Beloved Grocery Stores We No Longer Have Left in Washington State

You are about to take a little tour through Washington's grocery store history. Get your hankie's out because you might shed a tear or two from all the nostalgia you're going to read.

You just might realize how much you miss some of these stores.

BUT FIRST, A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE KROGER-ALBERTSONS MERGER

In case you've been hiding away from newsfeeds, the Kroger** and Albertsons stores are trying to merge. They have hopes of combining forces to create one giant grocery chain, hoping to compete with the likes of Walmart.

*Enter the U.S. GOVERNMENT, Stage Left*

Several states (including Washington) don't want this merger to happen. They are suing for anti-trust reasons. Anyway, going down this rabbit hole of news made me yearn for the sweet yesteryears when we all used to go shopping at our smaller, local mom-and-pop grocery stores....

(CONTINUED BELOW)

WHEN I WAS A KID...

Growing up in my Tennessee hometown, we shopped at Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, Winn-Dixie, Harris Teeter, and H.G. Hill.

When I was a kid, there was this one mom-and-pop grocery store that my little brother and I loved walking to after school. It was called Central Market.

Sometimes our parents would let us walk there to get a free piece of penny candy if we asked the store owner nicely, with polite manners.

My brother and I would often spend some our allowance money buying a few of those flavored peppermint sticks candy canes from that store. Do you remember those? I loved the blueberry, strawberry, and banana flavored ones! They were SOOOO GOOOD, and they only cost, like, 15 cents or a quarter for the big ones.😍

Those kinds of experiences are what I miss about shopping in mom-and-pop grocery stores. They are now relics of the past and have been replaced by huge grocery store chains that intend to own stores in all of our neighborhoods.

Nothing is wrong with that, of course, but it makes me kind of sad and nostalgic for the good old days. Sigh.

Central Market closed down a couple of decades ago, sold the property to property developers who have now turned this historic space to some ridiculous hipster beer and burger parlor.

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Washington locals fondly remember grocery shopping at stores like Top Food & Drug, A&P, Pay ‘n Save, Sam's Club, and Red Apple Market. #RIP

Here's an old Top Food & Drug commercial from the 90s.

This is an old Pay 'N Save commercial from the 80s!

**Recently, I had a nightmare where I was driving a car that broke down in a Kroger parking lot in my hometown and my dad had to come rescue me by fixing my car. I need a dream analyst to tell me what THAT means. Please email me! Ha!

I mention all these stores by name because they are now a part of grocery chain store history, as re-lived in this photo gallery below.