Supermarket

Charles Genuardi, 102, eldest of five brothers who founded in 1954 what became a chain of suburban supermarkets, died of kidney failure Friday, Sept. 16, at his home in Meadowood, a retirement community in Worcester Township. After buying a small New Jersey grocery chain in 1997, Genuardi's Family Markets Inc. operated 33 stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The firm, noted for its customer service, was sold in 2001 to Safeway Inc. Born in Norristown, Mr. Genuardi left elementary school to help support the family, but graduated from a business school there in the 1930s, a son, Charles A., said.

Giant Food Stores, which has expanded fiercely with 47 locations across Southeastern Pennsylvania in recent years to become one of the most popular supermarket chains in the region, has broken the city barrier. The grocer will open its first Philadelphia store July 20 at the site of the decommissioned Penn Fruit bakery and commercial food-storage facility in the 2500 block of Grant Avenue near Roosevelt Boulevard in the Northeast. The 74,000-square-foot Giant is part of a 156,000-square-foot retail redevelopment project that came to fruition during the last two years despite opposition from the region's top grocery labor union - and despite ample competition in the area.

The Acme supermarket chain and two businessmen have reached a tentative agreement that could lead to the reopening of a downtown Coatesville supermarket that was closed in December, leaving nearby elderly residents with no convenient place to buy groceries. Acme, which leases the building at Third Avenue and East Lincoln Highway, has tentatively agreed to sublease it to Marvin Sellers and Morrie Rubin, who own an IGA supermarket in Thorndale and would open a second store in Coatesville, according to Walter Rubel, a lawyer at Acme's corporate headquarters in Philadelphia.

Two months ago, a deal to build a supermarket in Chester was so close that residents could practically taste it. Now, with a key deadline having passed, cautious optimism has given way to uncertainty. The impoverished Delaware County city hasn't had a full-service grocery since 2001, and plans to build a new supermarket there have been on the horizon for almost as long. Aided by $47 million in state funding, construction of a $115 million professional-soccer stadium is under way on the Chester waterfront.

A bandit claiming to have a bomb robbed a Giant supermarket in Whitpain Township, Montgomery County, late last night. Whitpain Township police said that the robber entered the store on Dekalb Pike in the Blue Bell section just before midnight Wednesday and approached an employee working one of the registers. The suspect told the worker he had a concealed bomb. He then produced a device. The cashier gave him money from the register. The robber fled. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Department bomb squad responded and found a device outside the store.

A 23-year-old Wilmington man who was wheeled in a shopping cart through a Newark, Del., supermarket while a friend piled frozen turkeys and toys on top of him pleaded guilty yesterday to a charge of disorderly conduct. Malcolm S. Graham Jr. received a 30-day suspended sentence, one year's probation and $300 fine for the May 24 incident, in which he and Edward K. Bispham 4th, 22, also of Wilmington, allegedly stole $109 worth of groceries and other items from an Acme supermarket.

The big Pathmark supermarket on Grays Ferry Avenue was brand new only eight years ago - but it has already been renovated, updated, enlarged and improved. Today, it has a bigger produce department and an expanded bakery. Turkeys are roasted in the store and a gourmet salad bar has been installed. There're even live lobsters floating in a tank. But such improvements are not unusual these days. Every area supermarket chain is striving to become even more super, struggling to survive in a world where competition is tougher.

A local developer is planning a new shopping attraction this fall: a farmers' market that will sell specialty meats and seafoods, fresh pasta, produce and flowers. The market is to open in the boarded-up IGA building on West Market Street, site of the last supermarket to operate in the borough. It closed in October 1991. The market will feature 15 booths, some run by old hands at the long- established farmers' markets in Wayne and Ardmore. "The farmers' market has been 60 percent leased," said Daniel Rauch of Anstey & Associates, a West Chester brokerage.

City Council members this week have a chance to back away from legislation that would force Philadelphia supermarkets to stick price tags on every item in the store. There's a real danger this legislation would boost labor costs for store operators and impose higher food costs on consumers. That's why Mayor Goode vetoed it last week, and it's reason enough for Council members to look around for other ways of helping consumers deal with the confusion and pricing errors associated with electronic supermarket checkout systems.

The Shop Fresh Market, the only supermarket on Chester's east side and one of only two in this city of 40,000 people, is about to close. The supermarket, a former A&P store at 1118 Ave. of the States, was purchased in 1989 by Robert Mancaruso of West Chester. The only other sizable food store is more than three miles away, near Chester's western border. Yesterday, two weeks after Mancaruso started liquidating the inventory, many shelves were bare; others were still lined with such items as as soup and Jell-O, toilet-bowl cleaner and hair conditioner.