Acme Market

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Acme Markets

Type	Grocery
Founded	1891 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Headquarters	Malvern, Pennsylvania
Key people	Jeff Noddle, Chairman and CEO Mike Jackson, President and COO John Hooley, Executive Vice President; President, Retail East
Industry	Retail
Products	Bakery, dairy, deli, frozen foods, general grocery, meat, pharmacy, produce, seafood, snacks, liquor
Website	http://www.acmemarkets.com/

This article is about Acme Markets, the Philadelphia-area division of Supervalu. For the Akron, Ohio based chain, see Acme Fresh Market.

Acme Markets is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Supervalu. Acme was founded in 1891 by Samuel Robinson and Robert Crawford in South Philadelphia and now operates almost 135 supermarkets in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania under the Acme banner.

[edit] History

An Acme located in Wildwood Crest, NJ. The store was rebuilt and in 2006 a brand-new doo-wop retro-style Acme now sits on the same site.

In 1917, Robinson and Crawford merged Acme Markets with four other Philadelphia area grocery chains, and the combined company was named American Stores. The company acquired California's Alpha-Beta stores in 1961. American Stores was acquired in 1979 by Skaggs Drug Centers which took the American Stores name, and relocated the headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1984 American Stores acquired Jewel Companies, Inc., which included several large chains: Jewel and Jewel-Osco in the Chicago area; Eisner Foods in downstate Illinois and Indiana (later merged into Jewel-Osco); Buttrey Food & Drug in Montana and other Western states; Star Markets in New England; Osco Drug in the Midwest, Northwest, and New England, and Sav-On Drugs in California, Nevada, and Texas. In 1988 it acquired Lucky Stores, also in California, and then divested Alpha Beta to the Yucaipa Cos., Buttrey Food & Drug was spun off to its management, which subsequently sold the chain to Albertsons (prior to American Stores merger with Albertsons); and Star Market was sold to Investcorp, which subsequently sold the chain to J Sainsbury plc, who merged it with their Shaw's Markets chain, which was itself sold to Albertsons in 2004.

The company is the largest food and drug retailer in the competitive Philadelphia market, where it competes with local chains, including ShopRite, Safeway-owned Genuardi's and Wal-Mart Supercenters. In addition to its bricks-and-mortar stores, Acme offers online grocery shopping in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs and in four New Jersey counties. Shoppers are charged $4.95 for orders picked up at the store and $9.95 for delivery.

In 2004, Acme Markets were among the first to introduce "self-checkout lines," where shoppers could scan and bag their own (limited number of) groceries.

Acme Markets was acquired by Albertsons in 1998. Albertsons was acquired by Supervalu in 2006.