CLEVELAND, Ohio — Grocery stores in Greater Cleveland looked much different at the dawn of the 20th Century than they do today. While contemporary grocery stores give their customers a single place to fill all of their cooking needs, 100 years ago shoppers visited a butcher for their meats, a green grocer for their vegetables and a bakery for their bread, historians say.
We put together a gallery of some of the long-lost grocery stores of Northeast Ohio, providing a visual history of the shops Clevelanders once patronized when their cupboards were empty.
Like most industries, the grocery business changes as technology and consumer tastes evolve. At first glance, the most noticeable difference is the number of stores.
Cleveland had 5,358 stores that sold food in 1929.
“That was 43 percent of all retail stores,” said John Grabowski, a historian with the Western Reserve Historical Society and Case Western Reserve University.
That figure fell to 1,235 in 1982.
Retain chain Fisher Foods emerged at the beginning of the 20th Century as a precursor to supermarkets, Grabowski said. But the death knell for the mom-and-pop groceries came with the advent of public transportation and the automobile.
Before car ownership became widespread shortly after the World War II, Clevelanders depended on the neighborhood stores within walking distance of their homes. Many of those stores were owned by immigrants, who often went into the food business after arriving in the United States.
“A lot of those art shops in Little Italy used to be grocery stores,” Grabowski said.
In fact, an upcoming Western Reserve Historical Society exhibit — which opens in August — chronicles the impact of Italian entrepreneurs, and includes information about Italian food stores.
The mom-and0pop grocery stores of old “were about the size of the first floor of somebody’s house,” said Bill Hauser, assistant dean and director of graduate studies in the University of Akron’s College of Business Administration.
Hauser worked for Kroger as a manager in the 1970s.
As you’ll see in the photo gallery, many of the grocery stores from the first half of the 20th Century were small enough to fit into the storefronts that populated main drags and downtowns throughout Greater Cleveland.
“The idea was that (the grocers received shipments) two, three, four times a week and everything was going to be fresh,” Hauser said.
Supermarkets started to pop up in the early 1900s, but they took off once shoppers acquired the ability to drive to a single place to do all of their shopping.
But it also robbed customers of the power to haggle over the price of their food.
Grabowski recalled going to a supermarket with his mother as a child and feeling embarrassed when she tried to negotiate prices.
“She was so used to bargaining at small stores, she would start arguing with the guy behind the counter,” he said. “She would say, ‘I can get this for less at the store down the street,’ and the guy behind the counter would tell her to go down the damn street.”
The decline of small groceries also saw the rise of the stores many of us recognize today.
“In the late ’60s and early ’70s, you saw Kroger come in,” Hauser said. “The biggest thing was convenience. Even the layout of the store was set up so you could get in and out as quickly as possible. The quick sale items were at the front, and then it went right to the staples, breads, dairy products, meat. You would make a loop around the store back to the cash register. Almost all the stores had the same layout.”
Discount stores like ALDI emerged in the 1980s as consumers became more price conscious, Hauser said, giving shoppers the chance to buy all of their goods in one place at a heavily discounted price.
“Most of the warehouse clubs came out in that era,” he said.
But in recent years, consumers have shown a greater preference for higher-end stores like Heinen’s and Whole Foods that still offer shoppers a single place to buy all the foods they need, but also stock their shelves with organic foods and provide entertainment.
“They’ve become more of a destination,” Hauser said.
Stores like Whole Foods have bars and restaurants inside, and host wine tastings and live music. Organic foods are a large draw at higher-end stores, which boast a larger sticker price than non-organic foods.
But the specialty shops common in the first half of the 20th Century have also started to resurge, Grabowski said.
Stores like the Luna Bakery and Cafe and the Stone Oven — both in Cleveland Heights — sell artisanal baked goods.
And farmers markets have proliferated in the 21st Century as consumers increasingly prefer fresh, locally grown and healthier foods.
“It’s kind of like the brew pub market now,” Grabowksi said. “You can buy Millers and (Budweisers) cheaper, but if you want a better product, you’re going to get Great Lakes. I think we’ve become more conscious of where our food comes from and what it can do for us.”
The aforementioned farmers markets “are a tradition that dates back almost to the very beginning of the city,” Grabowski added. “Farmers would come in with their produce and sell it on the market day.”
The artisanal bakeries and farmers markets feature higher prices, excluding low-income shoppers and ensuring that the market for wholesale goods continues, he said.
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