract shoppers to their store. Supermarkets make up for their low margins by a high volume of sales, and with of higher-margin items bought by the customers. Self-service with shopping carts (trolleys) or baskets reduces labor costs, and many supermarket chains are attempting further reduction by shifting to self-service check-outs.

History

Historically, the earliest retailers were peddlers who marketed their wares in the streets; however, by the 1920s, retail food sales in the United States had mostly shifted to small corner grocery stores. In that era, the standard retail grocery business model was for a clerk to fetch products from shelves behind the merchant's counter while customers waited in front of the counter, indicating the items they wanted. Most foods and merchandise did not come in individually wrapped consumer-sized packages, so the clerk had to measure out and wrap the precise amount desired. Merchants did not post prices, which forced customers to haggle and bargain with clerks to reach fair prices for their purchases. This business model had already been established in Europe for several centuries. It offered extensive opportunities for social interaction: many regarded this style of shopping as "a social occasion" and would often "pause for conversations with the staff or other customers".

These practices were by nature slow, had high labor intensity, and were quite expensive. The number of customers who could be attended to at one time was limited by the number of staff employed in the store. Shopping for groceries often also involved trips to multiple specialty shops, such as a greengrocer, butcher, bakery, fishmonger and dry goods store, in addition to a general store. Milk and other items of short shelf life were delivered by a milkman.

The concept of an inexpensive food market relying on economies of scale was developed by Vincent Astor. He founded the Astor Market in 1915, investing $750,000 of his fortune into a 165′ by 125′ (50×38-metre) corner of 95th and Broadway, Manhattan, creating, in effect, an open-air mini-mall that sold meat, fruit, produce and flowers. The expectation was that customers would come from great distances ("miles around"), but in the end, even attracting people from ten blocks away was difficult, and the market folded in 1917.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which was established in 1859, was an early grocery store chain in Canada and the United States. It became common in North American cities in the 1920s. Early chains like A&P did not sell fresh meats or produce. During the 1920s, to reduce the hassle of visiting multiple stores, U.S. grocery store chains like A&P introduced the combination store. This was a grocery store which combined several departments under one roof, but generally maintained the traditional system of clerks pulling products from shelves on request. By 1929, only one in three U.S. grocery stores was a combination store.

The concept of a self-service grocery store predates the supermarket; it was developed by entrepreneur Clarence Saunders at his Piggly Wiggly stores, the first of which opened in 1916. Saunders was awarded several patents for the ideas he incorporated into his stores. The stores were a financial success and Saunders began to offer franchises.

The general trend since then has been to stock shelves at night so that customers, the following day, can obtain their own goods and bring them to the front of the store to pay for them. Although there is a higher risk of shoplifting, the costs of appropriate security measures ideally will be outweighed by reduced labor costs.

Historically, there has been much debate about the origin of the supermarket. For example, Southern California grocery store chains Alpha Beta and Ralphs both have strong claims to being the first supermarket. By 1930, both chains were already operating multiple 12000 sqft self-service grocery stores. However, as of 1930, both chains were not yet true supermarkets in the modern sense because their prices remained quite high; one of the most important defining features of the supermarket is cheap food. Their main selling point was free parking. Other strong contenders in Texas included Weingarten's and Henke & Pillot.

To end the debate, the Food Marketing Institute in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution and with funding from H.J. Heinz, researched the issue. They defined the attributes of a supermarket as "self-service, separate product departments, discount pricing, marketing and volume selling". They determined that the first true supermarket in the United States was opened by a former Kroger employee, Michael J. Cullen, on 4 August 1930, inside a 6000 sqft former garage in Jamaica, Queens in New York City. The store King Kullen, operated under the logic of "pile it high and sell it cheap". The layout was designed by Joseph Unger, who originated the concept of customers using baskets to collect groceries before checking out at a counter. Everything displayed for sale in the store "had prices clearly marked", meaning that consumers would no longer need to haggle over prices. Cullen described his store as "the world's greatest price wrecker". At the time of his death in 1936, there were seventeen King Kullen stores in operation. Although Saunders had brought the world self-service, uniform stores, and nationwide marketing, Cullen built on this idea by adding separate food departments, selling large volumes of food at discount prices and adding a parking lot.

Early supermarkets like King Kullen were called "cheapy markets" by industry experts at the time; this was soon replaced by the phrase "super market". The compound phrase was then closed up to become the modern term "supermarket".

Other established American grocery chains in the 1930s, such as Kroger and Safeway Inc. at first resisted Cullen's idea, but were eventually forced to build their own supermarkets as the economy sank into the Great Depression. American consumers became extraordinarily price-sensitive at a level never experienced before. Kroger took the idea one step further and pioneered the first supermarket surrounded on all four sides by a parking lot. Once the large chains joined the supermarket trend, the new retail format became widespread. The number of American supermarkets almost tripled from 1,200 in 32 states in 1936 to over 3,000 in 47 states in 1937. It was well over 15,000 by 1950. One sign of the supermarket format's success in slashing labor costs, overhead, and food prices was that the percentage of disposable income spent by American consumers on food plunged "from 21 percent in 1930 to 16 percent in 1940". The modern era of "cheap food" had begun.

As large chain stores began to dominate the American grocery landscape with their low overhead and low prices (while crushing numerous independent small stores along the way), a backlash to this radical alteration of food distribution infrastructure appeared in the form of numerous anti-chain campaigns. The idea of "monopsony", proposed by Cambridge economist Joan Robinson in 1933, that a single buyer could outmaneuver a market of multiple sellers, became a strong anti-chain rhetorical device. With public backlash came political pressure to even the playing field for smaller vendors lacking the luxury of economies of scale. In 1936, the Robinson-Patman Act was implemented as a way of preventing such large chains from using their buying power to reap advantages over small stores, although the act was not well enforced and did not have much impact on such chains.

Supermarkets rapidly proliferated across both Canada and the United States with the growth of automobile ownership and suburban development after World War II. Most North American supermarkets are located in suburban strip shopping centers as an anchor store along with other smaller retailers. They are generally regional rather than national in their company branding. Kroger is the most nationally oriented supermarket chain in the United States, but it has preserved most of its regional brands, including Ralphs, City Market, King Soopers, Fry's, Smith's, and QFC.

In Canada, the largest such company is Loblaw, which operates stores under a variety of banners targeted to different segments and regions, including Fortinos, Zehrs, No Frills, the Real Canadian Superstore, and Loblaws, the foundation of the company. Sobeys is Canada's second largest supermarket with locations across the country, operating under many banners (Sobeys IGA in Quebec). Québec's first supermarket opened in 1934 in Montréal, under the banner Steinberg's.

In the United Kingdom, self-service shopping took longer to become established. Even in 1947, there were just ten self-service shops in the country. In 1951, ex-US Navy sailor Patrick Galvani, son-in-law of Express Dairies chairman, made a pitch to the board to open a chain of supermarkets across the country. The UK's first supermarket under the new Premier Supermarkets brand opened in Streatham, South London, taking ten times as much per week as the average British general store of the time. Other chains caught on, and after Galvani lost out to Tesco's Jack Cohen in 1960 to buy the 212 Irwin's chain, the sector underwent a large amount of consolidation, resulting in 'the big four' dominant UK of today: Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons.

In the 1950s, supermarkets frequently issued trading stamps as incentives to customers. Today, most chains issue store-specific "membership cards", "club cards", or "loyalty cards". These typically enable the cardholder to receive special members-only discounts on certain items when the credit card-like device is scanned at the checkout. Sales of selected data generated by club cards is becoming a significant revenue stream for some supermarkets.

Traditional supermarkets in many countries face intense competition from discounters such as Wal-Mart, Aldi and Lidl, which typically is non-union and operates with better buying power. Other competition exists from warehouse clubs such as Costco that offer savings to customers buying in bulk quantities. Superstores, such as those operated by Wal-Mart and Asda, often offer a wide range of goods and services in addition to foods. In Australia, Aldi, Woolworths and Coles are the major players running the industry with fierce competition among all the three. The rising market share of Aldi has forced the other two to cut prices and increase their private label product ranges. The proliferation of such warehouse and superstores has contributed to the continuing disappearance of smaller, local grocery stores, the increased dependence on the automobile, and suburban sprawl because of the necessity for large floor space and increased vehicular traffic. For example, in 2009 51% of Wal-Mart's $251 billion domestic sales were recorded from grocery goods. Some critics consider the chains' common practice of selling loss leaders to be anti-competitive. They are also wary of the negotiating power that large, often multinationals have with suppliers around the world.

Online-only supermarkets (21st century)
During the dot-com boom, Webvan, an online-only supermarket, was formed and went bankrupt after three years and was acquired by Amazon. The British online supermarket Ocado, which uses a high degree of automation in its warehouses, was the first successful online-only supermarket. Ocado expanded into providing services to other supermarket firms such as Waitrose and Morrisons.

Grocery stores such as Walmart employ food delivery services offered by third parties such as DoorDash. Other online food delivery services, such as Deliveroo in the United Kingdom, have begun to pay specific attention to supermarket delivery.

Delivery robots are offered by various companies partnering with supermarkets.

Micro-fulfillment centers (MFC) are relatively small warehouses with sophisticated automated rack-and-tote systems which prepare orders for pickup and delivery. Once the order is complete, the customer will pick it up (i.e. "click-and-collect") or have it fulfilled via home delivery. Supermarkets are investing in micro-fulfillment centers with the hope that automation can help reduce the costs of online commerce and e-commerce by shortening the distances from store to home and speeding up deliveries. MFCs are said by many to be the key to profitably fulfilling online orders.

U.S. categorization
The U.S. FMI food industry association, drawing on research by Willard Bishop, defines the following formats (store types) that sell groceries:

Organic and environmentally-friendly supermarkets
Some supermarkets are focusing on selling more (or even exclusively) organically certified produce. Others are trying to differentiate themselves by selling fewer (or no) products containing palm oil. This as the demand of palm oil is a main driver for the destruction of rainforests. As a response to the growing concern on the heavy use of petroleum-based plastics for food packaging, so-called "zero waste" and "plastic-free" supermarkets and groceries are on the rise.

Growth in developing countries
Beginning in the 1990s, the food sector in developing countries has rapidly transformed, particularly in Latin America, South-East Asia, India, China and South Africa. With growth, has come considerable competition and some amount of consolidation. The growth has been driven by increasing affluence and the rise of a middle class; the entry of women into the workforce; with a consequent incentive to seek out easy-to-prepare foods; the growth in the use of refrigerators, making it possible to shop weekly instead of daily; and the growth in car ownership, facilitating journeys to distant stores and purchases of large quantities of goods. The opportunities presented by this potential have encouraged several European companies to invest in these markets (mainly in Asia) and American companies to invest in Latin America and China. Local companies also entered the market. Initial development of supermarkets has now been followed by hypermarket growth. In addition there were investments by companies such as Makro and Metro Cash and Carry in large-scale Cash-and-Carry operations.

While the growth in sales of processed foods in these countries has been much more rapid than the growth in fresh food sales, the imperative nature of supermarkets to achieve economies of scale in purchasing means that the expansion of supermarkets in these countries has important repercussions for small farmers, particularly those growing perishable crops. New supply chains have developed involving cluster formation; development of specialized wholesalers; leading farmers organizing supply, and farmer associations or cooperatives. In some cases supermarkets have organized their own procurement from small farmers; in others wholesale markets have adapted to meet supermarket needs.

Typical supermarket merchandise
Larger supermarkets in North America and in Europe typically sell many items among many brands, sizes and varieties. U.S. publisher Supermarket News lists the following categories, for example: Hypermarkets have a larger range of non-food categories such as clothing, electronics, household decoration and appliances.
 * Bakery (packaged and sometimes a service bakery and/or onsite bakery)
 * Beverages (non-alcoholic packaged, sometimes also alcoholic if laws permit)
 * Nonfood & Pharmacy (e.g. cigarettes, lottery tickets and over-the-counter medications (as laws permit), DVD rentals, books and magazines, including supermarket tabloids, greeting cards, toys, small selection of home goods like light bulbs, housewares (typically limited)
 * Personal care e.g. cosmetics, soap, shampoo
 * Produce (fresh fruits and vegetables)
 * Floral (flowers and plants)
 * Deli (sliced meats, cheeses, etc.)
 * Prepared Foods (packaged and frozen foods)
 * Meat (fresh packaged, frozen, sometimes with a butcher service counter)
 * Seafood (fresh packaged, frozen, sometimes with a butcher service counter)
 * Dairy (milk products and eggs)
 * Center store (e.g. detergent, paper products, household cleaning supplies)
 * Multicultural (ethnic foods)
 * Bulk dried foods
 * Animal foods, toys and products

Layout strategies
Most merchandise is already packaged when it arrives at the supermarket. Packages are placed on shelves, arranged in aisles and sections according to type of item. Some items, such as fresh produce, are stored in bins. Those requiring an intact cold chain are in temperature-controlled display cases.

While branding and store advertising will differ from company to company, the layout of a supermarket remains virtually unchanged. Although big companies spend time giving consumers a pleasant shopping experience, the design of a supermarket is directly connected to the in-store marketing that supermarkets must conduct to get shoppers to spend more money while there.

Every aspect of the store is mapped out and attention is paid to color, wording and surface texture. The overall layout of a supermarket is a visual merchandising project that plays a major role. Stores can creatively use a layout to alter customers' perceptions of the atmosphere. Alternatively, they can enhance the store's atmospherics through visual communications (signs and graphics), lighting, colors, and scents. For example, to give a sense of the supermarket being healthy, fresh produce is deliberately located at the front of the store. In terms of bakery items, supermarkets usually dedicate 30 to 40 feet of store space to the bread aisle.

Supermarkets are designed to "give each product section a sense of individual difference and this is evident in the design of what is called the anchor departments; fresh produce, dairy, delicatessen, meat and the bakery". Each section has different floor coverings, style, lighting and sometimes even individual services counters to allow shoppers to feel as if there are a number of markets within this one supermarket.

Marketers use well-researched techniques to try to control purchasing behavior. The layout of a supermarket is considered by some to consist of a few rules of thumb and three layout principles. The high-draw products are placed in separate areas of the store to keep drawing the consumer through the store. High impulse and high margin products are placed in the most predominant areas to grab attention. Power products are placed on both sides of the aisle to create increased product awareness, and end caps are used to receive a high exposure of a certain product whether on special, promotion or in a campaign, or a new line.

The first principle of the layout is circulation. Circulation is created by arranging product so the supermarket can control the traffic flow of the consumer. Along with this path, there will be high-draw, high-impulse items that will influence the consumer to make purchases which they did not originally intend. Service areas such as restrooms are placed in a location which draws the consumer past certain products to create extra buys. Necessity items such as bread and milk are found at the rear of the store to increase the start of circulation. Cashiers' desks are placed in a position to promote circulation. In most supermarkets, the entrance will be on the right-hand side because some research suggests that consumers who travel in a counter-clockwise direction spend more. However, other researchers have argued that consumers moving in a clockwise direction can form better mental maps of the store leading to higher sales in turn.

The second principle of the layout is coordination. Coordination is the organized arrangement of product that promotes sales. Products such as fast-selling and slow-selling lines are placed in strategic positions in aid of the overall sales plan. Managers sometimes place different items in fast-selling places to increase turnover or to promote a new line.

The third principle is consumer convenience. The layout of a supermarket is designed to create a high degree of convenience to the consumer to make the shopping experience pleasant and increase customer spending. This is done through the character of merchandising and product placement. There are many different ideas and theories in relation to layout and how product layout can influence the purchases made. One theory suggests that certain products are placed together or near one another that are of a similar or complementary nature to increase the average customer spend. This strategy is used to create cross-category sales similarity. In other words, the toothpaste is next to or adjacent the toothbrushes and the tea and coffee are down the same aisle as the sweet biscuits. These products complement one another and placing them near is one-way marketers try to increase purchases.

For vertical placement, cheap generic brands tend to be on the lowest shelves, products appealing to children are placed at the mid-thigh level, and the most profitable brands are placed at eye level.

The fourth principle is the use of color psychology, and the locations of the food, similar to its use in fast food branding.

Consumer psychologists suggest that most buyers tend to enter the store and shop to their right first. Some supermarkets, therefore, choose to place the entrance to the left-hand side as the consumer will likely turn right upon entry, and this allows the consumer to do a full counter-clockwise circle around the store before returning to the checkouts. This suggests that supermarket marketers should use this theory to their advantage by placing their temporary displays of products on the right-hand side to entice you to make an unplanned purchase. Furthermore, aisle ends are extremely popular with product manufacturers, who pay top dollar to have their products located there. These aisle ends are used to lure customers into making a snap purchase and to also entice them to shop down the aisle. The most obvious place supermarket layout influences consumers are at the checkout. Small displays of candy, magazines, and drinks are located at each checkout to tempt shoppers while they wait to be served.

Criticisms
The large scale of supermarkets, while often improving cost and efficiency for customers, can place significant economic pressure on suppliers and smaller shopkeepers. Supermarkets often generate considerable food waste, although modern technologies such as biomethanation units may be able to process the waste into an economical source of energy. Also, purchases tracking may help as supermarkets then become better able to size their stock (of perishable goods), reducing food spoilage.

title: Supermarket


text:
Rocket 88

"Rocket 88" (originally stylized as Rocket "88") is a song that was first recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, in March 1951. The recording was credited to "Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats"; while Brenston did provide the vocals, the band was actually Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm. The single reached number one on the Billboard R&B chart.

Many music writers acknowledge its importance in the development of rock and roll music, with several considering it to be the first rock and roll record. In 2017, the Mississippi Blues Trail dedicated its 200th marker to "Rocket 88" as an influential record. The song was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1991, the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, and the National Recording Registry in 2024.

Composition and recording
The original version of the twelve-bar blues song was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, which reached number one on the R&B charts. Brenston was Ike Turner's saxophonist and the Delta Cats were actually Turner's Kings of Rhythm back-up band, who rehearsed at the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Brenston sang the lead vocal and is officially listed as the songwriter. Turner led the band and is credited in some sources as the composer.

Brenston later said that the song was not particularly original; "they had simply borrowed from another jump blues about an automobile, Jimmy Liggins’ 'Cadillac Boogie. The song was a hymn of praise to the joys of the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 automobile which had recently been introduced, and was based on the 1947 song "Cadillac Boogie" by Jimmy Liggins.

Drawing on the template of jump blues and swing combo music, Turner made the style even rawer, superimposing Brenston's enthusiastic vocals, his own piano, and tenor saxophone solos by 17-year-old Raymond Hill. Willie Sims played drums for the recording.

A review of the record in Time magazine included: "Rocket 88 was brash and it was sexy; it took elements of the blues, hammered them with rhythm and attitude and electric guitar, and reimagined black music into something new. If the blues seemed to give voice to old wisdom, this new music seemed full of youthful notions. If the blues was about squeezing cathartic joy out of the bad times, this new music was about letting the good times roll. If the blues was about earthly troubles, the rock that Turner's crew created seemed to shout that the sky was now the limit."

The legend of how the sound came about says that Kizart's amplifier was damaged on Highway 61 when the band was driving from Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee. An attempt was made to hold the cone in place by stuffing the amplifier with wadded newspapers, which unintentionally created a distorted sound; Phillips liked the sound and used it. Peter Guralnick, in his biography of Sam Phillips, has the amplifier being dropped from the car's trunk when the band got a flat tire and was digging out the spare.

Phillips offered this reminiscence about the amp in an interview with Rolling Stone: "The bass amplifier fell off the car. And when we got in the studio, the woofer had burst; the cone had burst. So I stuck the newspaper and some sack paper in it, and that's where we got that sound". Afterwards, Phillips had no complaints about the unusual effect the "fix" had created. "The more unconventional it sounded, the more interested I would become in it."

The song was recorded in the Memphis studio of producer Sam Phillips in March 1951, and licensed to Chess Records for release. The record was supposed to be credited to Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm featuring Jackie Brenston, but Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats was printed instead. Turner blamed Phillips for this error since he was the one who licensed it to Chess. Turner and the band were only paid $20 each (US$0 in dollars) for the record, with the exception of Brenston who sold the rights to Phillips for $910.

Whether this was the first record of the rock'n'roll genre is debated. A 2014 article in The Guardian stated that "Rocket 88's reputation may have more to do with Sam Phillips's vociferous later claims he had discovered rock'n'roll". Time quotes The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as confirming that "Rocket 88 may well have been the first rock 'n' roll record".

In a later interview, however, Ike Turner offered this comment: "I don't think that 'Rocket 88' is rock 'n' roll. I think that 'Rocket 88' is R&B, but I think 'Rocket 88' is the cause of rock and roll existing".

Chart performance
"Rocket 88" was the third-biggest rhythm and blues single in jukebox plays of 1951, according to Billboard magazine, and ninth in record sales. The single reached the top of the Best Selling R&B Records chart on June 9, 1951, and stayed there for three weeks. It also spent two weeks at the top of the Most Played Juke Box R&B Records chart; spending a total of five weeks at number-one on the R&B charts.

Influence
Ike Turner's piano intro on "Rocket 88" influenced Little Richard who later used it for his 1958 hit song "Good Golly, Miss Molly."

Sam Philips, the founder of Sun Records and Sun Studio, and many writers have suggested that "Rocket 88" has strong claims to be called the first rock'n'roll record. Others take a more nuanced view. Charlie Gillett, writing in 1970 in The Sound of the City, said that it was "one of several records that people in the music business cite as 'the first rock'n'roll record. It has been suggested by Larry Birnbaum that the idea that "Rocket 88" could be called "the first rock'n'roll record" first arose in the late 1960s; he argued that: "One of the reasons is surely that Kizart's broken amp anticipated the sound of the fuzzbox, which was in its heyday when 'Rocket 88' was rediscovered."

Music historian Robert Palmer, writing in The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll in 1980, described it as an important and influential record. He noted that Hill's saxophone playing was "wilder and rougher" than on many jump blues records, and also emphasized the record's "fuzzed-out, overamplified electric guitar". Writing in his 1984 book Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Nick Tosches, though rejecting the idea that it could be described as the first rock'n'roll record "any more than there is any first modern novel – the fact remains that the record in question was possessed of a sound and a fury the sheer, utter newness of which set it apart from what had come before." Echoing this view, Bill Dahl at AllMusic wrote: "Determining the first actual rock & roll record is a truly impossible task. But you can't go too far wrong citing Jackie Brenston's 1951 Chess waxing of 'Rocket 88', is a seminal piece of rock's fascinating history with all the prerequisite elements firmly in place: practically indecipherable lyrics about cars, booze, and women; Raymond Hill's booting tenor sax, and a churning, beat-heavy rhythmic bottom."

Rock art historian Paul Grushkin wrote:"Working from the raw material of post-big band jump blues, Turner had cooked up a mellow, cruising boogie with a steady-as-she-goes back beat now married to Brenston's enthusiastic, sexually suggestive vocals that spoke of opportunity, discovery and conquest. This all combined to create (as one reviewer later put it) 'THE mother of all R&B songs for an evolutionary white audience'." Michael Campbell wrote, in Popular Music in America: And the Beat Goes On:"Both the distortion and the relative prominence of the guitar were novel features of this recording – these are the elements that have earned 'Rocket 88' so many nominations as 'the first' rock and roll record. From our perspective, 'Rocket 88' wasn't the first rock and roll record, because the beat is a shuffle rhythm, not the distinctive rock rhythm heard first in the songs of Chuck Berry and Little Richard. Still, the distortion and the central place of the guitar in the overall sound certainly anticipate key features of rock style." Ike Turner himself said, in an interview with Holger Petersen: "I don't think that 'Rocket 88' is rock'n'roll. I think that 'Rocket 88' is R&B, but I think 'Rocket 88' is the cause of rock and roll existing ... Sam Phillips got Dewey Phillips to play 'Rocket 88' on his program – and this is like the first black record to be played on a white radio station – and, man, all the white kids broke out to the record shops to buy it. So that's when Sam Phillips got the idea, 'Well, man, if I get me a white boy to sound like a black boy, then I got me a gold mine', which is the truth. So, that's when he got Elvis and he got Jerry Lee Lewis and a bunch of other guys and so they named it rock and roll rather than R&B and so this is the reason I think rock and roll exists – not that 'Rocket 88' was the first one, but that was what caused the first one."

The song was covered by several artists over the years, the first being Bill Haley & His Comets in July 1951. No matter which version deserves the accolade, "Rocket 88" is seen as a prototype rock and roll song in musical style and lineup, as well as its lyrical theme, in which an automobile serves as a metaphor for sexual prowess.

title: Rocket 88


text:
Giant Food

Giant Food may refer to:

 * Giant Food (Landover), also known as Giant Food of Maryland, LLC, a division of Ahold Delhaize
 * Giant Food Stores, also known as The Giant Company, a division of Ahold Delhaize

title: Giant Food


text:
Paper clip

A paper clip (or paperclip) is a tool used to hold sheets of paper together, usually made of steel wire bent to a looped shape (though some are covered in plastic). Most paper clips are variations of the Gem type introduced in the 1890s or earlier, characterized by the one and a half loops made by the wire. Common to paper clips proper is their utilization of torsion and elasticity in the wire, and friction between wire and paper. When a moderate number of sheets are inserted between the two "tongues" of the clip, the tongues will be forced apart and cause torsion in the bend of the wire to grip the sheets together. They are usually used to bind papers together for productivity and portability.

The paper clip's widespread use in various settings, from offices to educational institutions, underscores its functional design and adaptability. While primarily designed for binding papers, its versatility has led to a range of applications, both practical and creative.

Shape and composition
Paper clips usually have an oblong shape with straight sides, but may also be triangular or circular, or have more elaborate shapes. The most common material is steel or some other metal, but molded plastic is also used. Some other kinds of paper clips use a two-piece clamping system. Recent innovations include multi-colored plastic-coated paper clips and spring-fastened binder clips. Regular metal paper clips weigh about a gram.

History
According to the Early Office Museum, the first patent for a bent wire paper clip was awarded in the United States to Samuel B. Fay in 1867. This clip was originally intended primarily for attaching tickets to fabric, although the patent recognized that it could be used to attach papers together. Fay received U.S. patent 64,088 on April 23, 1867. Although functional and practical, Fay's design along with the 50 other designs patented prior to 1899 are not considered reminiscent of the modern paperclip design known today. Another notable paper clip design was also patented in the United States by Erlman J. Wright on July 24, 1877, patent #193,389. This clip was advertised at that time for use in fastening together loose leaves of papers, documents, periodicals, newspapers etc.

The most common type of wire paper clip still in use, the Gem paper clip, was never patented, but it was most likely in production in Britain in the early 1870s by "The Gem Manufacturing Company", according to the American expert on technological innovations, Professor Henry J. Petroski. He refers to an 1883 article about "Gem Paper-Fasteners", praising them for being "better than ordinary pins" for "binding together papers on the same subject, a bundle of letters, or pages of a manuscript". Since the 1883 article had no illustration of this early "Gem", it may have been different from modern paper clips of that name.

The earliest illustration of its current form is in an 1893 advertisement for the "Gem Paper Clip". In 1904 Cushman & Denison registered a trademark for the "Gem" name in connection with paper clips. The announcement stated that it had been used since March 1, 1892, which may have been the time of its introduction in the United States. Paper clips are still sometimes called "Gem clips", and in Swedish the word for any paper clip is "gem".

Definite proof that the modern type of paper clip was well known in 1899 at the latest, is the patent granted to William Middlebrook of Waterbury, Connecticut on April 27 of that year for a "Machine for making wire paper clips." The drawing clearly shows that the product is a perfect clip of the Gem type. The fact that Middlebrook did not mention it by name, suggests that it was already well known at the time. Since then countless variations on the same theme have been patented. Some have pointed instead of rounded ends, some have the end of one loop bent slightly to make it easier to insert sheets of paper, and some have wires with undulations or barbs to get a better grip. In addition, purely aesthetic variants have been patented, clips with triangular, star, or round shapes. But the original Gem type has for more than a hundred years proved to be the most practical, and consequently by far the most popular. Its qualities—ease of use, gripping without tearing, and storing without tangling—have been difficult to improve upon. National Paperclip Day is May 29.

The Gem-type paperclip has become a symbol of inventive design, as confirmed below – although falsely – by its celebration as a Norwegian invention in 1899. More convincing is its appropriation as logo of the Year of Design (L'any del disseny) in Barcelona 2003, depicted on posters, T-shirts and other merchandise.

Unsupported claims
It has been claimed that the paper clip was invented by English intellectual Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). Spencer registered a "binding-pin" on 2 September 1846, which was made and sold by Adolphus Ackermann for over a year, advertised as "for holding loose manuscripts, sermons, weekly papers, and all unstitched publications". Spencer's design, approximately 15 cm unfolded, looked more like a modern cotter pin than a modern paper clip.

Norwegian claim

Norwegian Johan Vaaler (1866–1910) has been identified as the inventor of the paper clip. He was granted patents in Germany and in the United States (1901) for a paper clip of similar design, but less functional and practical, because it was more complicated to insert into the paper Vaaler probably did not know that a better product was already on the market, although not yet in Norway. His version was never manufactured and never marketed, because the superior Gem was already available.

Long after Vaaler's death his countrymen created a national myth based on the false assumption that the paper clip was invented by an unrecognized Norwegian genius. Norwegian dictionaries since the 1950s have mentioned Vaaler as the inventor of the paper clip, and that myth later found its way into international dictionaries and much of the international literature on paper clips.

Vaaler probably succeeded in having his design patented abroad, despite the previous existence of more useful paper clips, because patent authorities at that time were quite liberal and rewarded any marginal modification of existing inventions. Johan Vaaler began working for Alfred J. Bryns Patentkontor in Kristiania in 1892 and was later promoted to office manager, a position he held until his death. As the employee of a patent office, he could easily have obtained a patent in Norway. His reasons for applying abroad are not known; it is possible that he wanted to secure the commercial rights internationally. Also, he may have been aware that a Norwegian manufacturer would find it difficult to introduce a new invention abroad, starting from the small home market.

Vaaler's patents expired quietly, while the "Gem" was used worldwide, including his own country. The failure of his design was its impracticality. Without the two full loops of the fully developed paper clip, it was difficult to insert sheets of paper into his clip. One could manipulate the end of the inner wire so that it could receive the sheet, but the outer wire was a dead end because it could not exploit the torsion principle. The clip would instead stand out like a keel, perpendicular to the sheet of paper. The impracticality of Vaaler's design may easily be demonstrated by cutting off the last outer loop and one long side from a regular Gem clip.

National symbol
The originator of the Norwegian paper clip myth was an engineer of the Norwegian national patent agency who visited Germany in the 1920s to register Norwegian patents in that country. He came across Vaaler's patent, but failed to detect that it was not the same as the then-common Gem-type clip. In the report of the first fifty years of the patent agency, he wrote an article in which he proclaimed Vaaler to be the inventor of the common paper clip. This piece of information found its way into some Norwegian encyclopedias after World War II.

Events of that war contributed greatly to the mythical status of the paper clip. Patriots wore them in their lapels as a symbol of resistance to the German occupiers and local Nazi authorities when other signs of resistance, such as flag pins or pins showing the cipher of the exiled King Haakon VII of Norway were forbidden. Those wearing them did not yet see them as national symbols, as the myth of their Norwegian origin was not commonly known at the time. The clips were meant to denote solidarity and unity ("we are bound together"). The wearing of paper clips was soon prohibited, and people wearing them could risk severe punishment.

The leading Norwegian encyclopedia mentioned the role of the paper clip as a symbol of resistance in a supplementary volume in 1952, but did not yet proclaim it a Norwegian invention. That information was added in later editions. According to the 1974 edition, the idea of using the paper clip to denote resistance originated in France. A clip worn on a lapel or front pocket could be seen as "deux gaules" (two posts or poles) and be interpreted as a reference to the leader of the French Resistance, General Charles de Gaulle.

The post-war years saw a widespread consolidation of the paper clip as a national symbol. Authors of books and articles on the history of Norwegian technology eagerly seized it to make a thin story more substantial. They chose to overlook the fact that Vaaler's clip was not the same as the fully developed Gem-type clip. In 1989 a giant paper clip, almost 7 m high, was erected on the campus of a commercial college near Oslo in honor of Vaaler, ninety years after his invention was patented. But this monument shows a Gem-type clip, not the one patented by Vaaler. The celebration of the alleged Norwegian origin of the paper clip culminated in 1999, one hundred years after Vaaler submitted his application for a German patent. A commemorative stamp was issued that year, the first in a series to draw attention to Norwegian inventiveness. The background shows a facsimile of the German "Patentschrift". However, the figure in the foreground is not the paper clip depicted on that document, but the much better known "Gem". In 2005, the national biographical encyclopedia of Norway (Norsk biografisk leksikon) published the biography of Johan Vaaler, stating he was the inventor of the paper clip.

Other uses
Wire is versatile in its nature. Thus a paper clip is a useful accessory in many kinds of mechanical work, including computer work: the metal wire can be unfolded with a little force. Several devices call for a very thin rod to push a recessed button which the user might only rarely need. This is seen on most CD-ROM drives as an "emergency eject" should the power fail; also on early floppy disk drives (including the early Macintosh). Various smartphones require the use of a long, thin object such as a paper clip to eject the SIM card and some Palm PDAs advise the use of a paper clip to reset the device. The trackball can be removed from early Logitech pointing devices using a paper clip as the key to the bezel. A paper clip bent into a "U" can be used to start an ATX PSU without connecting it to a motherboard (connect the green to a black on the motherboard header). One or more paper clips can make a loopback device for a RS-232 interface (or indeed many interfaces). A paper clip could be installed in a Commodore 1541 disk drive as a flexible head-stop. The steel wire from a paperclip can be used in dentistry to form a dental post.

Another common use of paper clips is pipe smokers, including Cannabis smokers use straightened out paper clips to unclog their pipe or bong bowl.

Another creative use of paper clips is in "paperclip art", where enthusiasts bend and twist paper clips into intricate designs and figures, ranging from simple shapes to detailed sculptures. This form of art showcases the flexibility and adaptability of the paper clip beyond its traditional use.

Additionally, paper clips can serve as temporary bookmarks in books or documents. Their slim profile and easy placement make them useful for marking a specific page or section without causing damage or adding bulk.

Paper clips can be bent into a crude but sometimes effective lock picking device. Some types of handcuffs can be unfastened using paper clips. There are two approaches. The first one is to unfold the clip in a line and then twist the end in a right angle, trying to imitate a key and using it to lift the lock fixator. The second approach, which is more feasible but needs some practice, is to use the semi-unfolded clip kink for lifting when the clip is inserted through the hole where the handcuffs are closed.

A paper clip image is the standard image for an attachment in an email client.

Trade
In 1994, the United States imposed anti-dumping tariffs against China on paper clips.

Other fastening devices

 * Binder clip
 * Brass fastener
 * Bulldog clip
 * Staple
 * Treasury tag

title: Paper clip


text:
Googly

In the game of cricket, a googly refers to a type of delivery bowled by a right-arm leg spin bowler. It is different from the normal delivery for a leg-spin bowler in that it is turning the other way. The googly is not a variation of the typical off spin type of delivery, in that the cricket ball is presented from the bowler's hand in such a way that once the ball pitches; instead, it deviates in the opposite direction of a leg spinning type of delivery (i.e. towards the leg stump rather than the off stump). It has also been colloquially referred to as the wrong'un, Bosie or Bosey, with the latter two eponyms referring to Bernard Bosanquet, the bowler who originally devised and began using the googly.

Explanation
While a normal leg break spins from the leg to the off side, away from a right-handed batter, a googly spins the other side, from off to leg, into a right-handed batter (and is distinct from an off break delivery). The bowler achieves this change of spin by bending the wrist sharply from the normal leg break delivery position. When the ball rolls out of the hand (from the side near the little finger, as in a normal leg break), it emerges with a clockwise spin (from the bowler's point of view). A googly may also be achieved by bowling the ball as a conventional leg break, but spinning the ball further with the fingers just before it is released.

The change of wrist action can be seen by a skilled batter and the change of spin allowed for when playing a shot at the ball. Less skilled batters, or ones who have lost their concentration, can be deceived completely, expecting the ball to move one direction off the pitch, only for it to move the other direction. If the batter is expecting a leg break, he or she will play outside the line of the ball after it spins. This means the ball can strike the pads for a potential leg before wicket (lbw) appeal, fly between the bat and the pads and hit the wicket, or catch the edge of the bat.

The googly is a major weapon in the arsenal of a leg spin bowler, and can be one of the bowler's most effective most important wicket-taking balls. It is used infrequently, because its effectiveness comes mostly from its surprise value.

Left-arm unorthodox spinners can bowl with the googly action using the left arm. This delivery turns away from a right-handed batter, like a leg break or left-arm orthodox spinner. The googly is similar in principle to the doosra, the ball from an off-spinner that turns the opposite way from his stock ball.

Chambers Dictionary describes the whole etymology of the word as "dubious".

Mechanics
To grip the ball for a leg-spinning delivery, the ball is placed into the palm with the seam parallel to the palm. The first two fingers then spread and grip the ball, and the third and fourth fingers close together and rest against the side of the ball. The first bend of the third finger should grasp the seam. The thumb resting against the side is up to the bowler, but should impart no pressure. When the ball is bowled, the third finger will apply most of the spin. The wrist is cocked as it comes down by the hip, and the wrist moves sharply from right to left as the ball is released, adding more spin. The ball is tossed up to provide flight. The batter will see the back of the hand when the ball is released.

An alternative grip is to hold the ball in the thumb, index finger and middle finger. The finger-print of both the thumb and index finger rest on the seam, as does the first bend of the middle finger. Together with rotation of the wrist, the index and middle fingers are involved in imparting spin on the ball and can achieve a very high number of revolutions. As with the more conventional grip, all the various deliveries can be bowled with the same level of success and the wrist and fingers must also be relaxed.

In popular culture
In a scene from John Boorman's 1987 film Hope and Glory, David Hayman plays a father who, before leaving to fight in WWII, passes on "the secret of the googly" to his young son.

title: Googly