Although I'm usually not too nostalgic about chain stores, I am about Lawson's. The ubiquitous stores were clean and well-stocked, and really set a standard for consistent quality.
Compare that to the some of the rather disgusting independent 'convenience' stores today that exist only to sell lottery tickets and liquor. (In Cleveland where I work, you would have to be insane to purchase any of the prepared foods in these filthy markets.)
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| Photo courtesy of Circle K |
There are still a few Dairy Marts in Lorain County, which is fine with me since I can purchase the original Lawson's Chip Dip there. It's also available at Circle K stores.
Here's a link to the Lawson's Wiki entry, which reveals that the store chain lives on today in Japan!
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My wife works in a convenience store, and she often complains about the poor quality of the products they sell, and the recurring zombies who seem to exist on beer, cigarettes, and scratch-off lottery tickets.
Lawson's was great-good quality items, not too expensive, clean, everywhere.
I guess I was a little unfair about the independent stores; they're not all bad. There's some good ones in Lorain County (such as Brownie's in Sheffield Lake) but in Cleveland, the cleanliness of these stores leaves a lot to be desired. (I once watched a worker behind the deli counter in one of these stores spit a huge loogie into a sink--yechhh!!!)
I haven't seen a convenience store with a deli in decades! I remember stopping at Lawson's on my way to work with empty bread sandwiches in my lunch box so I could get some meat to put in them. Sometimes the corned beef (never had corned beef like that before or since- probably some of that strange, white, congealed fat is still clogging my arteries 30 years later) but most often I got the Dutch Loaf, whatever that was. Whatever it was, I loved it! I could never figure out why it was so much cheaper than everything else, because I thought it was fantastic! I could eat it every day. It might have been made of stuff that sluiced through the grates in the slaugherhouse, but I wish I could have a half a pound of it today.
Apparently Hawaii is blessed with Lawson's now!
http://www.ohio.com/news/top-stories/lawson-s-returns-to-the-u-s-1.319016
We had the one in Sheffield Lake, but I don't remember much about it, I stayed in the car and dad went in.
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