A&P will be no more

[John Coloccia]

There are chains that I didn't know were owned by A&P - Superfresh and Pathmark in the mid-Atlantic area. Some of those are closing but I don't think all, at least not yet.

Pathmark, A&P and Waldbaums were all big in the New York area where I grew up, and I believe they all ended up being owned by A&P. I think a lot of the stores aren't actually closing, but are being bought out. I think Stop&Shop bought some....someone else bought some. The ones that will close are the ones that are obviously already in a saturated market. That seems more and more common, though.

[Rod Sheridan]

Didn't realize A&P was a national chain., thought it was just here in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states.

Interesting article on how and why Aldi (and TJ's) are so effective: http://frugalbites.com/why-is-aldi-s...-supermarkets/

Probably the future of grocery retailing though the shopping cart thing really bugs me.

Actually it was international, we had them as well............Regards, Rod.

[Barry McFadden]

A&P has been gone for years up here....now they are Metro.....

[Jim Koepke]

Yep. Absolutely.

Either that or the death of another hidebound old-line corporation that could not figure out how to avoid being eaten by the efficient capitalist competition.

Many years ago my employer was one of those old stodgy companies. Whenever someone would suggest doing something a different way the standard reply was, "we have always done it this way and it still works." They downsized and ended up being devoured by a company with a more modern approach to the market. At one time it had the biggest steel casting facility west of the Mississippi River. My recollection is when they closed there were about 2,000 people put out of work.

There were a lot of little changes that could have been made along the way to keep them in business, but that wasn't they way they did things.

jtk

[Brian Elfert]

Walmart is now the single largest seller of groceries in the USA. Walmart sells 25% of all groceries in the USA. Walmart is even building Neighborhood Markets that only sell groceries. That market share has to come from somewhere unfortunately. Walmart is not the only discounter taking market share from traditional grocery stores. Aldi is growing fast. The Minneapolis area lost an entire chain of grocery stores in 2014. Another chain bought some of the locations while a number of the locations were closed.

Change happens constantly in the business world. Some changes you can adapt to and sometimes you go out of business. If you print stuff there really is no other use for printing presses. Plenty of businesses have gone under because of the Internet, but plenty of new companies are thriving because of the Internet.