Supermarket

The city's crackdown last week on a West Oak Lane supermarket over electronic-scanner errors may be hailed by folks pining for the good old days of item-price stickers. But how will the shoppers on line at the Thriftway on Ogontz Avenue react in a month or so if cashiers revert to the laborious, key- punching of their week's groceries? So miffed is the store's owner with being fined $1,000 and forced for the next year to tag prices on everything he sells that he's talking about scrapping the labor-saving scanners altogether.

Sunshine broke through the clouds just before noon yesterday in West Philadelphia - both in the sky and on the ground at 56th and Chestnut Streets. The Fresh Grocer, a supermarket operator based in Drexel Hill, opened its eighth store, this one in a neighborhood where residents say there has been an acute need for years for a modern market comparable to those suburbanites enjoy. "I think it's gorgeous," Overbrook resident Marie Walker, one of the first customers, said as she navigated through the throng of shoppers.

When Gaspare and Jacqueline Genuardi, two Italian immigrants living in Norristown, started their food business in 1920, high-tech meant deciding what kind of harness to put on the horse. And expansion meant adding extra routes and converting from wagon to Model T truck. For their nine grandsons, who operate Genuardi's Family Markets, a 26-store supermarket chain, expansion means adding five stores next year and a trip across the Delaware River into New Jersey. Genuardi's will open its first Jersey store in Evesham Township in 1997.

For years, Alva Gonzalez had walked past dilapidated houses and a deteriorating shell of a school on her way to shop at a small neighborhood grocery store. It had nearly everything she needed to prepare her family's favorite native Puerto Rican dishes. The prices were just something she had to live with. Recently, Gonzalez stood at the sprawling meat counter of a spacious, full- line supermarket - on the same spot where the old Mary C.I. Williams School once sat - and commented on the chicken: "It's a bargain.

"No," I said. "Why?" she asked. "You just can't," I said. It's Saturday morning and I've taken Alexis to the supermarket. Alexis is 4. The trick with a child in a supermarket is to snake your way up and down the aisles, without forgetting the things on your list, without losing track of the child, without buying one of everything she wants while, at the same time, keeping her interested and happy enough so she doesn't make a...

Soon they'll be calling it the land of many markets. Atlanta-based Hendon Property Associates has an agreement of sale on the former Hecht's building on Old York Road and the Fairway and is thinking about putting in a supermarket, a company representative said. There is an Acme on the far end of the adjacent shopping center, Baederwood Plaza, but it might move since Acme plans to open a superstore in the Bridge, just up Old York Road. Genuardi's, meanwhile, is talking about opening a store in Roslyn, to go with the Rockledge Genuardi's.

When Kmart Corp. announced last month that it would shut down its Brace Road store and eliminate 90 jobs, it looked like Fashion Square shoppers and merchants would only see another empty storefront in the strip mall. But yesterday, an executive at Giant Food Inc. confirmed that the company, based in Landover, Md., will open a Super G supermarket in the center. The Kmart, which will close by the end of the year, will be torn down and a 62,000-square-foot store will be built in its place, said Odonna Mathews, vice president for corporate affairs for Giant Food.

In hazy sunshine yesterday morning, dozens of East Germantown residents stood in front of the new, green-and-white Fresh Grocer store, waiting for the doors to finally open. "I'm so glad," said Gertrude Heath, 69, her empty cart nearby. Soon, it would be filled with cases of soda, paper towels, and other necessities for a family barbecue. For years, Heath said, she has traveled 20 minutes by bus to a ShopRite on Fifth Street. Now, she can walk to the Fresh Grocer, on Chew Avenue between Church Lane and Wister Street, which she said was "going to do a lot for the community.

After going without a supermarket since June, residents might herald the arrival of a new national chain in time for the new year, say owners of the small town's only shopping center. Jim Conway, part owner of the Broad Street building that last housed Acme Markets, said his group, Paulsboro Associates, is negotiating with "a national chain," which the group hopes will move in by the end of December. Conway declined to identify the chain. But he did say it was the first national store to show interest in the location, which has been vacant since June, when Acme moved out. Residents - and even some merchants - are eager to welcome a new store.

When word got out that a new shopping center would be built in Newtown, all the big names in the supermarket business surfaced as bidders for a store. Acme Markets made a pitch. SuperFresh went after a lease. Two large, out-of-town chains - Giant Foods of Carlisle, Pa., and Weis Markets of Sunbury, Pa. - also made overtures for the property. But in the end, the lease went to a small local chain - Genuardi Super Markets Inc. of Norristown. Gen-u-who? Granted, the Genuardi name is not as well-known in all reaches of the Philadelphia area as Acme or SuperFresh.