Grocery Archaeology

Original Grocery Tenant: Red & White Food Stores Address: 46 Tolland Green, Tolland, CT Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Tolland Red & White Gift Shop Photographed:  November 27, 2022 The small town of Tolland, CT -- 18 miles northeast of Hartford and 12 miles south of Massachusetts -- today has a very attractive-looking Big Y , but once was served by the Tolland Red & White. Red & White , for those who are not familiar, is a very loose group of small independent grocers, once a larger cooperative with locations across the US and Canada but now really just a brand distributed by The Federated Group from the Chicago area. It's not uncommon to see small convenience stores, bodegas, and greengrocers in the New York City area selling Red & White products, but those come from Federated via the Jetro wholesaler in New York, through their FoodBase program . On the town green in Tolland, a roughly 1000 square foot store retains the name...

 Possibly the less-famous band led by Tom Robert? Okay, let's get into our third day of matchbooks with this specimen from the defunct southeastern chain . Again, it would be fascinating to know how this St Louis/New Orleans-area chain's matchbook ended up in Maine. Of course, their reach was much wider than that (check out that Wikipedia article for more details), but it's not a chain I'm familiar with. In fact, since it was related to the Loblaw's chain up north, any chance this might have been given out -- maybe even accidentally -- at a Loblaw's? Not too much to see here as far as design goes, just the logo (which is a creative inversion of the Loblaw's L). Heading into more familiar territory, we check out the Providence Public Market Co., whose store would've been here (but of course has been demolished). Additional stores: 93 Weybosset , also apparently demolished; 1880 Westminster , same; 132 Taunton , probably in that brick building, which is p...

Original Tenant:  Red & White Food Stores Address:  3736 NY-54A, Branchport, NY Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Crooked Lake Mercantile Photographed:  August 2020 This touristy-centered general store type thing was previously a Red & White Food Store. How do I know? Because the signs are still up on the front and side of the building! Crooked Lake Mercantile, which now occupies the space, is one of just five businesses, I believe, in this "downtown" area of Branchport. Before we visit Hammondsport, at the southern tip of the Y of Keuka Lake, we're going to take a quick detour inland about eight miles to Prattsburgh tomorrow over on The Independent Edition !