Autumn Years Spring 2023

joined Wakefern Food Corp. Today, it is a Wake fern brand store called The Fresh Grocer. Another chain with a presence in the county, beginning in 1958, had a name that sounded more like a bank: First National Supermarket. Its in-house brand, “Finast,” was an ac

store owner’s name took top billing over the ShopRite brand name.” Today, there are 14 ShopRite lo cations in Bergen County. Foodtown, once a

shelves on that first day. The chain later had stores in New Milford, River Edge and River Vale before it went out of busi ness in c.1963. On May 7, 1952, Mrs. Penny Ducan— “the honey-blonde Mrs. America, 1952”— was the hostess at the opening of Bergen County’s first Kings Supermarket. Lo cated at 461 Passaic Street, Hackensack, the new store’s tagline was “Where Mr. Joe saves you dough.” In promoting its new “shining baby shopping buggies,” the store stated that “Baby is king at Kings,” adding that with the new buggies, baby “won’t hang on your arms or nag or whine” and that “he’s safe as if he were home in bed.” Today, Kings has three loca tions in the county. The well-known ShopRite brand name first appeared in Bergen County in December 1954 when “Vay’s Shop-Rite Supermarket” opened at 362 River Road, New Milford. Owner Vay Najarian had been accepted as a mem ber of the recently established and grow ing retailer-owned cooperative known as Wakefern Food Corp. (Today, it is the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the United States.) A spokesperson for Inserra Supermarkets, owner of today’s New Milford ShopRite, stated that “Back in the beginning, the local cooperative

major brand in Ber gen County, arrived in the mid-1950s and eventually had many locations. Like ShopRite, it was a retailer owned cooperative and, thus, the owner’s name of ten took top billing. Lipp’s Foodtown was part of the well-remembered Frankie’s Market complex in Lodi, an immense shopping location with 350 merchant stalls at its peak in 1952. One of the last Foodtown stores in the county was in Washington Township; in 2020, the Ma niaci family (owner of the store)

A&P’s “automatic cart unloader.”

ronym drawn from the formal name of the company, “First National Stores.” When the Paramus shopping malls opened, they were envisioned to replace the traditional downtown. So naturally, there had to be food stores. Bergen Mall in 1958 had both a Food Fair store and a Penn Fruit store (200 feet apart). The Food Fair location soon closed, and the large bow-roofed Penn Fruit store was rebranded as Dales (and later became a ShopRite). Today, the mall has a Whole Foods store. Grand Union opened at Garden State Plaza in 1957 and closed sometime after 1970.

Dales supermarket at Bergen Mall.

58 AUTUMN YEARS I SPRING 2023