Phar-Mor/Drug Emporium

[Ameskid]

Originally posted by videogamer75

Originally posted by MikeRa

• Bradlees Plaza, Stratford, NJ (Opened as Rx Place.  located in a former Penn Fruit Company building)
[/list=1]

:yup:

Now a Goodwill Store

That looks like one of the very old Safeways.

[videogamer75]

Yeah, Penn Fruit used a very similar design. There were never any Safeways in NJ though, just their division Genaurdi's.

[beachgal26]

The store in the picture sure looks like an old Acme...

What I miss most about Phar-mor was their variety.  I could only go in when I had time and money to spend since they were full of bargains.  One of the favorite things was back in the early 1990's in Orlando when they had their huge wall of rebate forms.  It was a great way to save money at the same time!

[Mobil]

Originally posted by beachgal26
The store in the picture sure looks like an old Acme...

What I miss most about Phar-mor was their variety.  I could only go in when I had time and money to spend since they were full of bargains.  One of the favorite things was back in the early 1990's in Orlando when they had their huge wall of rebate forms.  It was a great way to save money at the same time!

The store was not an Acme. It was a Penn Fruit, a local chain. The store would have been built in the 50s. Penn Fruit was sold to Pantry Pride in 1975 or 1976. Pantry Pride, however, closed many stores in 1979, a few of which became Acme.

[videogamer75]

The Penn Fruit in Audubon, NJ is now an Acme.

[Mobil]

Originally posted by videogamer75
The Penn Fruit in Audubon, NJ is now an Acme.

I know, and that store was across from an A&P as well. The only other Penn Fruit-Acme stores I know closed:
Woodlyn, PA, now Bally
City Ave., Philadelphia, now Ross

[Retail Fan+ (Justin Hill)]

ShopKo was going to merge with PharMor back in 1997, but the deal fell apart.

[dmx10101]

Prototype Phar-mor


Courtesy of http://www.strolloarchitects.com/

[gu4ever]

Prototype Phar-mor


Courtesy of http://www.strolloarchitects.com/

Wow the red/white and blue/white in the Phar-mor photo's are pretty intense. I wonder if it's just the photo capture that made it look like this or if infact it looks like this in reality.... Anyone seen this design in person???
Also did you see the selfserve cigarette rack at checkout lane 1? I'm sure with the price of cigarette's now they aren't being displayed like that anymore... Otherwise you would see someone showing up in a pickup with a two-wheeler hand truck and taking off with the whole cigarette fixture......

[Retail Fan+ (Justin Hill)]

A Phar-Mor newspaper ad from the November 3, 1991 edition of the Green Bay Press-Gazette newspaper featuring all of the Wisconsin locations.


All of the former Phar-Mor locations in Wisconsin:
* Appleton - 601 Westhill Blvd. (now Bassett Furniture)
* Ashwaubenon (Green Bay) - 2279 S. Oneida St. (demolished for a strip mall anchored by Pier 1 Imports)
* Eau Claire - 4070 Commonwealth Ave. (later Electric Ave., now T.J. Maxx)
* Milwaukee-Brookfield - 12575 W. Capitol Dr. (now Marshalls)
* Milwaukee-Brown Deer - 9140 Green Bay Rd. (now Marshalls)
* Milwaukee-West Allis - 2625 S. 108th St. (now Marshalls)
* Racine - 2360 S. Green Bay Rd. (now T.J. Maxx)

[retailfan]

the design you see in the pics was set up in Anderson In  that old store still sits empty to this day  and last i knew still had the signage up  it was a super pharmor and had grocery in addition to the regular items  it closed when the rest of the chain closed up  and was always a busy location

[beachgal26]

I do remember their interior as being one of the most colorful I had ever seen and their stores were super clean and always tidy.  Even though they've been gone for awhile, I still miss them, their great buys and their rebate form wall!

;) >:(

[EddieJ1984]

I liked pharmor, the one near me the last couple of years before it closed with the others was had the "Super Pharmor" name
I remember it seemed to have a grocery section.
This was the one in ne philly at bustleton and cottman. It was the bottom floor of sears (used to be gimbels then strens)
After it closed sears took over the bottom floor so it could be 3 floors.
It as neat tho to go from the 1st floor of sears, and take the escalator down into pharmor.

[store215]

I liked pharmor, the one near me the last couple of years before it closed with the others was had the "Super Pharmor" name
I remember it seemed to have a grocery section.
This was the one in ne philly at bustleton and cottman. It was the bottom floor of sears (used to be gimbels then strens)
After it closed sears took over the bottom floor so it could be 3 floors.
It as neat tho to go from the 1st floor of sears, and take the escalator down into pharmor.

That's the store I vaguely remember from my childhood...must have only been 4 years old. I remember there was escalators (I think) to go up to the Sears portion. Kind of a weird combination.

[MikeRa]

I liked pharmor, the one near me the last couple of years before it closed with the others was had the "Super Pharmor" name
I remember it seemed to have a grocery section.
This was the one in ne philly at bustleton and cottman. It was the bottom floor of sears (used to be gimbels then strens)
After it closed sears took over the bottom floor so it could be 3 floors.
It as neat tho to go from the 1st floor of sears, and take the escalator down into pharmor.

That's the store I vaguely remember from my childhood...must have only been 4 years old. I remember there was escalators (I think) to go up to the Sears portion. Kind of a weird combination.

It was unique.  Phar-Mor or Sears could have walled in the escelator and staris, but they didn't

[Retail Fan+ (Justin Hill)]

The topic of Phar-Mor's founder Mickey Monus, the quick rise and fall of the Phar-Mor discount chain, the World Basketball League and the Phar-Mor embezzlement scandal would make for an interesting biographical film. I think "Power Embezzling" would be a great title for the film. I think film would feel like a mix of "JOBS", "Wall Street", "The Social Network" and "The Founder".

[TheFugitive]

More than likely Hollywood would just screw it up.  They'd rewrite the script until it was
virtually unrecognizable from the actual events.

A great example is the film Lucky Numbers.  Allegedly about the Pennsylvania Lottery rigging scandal, virtually NOTHING of the actual story was retained (other than the fact that Ping-Pong balls weighted down by paint were used to rig the drawing).

The actual events would have been more than compelling enough.  Nick Perry, longtime TV host of Bowling for Dollars masterminds the scam.  He gets a couple of stagehands from the station to assist him.  Then he uses his Mafia connections (he owned an interest in a vending company that had machines at the station, among other places) to buy up tickets in 6 and 4 combinations.  The Number of the Beast, 666, hits with a record payout.  Convicted numbers boss Tony Grosso tells a rival TV station from jail that "the number was rigged".  The station that holds the drawing says impossible, their security is too good, and this story was cooked-up by the rival station for ratings and to get the lottery contract away from them.  There is an investigation and it all comes crashing down when a convenience store employee tells police he remembers selling a large batch of tickets in 6 and 4 combinations to two guys, who then made a call from a pay phone where they spoke a foreign language.  The number was traced and it was an extension at the very same Pittsburgh television station that held the drawings.  Nick Perry spoke Greek.

No, Hollywood had to go and change all that to make it a vehicle for John Travolta.

[retailisking]

No fictionalization could ever hope to measure up to the actual events. There was a great documentary about the Phar-Mor scandal from the PBS series Frontline
https://vimeo.com/64592343

[Retail Fan+ (Justin Hill)]

There was a great documentary about the Phar-Mor scandal from the PBS series Frontline
https://vimeo.com/64592343

I saw that. It's amazing how a retailer like Phar-Mor could go from hero to zero so quickly due to the actions of their CEO and CFO. Phar-Mor power embezzling gives Mickey Monus Phar-Mor embezzling power (and prison time). Mickey Monus is sort of the Richard Nixon of the 1990s. That documentary is a great lesson for those planning start a retailer showing what to do and what not to do at the corporate level. What Mickey did was immoral, it led to Phar-Mor flushing their money (and future) completely down the toilet.

[TheFugitive]

Sadly I had seen similar games played by executives in other companies.
Mickey just pushed it too far and got caught.

A good example was Ames during their first Chapter 11.   A few months before that happened
they spun-off the jewelry department into a leased department.  "JBA" now controlled it.
They appointed their own manager and Ames store management was told that we were to
have NO input in the running of that department.

(which created real headaches in our store as JBA had chosen an absolute idiot as their manager).

Then we filed bankruptcy.  Obviously this was a very brazen ploy to hide the gold and diamonds
from Ames' creditors.

Monus just did stuff like that on a much greater scale.  He also had the cover of being a local hero
as the Youngstown economy had collapsed, and he was just about the only guy in town creating jobs.

[buzz86us]

Powersbt, is this the old Herkimer Phar-Mor?

on the road as you get into Herkimer the now demolished plaza was over there. It was home to Pharmhouse (formerly Nichols), P&C, and a dollar store with a photomat out building that became a small gas station.
The Plaza was demolished to make way for a prison that never materialized..You'll see the still paved area where the razed plaza once stood. I remember this because this is where I initially learned to drive. The Grosmans Bargain outlet was never a Phar-Mor this is the site where the whole plaza sat
https://goo.gl/zrsNcz

[Retail Fan+ (Justin Hill)]

Sadly I had seen similar games played by executives in other companies.
Mickey just pushed it too far and got caught.

A good example was Ames during their first Chapter 11.   A few months before that happened
they spun-off the jewelry department into a leased department.  "JBA" now controlled it.
They appointed their own manager and Ames store management was told that we were to
have NO input in the running of that department.

(which created real headaches in our store as JBA had chosen an absolute idiot as their manager).

Then we filed bankruptcy.  Obviously this was a very brazen ploy to hide the gold and diamonds
from Ames' creditors.

Monus just did stuff like that on a much greater scale.  He also had the cover of being a local hero
as the Youngstown economy had collapsed, and he was just about the only guy in town creating jobs.

Kmart had dealt with similar problems before they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002. The corporate executives at the Kmart Corporation took money from the company and wasted it on personal luxuries.

[MikeinBuffalo]

these guys owned Vix right? One old Vix near me stood as a nasty home for drug deals gone south until they redeveloped it into a very nice medical office type place a couple years ago. Was supposed to have been either a Kmart or a Walmart but the locals complained about traffic.

[TheFugitive]

I was not aware that Phar-Mor owned any chain called Vix.

I did work at a Hills location in what used to be the Kennywood Mall.
A few years before I got there the mall was torn-down and the shops converted
to a strip center format.  Same reason you cite, it was a bad neighborhood and
the interior mall space just became an open shooting gallery for drug users.
Went by there last week and there is now a Rose's store in the old Hills location.

The Phar-Mor locations near me included:

-Century Square in West Mifflin, behind Century III Mall.  They occupied a very large end unit.
It later became Roomful Express, and is now vacant.

-Route 51 in Brentwood, in an old Giant Eagle store.  After the Phar-Mor closed it
was torn down, and a Get-Go was built on the property (bringing it full circle to Giant Eagle)

-Great Southern Shopping Center in Bridgeville, in a location that is now a Big Lots.

-Parkway Center Mall in Green Tree, in the space that was originally occupied by the
David Weis store while I worked while attending college.  The mall was torn down
earlier this year.

[Pikapower]

^Phar-Mor didn't own Vix, Drug Emporium did for a while before Vix went out.

[MikeRa]

The Phar-Mor at Philadelphia Mills Mall is still vacant after many years since closing in 2002

[EddieJ1984]

The Phar-Mor at Philadelphia Mills Mall is still vacant after many years since closing in 2002

The old johnny rockets in the mall in the food court which has been closed for just about as long finally has a tenant coming soon, Aya's Cafe (Mediterranean food).
JCPenney will be joining the vacant club probably in a week or two in the mall.