Groceteria.com

(Sorry for going off topic for a minute there...) McDonalds has been using the original Downey store as a prototype for a few years. For many years they tried to shut down that store since it was a pre-franchise store but McDs got new leadership who saw the value in the architecture and preserved i...

Another product gone, Schilling spices out west, replaced by the McCormick brand I had noticed that but didn't realize it was a geographic deal (in the vein of Dreyer's/Edy's and Best Foods/Hellman's)... The commercial jingle for Hellman's is the same as for Best Foods "Bring out the Best Food...

What building on Brookhurst & Chapman in Garden Grove were you referring to? As of 1984, there was no Food Barn at this location. The large building to the left was a Pavillions, was a Zody's before that. Across the street was an outdoor mall, including a JC Penny and a Best.

I wish New York Seltzer were still around...they pulled out of the west coast in the early 90's and went under completely 5 or so years ago. And New Coke hung on in the Midwest/Northeast until the mid 90's. I actually liked having a choice other than "classic coke" once in a while. If I'm...

Mars bars? The American Mars bar was recently rebranded Snickers Almond, though outside the US the international Mars bar remains. I didn't know they're Mars bars...you'd think M&M/Mars would've done some better advertising. Maybe they should rename M&M's to "Skittles Chocolate". ...

I've had the jingle "Merry Christmas, from Thrifty and Payless!" stuck in my mind this week, though both are long gome. Anyone remember the old Miller's Outpost Christmas commercial with the two cowboys? And what happened to the Wells Fargo stagecoach commercial where they deliver a Christ...

Check cashing---by the 80s, some stores like Jewel were set-up so that the store store would function like a branch bak for depositing a paycheck Boys Markets had these up until the early 80's in CA, separate from the rest of the store out in front. ATM's made these obsolete. I can think of a coupl...

Funny to think, if Disco Wonderland had hung on just a couple of more years, people who were not already familiar with it would have probably thought they were a chain of record stores or some kind of nightclub/roller disco. Maybe they could have repositioned themselves into that direction due to a...

Did Handy Dan have anything to do with the Handyman hardware stores? MAC DISCO reminds me of the shoe distributor to K Mart, MELDISCO.

And "Disco Wonderworld" reminds me of "Boogie Wonderland".

The Kmart in Covina had a District office next to it. it was added sometime in the early 90's if i'm correct. The Kmart in West Covina started out as a Save Co. in the early 60's then by 1970 was a Cal Store until Kmart moved in sometime in 1977 or 78. It also had a Vendome Liquor which opened on N...

While I've never been to Fairfield, it looks exactly like a Sambo's I remember in Anaheim, CA.

It was actually spelled Sprouse Reitz. They were a varierty store chain with locations all over the west coast. By the end, in the early 1990s, they'd started operating slightly larger stores in smaller cities. They were apparently on the level of a TG&Y or Rose's or Woolworth. A Google search ...

Victorville, now a King Ranch market http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=14827+7th+St,+Victorville,+CA+92395&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=34.520109,-117.308482&spn=0.001224,0.004174&t=h&om=0&iwloc=addr Apple Valley, now a school district building http://maps.google.com/map...

The SoCal natives would remember better, but that was na era where Vons seemed to be rolling out "niche" prototypes, including their stores with under the Tiaungis (?sp) which targeted Hispanic customers. Expo...the Vons for poor people. Safeway exchanged its stores in So Cal for a part o...

IIRC, the first Pavillions was opened in a former Zody's in Garden Grove. I had been to that store many times as a kid. That area was becoming very upscale at the time, and Vons created the idea to bring in shoppers with higher incomes (definitely not my family at that time). Maybe it has something ...