Thursday, May 6, 2021

1963 Lorain City Directory Grocery Listing

As sort of a follow-up to my post about small neighborhood food stores a few weeks ago, here’s the listings of "GROCERS and MEATS – RETAIL” from the 1963 Lorain City Directory. It includes not only the single mom-and-pop stores, but also the big players such as Kroger and A&P, and the regional chains as well. The area covered includes Lorain, Sheffield Lake, Sheffield and Amherst.

Perhaps seeing the list will jog some more memories.

I chose 1963 because it was still part of this area’s “Golden Age,” as well as being a time that would include stores that many of this blog’s readers probably remember.

There are plenty of names on the list that I’ve written about, including A&P, Bazley’s Cash Market, Fisher Foods, Fligner’s, Gang’s, Meyer Goldberg, Jay’s Sparkle Market, Jeancola Food Fair, Kroger, Manhattan Market and John Pfaff.

It’s kind of sad that many of the large chains are pretty much gone from our area, including IGA, Sparkle and Kroger. I’ve never been a big fan of Giant Eagle; I can still remember when the chain first arrived in our area, with their “The Eagle Has Landed” TV commercials. Ugh.

Anyway, here’s a very old post of mine (from 2011) in which I reminisced about going grocery shopping on Friday nights. It still seems like the night to go, so there’s a fresh stock of sugary sweet cereal to enjoy on Saturday morning!

5 comments:

-Alan D Hopewell said...

So many stores, practically on every corner, many of which I probably visited at least once in my ramblings,if only to buy a pop, a candy bar, or a pack of smokes. Always a pleasure to read your blog, Dan.

Dennis Thompson said...

We used to go to the store on Garfield Blvd and Missouri. I see it was called Gilbert's. They had the best sarsaparilla.

Anonymous said...

I see the world famous "Stans" 623 F Street is in there.

Dan Brady said...

Hi Alan! It’s incredible just how many stores there were, especially in South Lorain. I wonder if any of them are still there (sadly, we know the ones on vacated Vine are gone). And Dennis, there’s an extensive reminisce by well-known Lorain realtor Bill Latrany (whose mother went to school with my mother) about Gilbert’s here:

https://danielebrady.blogspot.com/2011/01/memories-of-gilberts-food-fair-trains.html

And one of these days I will have to do a post on Stan’s, as suggested.

Dennis Thompson said...

Stan's is still there and according to my son he thought there were old photos of the store displayed.