supermarket wars

Buffalo-based Tops supermarkets, current competitor for mighty Weggers, is giving up. It’s selling all its many stores in western New York and Pennsylvania.
So yet again mighty Weggers emerges triumphant. —Which to me doesn’t really benefit the shopper with lower prices, since Weggers isn’t selling low prices.
What it’s selling is ambience; the competition had to sell price.
Wars like this have been going on since I moved the Rochester in late 1966. On the west-side (West Ave.), it was mighty Weggers versus an adjacent Star Market; although the Star was a creaky abomination compared to Weggers.
When we moved to Averill Ave., after we got married, we shopped at a small city Weggers (on Monroe Ave. near Goodman) that closed long ago. It was nearby — within walking distance.
Both Weggers and Star were near our Winton Road house (and before that, Woodland Park); although Star suffered from a poor location. It was straddling two levels: a store-level and a parking-lot one level down.
It meant you had to carry your groceries down stairs; you couldn’t just wheel them out. (They had a small never-used elevator.)
But now that Weggers (the funky Park-Ave. store) is suffering from its tiny parking-lot. It’s also a small store.
Tops built a number of large city supermarkets in areas Weggers wasn’t.
The Park-Ave. Weggers was nearby to the giant new Tops at Winton and Blossom, previously the location of Taylor Chevrolet, where I bought the Vega.
But I didn’t like it, since they only had one size cart (big as a Buick), and often only one checkout was open (40 minutes).
I’d often shop there while at Transit, even after moving to West Bloomfield, since it was on the way home.
So now Tops is giving up. Low prices can’t compete with ambience and Wal*Mart.
Apparently a lot of the opposition to building a Wal*Mart supercenter in Lima came from the Honeoye Falls MarketPlace, the non-Weggers supermarket we shop at.
MarketPlace saw itself fading if Wal*Mart opened four miles away.
Tops also built a supermarket in Canandaigua, after wars with Weggers.
Tops was originally going to build in downtown Canandaigua, but Weggers bought the land. Hammer-and-tongs!
So Tops built their new store in the town on the city-border (i.e. outside the city). But it was still competing with long-established Weggers and the Weggers-ambience.
I patronized the new Tops a few times, while at the mighty Mezz. It was glitzy, but still a Tops.
Apparently a few small supermarkets* remain in downtown Canandaigua; and I was advised to patronize them instead of Weggers. *Ramshackle affairs with additions on additions.
Nice idea, but I know where things are at Weggers.
I also shop occasionally at the Honeoye Falls MarketPlace — but that’s mainly Linda, and me Weggers. Probably 60% of our groceries come from MarketPlace. Weggers is mainly produce and milk — plus you can’t get “Choose-a-Size” paper-towels at MarketPlace.
Weggers has a “story” printed on their sub-bags, about patronizing the best sub-place in Rochester, and getting their recipes.
Um, yeah; I can just imagine. Shaded thugs in trenchcoats waltz into the sub-place, saying “either you give us your recipe, or we’ll open a shop next to you and put you out of business.”
Weggers is a bully.