Meatland/Food City/Fresh Pride

[shore72]

I thought this chain deserved its own thread. Once they were my favorite place to shop; I'll tell what I know, and maybe I can learn some things I don't know. I don't have any "insider" information!

Up through the 70s/80s the dominant supermarkets on the Delmarva peninsula were Acme & A&P. Picture lots of small, rural towns and lots of small stores built in the 60s. A lot of those locations were closed through the 80s and 90s which gave an opening for somebody. The first area to be hit would have been the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the most rural part of the region. What sprung up was Eastern Shore Markets and their Meatland chain. Early on, these were typically located in former Acme/A&P buildings. Steadily the chain moved north into Maryland and Delaware. They had commercials on local TV featuring "Scotty from Meatland". They had a couple gimmicks. One was that they gave stamps which you could save for a discount on your purchase. The other was a Jackpot card. You kept half of it, and had to stop by the store weekly and have it "punched". The other half went into a barrel. Every Friday night, before the local 6pm news, Scotty would come on live and draw a card from the drum. If you had your card punched that week, you won a minimum of $1000. If not, the amount increased by $500 for the next week. It was a pretty popular contest in its day. They started having the winner come on to perform the drawing; a memorable Friday night was when Scotty, as usual, held up the card from the previous week, dropped it in the drum and gave it a thorough mixing, then the winner reached in....and pulled out his own card!

The store was associated with a distributor from mainland Virginia known as Camellia-that was their store brand, prominently displayed on some of the signage. I guess it was in the later 80s that they introduced Food City. These didn't seem to have any connection to the larger Food City chain known in parts of the deeper south. (different signage, among other things) The FC stores tended to be larger and were more likely to be in new buildings. There were several new shopping centers built in the late 80s that were anchored by both Jamesway and Food City: Cambridge, MD, Denton, MD and Georgetown, DE. I recall reading back then that the Cambridge store was both their largest and most profitable location. Through the early 90s the stores seemed to be doing quite well-in many towns they had no real competetion-maybe an IGA or Food Rite. In larger towns, that had an Acme, Super Fresh, etc, they were known as the low-price leader. But then, Food Lion came to town. That bigger chain built bigger, nicer stores in many of the same towns and quickly got the reputation of being better all around. Meatland/Food City was in retreat, closing stores left and right. At some point they had become part of a larger company from Virginia and were assoicated with Richfood. The parent company declared bankruptcy and remaining stores were rebranded FreshPride. Most of these didn't last long; I don't know of any left in Maryland and only one left in Delaware that I have seen. That is the Georgetown location, kept alive because their only competition is WalMart. I supect that as soon as the economy gets straight something higher end will come to town and this store will close. I was in there recently and it was rather dismal, at least compared to its heyday.  The chain is apparently doing better down on the Eastern Shore of Virginia where they started.

Anybody have anything they'd like to share? I have at least one photo of a Food City that I'll post later.