Acme Markets Inc. is a
supermarket
A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. Strictly speaking, a supermarket is larger and has a wider selecti ...
chain operating 159 stores throughout
Connecticut
Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...
,
Delaware
Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...
,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
, the
Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley or Hudson River Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The region stretches from the Capital District (New York), Capital District includi ...
of
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
, and
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
and, as of 1998, is a subsidiary of
Albertsons
Albertsons Companies, Inc. is an American grocery company founded and headquartered in Boise, Idaho.
With 2,253 stores as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 and 270,000 employees as of fiscal year 2019, the company is the second-large ...
, and part of its presence in the Northeast. It is headquartered in
East Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania
East Whiteland Township is a Township (Pennsylvania), township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 13,913 at th2020 Census Mailing addresses associated with East Whiteland include Ma ...
, near
Malvern, a
Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
suburb.
Acme Markets has 159
supermarkets
A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. Strictly speaking, a supermarket is larger and has a wider selecti ...
in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland.
After many decades of being the largest grocery retailer in the
Delaware Valley
The Philadelphia metropolitan area, also known as Greater Philadelphia and informally called the Delaware Valley, the Philadelphia tri-state area, and locally and colloquially Philly–Jersey–Delaware, is a major metropolitan area in the Nor ...
, Acme fell to No. 2 behind
ShopRite in 2011.
As of 2013, Acme was No. 3 behind No. 1 ShopRite and No. 2
The Giant Company in the region.
History
Early history
Irish immigrants
The Irish diaspora () refers to ethnic Irish people and their descendants who live outside the island of Ireland.
The phenomenon of migration from Ireland is recorded since the Early Middle Ages,Flechner, Roy; Meeder, Sven (2017). The Irish ...
, Samuel Robinson and Robert Crawford, founded what is now Acme in south Philadelphia in 1891.
In 1917, Robinson and Crawford merged Acme Markets with four other Philadelphia-area grocery stores, including English immigrant S. Canning Childs New Jersey–based ''American'' grocery chain; the new company was named
American Stores. In 1927, smaller rival
Penn Fruit began operating in Philadelphia's
Center City. In the late 1920s, supermarkets under the ''American Stores'' banner rapidly sprouted throughout the Philadelphia region, rivaling New Jersey–based
A&P, which then featured downtown stores throughout the East Coast, and as far west as
New Orleans
New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
. American Stores first introduced
self-service
Self-service is a system whereby customers acquire (or serve) themselves goods or services, paying for the items at a point-of-sale, as opposed to a shop assistant or clerk acquiring goods or providing services in addition to taking payment. Comm ...
stores in shopping centers in the early 1950s.
Expansion and acquisition
In 1961, the American Stores company acquired
southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...
's
Alpha Beta chain of supermarkets. Many of Acme's stores in the 1960s and 1970s were paired with a regional drugstore chain, a
PLCB liquor store (in Pennsylvania), a
Kmart
Kmart ( ), formerly legally registered as Kmart Corporation, now operated by Transformco, is a department-store chain and online retailer in the United States and Territories of the United States, its territories. It operates four remaining Kma ...
, or
Woolco
Woolco was an American-based discount retail chain. It was founded in 1962 in Columbus, Ohio, by the F. W. Woolworth Company. It was a full-line discount department store unlike the five-and-dime Woolworth stores which operated at the time. At ...
(earlier centers had a
Woolworth), and in rarer cases a department store such as
Sears
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...
or
JCPenney
Penney OpCo LLC , Trade name, doing business as JCPenney (colloquially Penney's and abbreviated JCP) is an American department store chain store, chain with 649 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. It is managed as part of the Catalys ...
. American Stores also bought the Philadelphia franchise rights to the then fast-growing restaurant chain
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut, LLC is an American multinational pizza restaurant chain and international franchise founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas, by brothers Dan and Frank Carney. The chain, headquartered in Plano, Texas, operates 19,866 restaurants worldw ...
in 1968. Acme would also acquire a number of stores from Kmart Foods (as did A&P, Safeway, and Kroger); however, in the late 1970s, many recently closed 1950s-era supermarkets in Philadelphia and close suburbs were reopened as independents
IGA or Thriftway/Shop 'n Bag. Starting in the 1980s, these independents were overtaken by family chains
Genuardi's (later acquired by
Safeway
Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, delicatessen, floral and pharmacy, as well as Starbucks coffee shops, and veh ...
and now defunct) and
Clemens Clemens is a Late Latin, German, and Dutch masculine given name and a surname, meaning "merciful".
Notable people with the name include:
Surname
* Adelaide Clemens (born 1989), Australian actress
* Andrew Clemens (1857–1894), American folk ...
(also defunct) along with
Giant-Carlisle and
Giant-Landover in newer suburbs, and modernized Acme,
Super Fresh, and Pathmark stores in the city and older suburbs not long after.

From 1978 to 1982, Acme acquired many stores during Food Fair's bankruptcy, including both ex-Food Fair (by then known as discount grocer Pantry Pride) and Penn Fruit units. The bulk of these dated to the 1950s. The former Food Fair/Pantry Pride stores were replaced by or remodeled into stores with the standard Acme prototype of the 1970s, as were many expanded A-Frame buildings and a few former
Pathmark (these were former
ShopRite) stores. Former Penn Fruit buildings, with their trademark barrel roof, could not be adapted to this model. Even many A-Frames were replaced by the often older but larger acquired stores.
In the early 1970s, Acme introduced a discount chain,
Super Saver, in an effort to compete in densely populated areas.
Both chains had the
slogan
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan or a political, commercial, religious, or other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the public or a more defined target group ...
"Acme and Super Saver - you're going to like it here!" The brand Super Saver was retired in the 1980s, only to be resurrected in the 1990s in the
West
West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...
. Some isolated stores retained the signage into the early 1990s, however.
American Stores were sold in 1979 to the
Skaggs Companies which took the American Stores name, moving its headquarters to
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...
. Also in 1979, American Stores announced that it would be closing most of its stores in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
state. In the 1980s, American Stores undertook various acquisitions (including
Chicago metropolitan area
The Chicago metropolitan area, also referred to as Chicagoland, is the largest metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the Midwest, containing the City of Chicago along with its surrounding suburbs and satellite cities. ...
chain
Jewel Food Stores) which ran the Jewel-T chain; it operated in many former urban Acme buildings. In 1995, Acme sold 45 stores in
northeastern Pennsylvania
Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA or Nepa) is a region of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania that includes the Pocono Mountains, the Endless Mountains, and the industrial cities of Scranton (the area's largest city), Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Ha ...
to
Penn Traffic.
American Stores was acquired by major Western and Southern chain
Albertsons
Albertsons Companies, Inc. is an American grocery company founded and headquartered in Boise, Idaho.
With 2,253 stores as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 and 270,000 employees as of fiscal year 2019, the company is the second-large ...
in November 1999.
In 2006, Albertsons' supermarket holdings were bought by
Cerberus Capital Management
Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. is an American global alternative investment firm with assets across credit, private equity, and real estate strategies.Leaders Magazine"Providing Economic Opportunity: An Interview with The Honorable Dan Qua ...
and
SuperValu and divided between the two companies, with Acme going to SuperValu. In 2013 Cerberus, which was operating the Albertsons stores it owned under the name Albertsons LLC, agreed to purchase Acme from SuperValu.
In July 2016, it was announced that Albertsons had entered into a purchase agreement with
Ahold and
Delhaize Group to replace a
Giant
In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: ''wiktionary:gigas, gigas'', cognate wiktionary:giga-, giga-) are beings of humanoid appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''gia ...
store in
Salisbury, Maryland
Salisbury ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Wicomico County, Maryland, United States. Salisbury is the largest city in Eastern Shore of Maryland, the state's Eastern Shore region, with a population of 33,050 at the 2020 United States census ...
as part of the divestiture of stores to gain clearance from the
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) United States antitrust law, antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. It ...
for the impending Ahold/Delhaize merger. The store was rebranded under the Acme banner in September 2016.
Current and future operations
Acme is the third-largest food and drug retailer in the Delaware Valley,
where it competes with such chains as
Ahold's
Giant-Carlisle,
Giant-Landover,
Food Lion
Food Lion is an American regional supermarket Chain store, chain headquartered in Salisbury, North Carolina, that operates over 1,000 supermarkets in 10 states: Delaware, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsyl ...
, and
Stop & Shop;
Wakefern Food Corporation's
ShopRite;
Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...
and its warehouse club subsidiary
Sam's Club
Sam's West, Inc. (doing business as Sam's Club) is a chain of membership-only warehouse club retail stores in the United States owned by Walmart. It was founded in 1983 and named after Walmart founder Sam Walton as Sam's Wholesale Club. , Sam's ...
;
BJ's;
Costco
Costco Wholesale Corporation is an American multinational corporation which operates a chain of membership-only big-box warehouse club retail stores. As of 2021, Costco is the third-largest retailer in the world, and as of August 2024, Cos ...
; natural/organic products retailer
Whole Foods Market
Whole Foods Market, Inc. (colloquially referred to as simply Whole Foods) is an American multinational supermarket chain store, chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, which sells products free from Hydrogenated fat, hydrogenated fats and artificia ...
;
Wegmans Food Markets;
Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's is an American grocery store chain headquartered in Monrovia, California, with 597 locations across the US.
The first Trader Joe's store was opened in 1967 by founder Joe Coulombe in Pasadena, California. In 1979, the chain was s ...
and
Aldi
Aldi (German pronunciation: ), stylised as ALDI, is the common company brand name of two German multinational family-owned discount supermarket chains operating over 12,000 stores in 18 countries. The chain was founded by brothers Karl and ...
; and various smaller chains. Acme was the regional sales leader in the Philadelphia area for decades, and only lost its lead to ShopRite in 2011.
Acme offers online grocery shopping
for orders that can be picked up at the store or, in most areas, delivered to a home or business. In 2004, Acme introduced self-checkout stands, where shoppers could scan and bag their own groceries; however, many stores (including acquired stores - see below) have had their self-checkouts removed in an effort to expand customer service. In 2008, many Acme stores began adding hot food bars to the deli section.
In July 2015, Acme's competitor A&P announced it would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in three years and ceasing operations after 156 years. A&P began placing many of its stores up for auction shortly thereafter, and Acme placed bids on 76 of them, eventually taking the leases to 71 stores in all from A&P's namesake brand and its subsidiaries
Pathmark,
Waldbaum's,
Superfresh, and
The Food Emporium.
See also
*
Giant Food Stores
*
Genuardi's
*
Safeway
Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, delicatessen, floral and pharmacy, as well as Starbucks coffee shops, and veh ...
*
Costco
Costco Wholesale Corporation is an American multinational corporation which operates a chain of membership-only big-box warehouse club retail stores. As of 2021, Costco is the third-largest retailer in the world, and as of August 2024, Cos ...
*
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, was an American chain store, chain of grocery stores that operated from 1859 to 2015. From 1915 through 1975, A&P was the largest grocery retailer in the United States (and, until ...
*
Pathmark
*
Super Fresh
*
Wegmans
*
Weis Markets
Weis Markets, Inc. (, ), doing business as Weis and stylized as weis, is an American Grocery store, food retailer headquartered in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. It currently operates 200 stores with over 23,000 employees in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New ...
References
External links
AcmeAcme stores architecture
{{Cerberus Capital Management
Albertsons
Companies based in Philadelphia
Companies based in Chester County, Pennsylvania
Retail companies established in 1891
Culture of Philadelphia
Irish-American culture in Philadelphia
Skaggs family
Supermarkets of the United States
1891 establishments in Pennsylvania
1999 mergers and acquisitions