But what were those vintage 1970s supermarkets like — and how do they compare to today’s shopping options? Take a look below at some pictures and ads from the 70s, along with grocery store ads and sales circulars featuring food prices of the disco era, straight from the source!
For more, don’t miss checking out our photos of vintage 1950s grocery stores, vintage 1960s supermarkets, and 80s grocery stores.
Scenes from vintage 1970s supermarkets
DON’T MISS: 80s grocery stores: See vintage supermarkets, plus find out how retro tech paved the way for modern retail
Happy retro supermarket shoppers & employees in 1970
Six Safeway supermarket scenes of the seventies
Checking out package labels
Vintage bread in the Country Oven Bakery (1973)
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Gifts & goodies in the hospitality center
The section of the supermarket that sold greeting cards, candles and gifts
Safeway grocery store in Denver, Colorado
“The broad expanse of colorful shopping area below is an interior shot of the largest new Safeway store…”
The fancy new tech of 1970s supermarkets: Barcode scanners
“Note checker’s hands: she is passing the electronic scanning wand over identifying mark on package. At that point, computer takes over, flashes price on display panel, prints customer receipt (coming out of box on counter) and updates store sales data by item.”
Safeway store in Portland
Village Cheese Shop – Vintage supermarket department from the ’70s
Retro metal shopping carts aren’t much different now
Wine & cheese, retro ’70s style
Fazio/Fisher Foods wine “cellars”
Wines from around the world
Brown bags full of groceries from Safeway
Eco-friendly designs promoting conservation: Save water & Conserve energy
Vintage brown paper grocery bag from A&P
Canned goods in aisle 4
Vintage A&P grocery store frontage & produce department
The vintage meat & deli departments at an old A&P
ALSO SEE: See inside the first Piggly Wiggly grocery store that opened back in 1916
A&P store sign: Open 24 hours (1975)
A close-up look at the deli delights
Shopping for fruits & vegetables
Retro style shopping cart at the A&P
Oranges and other fruit on display
Retro packaged cookie brands on a supermarket shelf
Fig Newtons, Mayfair, Nilla Wafers, Bake Shop Oatmeal, chocolate-covered graham crackers, shortbread, Chips Ahoy, Chocolate Chocolate Chip cookies
Save! “Fight inflation with discount prices”
Love the kid sitting in the shopping cart
A vintage Dominick’s grocery store sign & facade
Also Chef Fazio’s delicatessen
MORE: 21 bad vintage product names you wouldn’t see today
Please take a number: Vintage Take-A-Tab for a store bakery
Old-fashioned cakes, rolls, danishes and other treats
A woman with a full cart checking out the ol’ dairy aisle (1970)
Dominick’s vintage grocery store in the Chicago area (1971)
Meat and seafood at a 1970s supermarket
Vintage Kantor grocery store: Fresh meats & Delicatessen
A busy Fazio’s checkout, complete with baggers
Vintage ’70s in-store bakeries
MORE: 100 vintage 1960s supermarkets & old-fashioned grocery stores
Putting price stickers on frozen cans of juice concentrate
Scenes from vintage Fazio’s grocery stores
Mother and daughter shopping in the snack aisle
Fresh poultry & meat section
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The butcher and fresh meats
A butcher restocking the meat
Hamburgers tonight?
Here’s a huge package of ground beef
The old-fashioned meat department at Safeway
Vintage 1970s Kroger grocery store produce department & deli
Family in front of a supermarket with paper bags of groceries (1974)
Winn-Dixie storefront: The Beef People
A&P Food stores: Garden center in Greenwich, Connecticut
MORE: Inside vintage 1950s grocery stores & old-fashioned supermarkets
Deli meats, cheeses and bread at a vintage ’70s supermarket
ALSO SEE: Vintage Wal-Mart history: What the first stores looked like, and how they changed over the years
Red Owl grocery store: “The Meat People”
Potato chips can keep fussy toddlers occupied
Vintage soda brands from the seventies
Includes Fresca, Shasta sodas, Schweppes, Vernors, Pepsi
Vintage pharmacy/beauty section at a 1970s grocery store
Selling gifts – cameras – film – jewelry
Pick up a pair of pants when you buy your butter!
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Cookware & kitchenware
Including pots and pans, woks, mugs, copper fish molds and a whole lot more.
Vintage frozen food brands in open cases
Old-fashioned produce scales
Weighing the lightest bananas in the world
Check out the retro-style plastic price numbers
Fun in the produce aisle
Celery & more produce at a retro grocery store
Mother and son in the vegetable section
Lots of loaves of bread in this old-school deli section
Lucky stores with the slogan, “If you only knew”
ALSO SEE: Mr Whipple: Please don’t squeeze the Charmin! 20 years of TV commercial toilet paper drama
Small A&P food store on a corner in New Orleans
The in-market drugstore section of a vintage supermarket
Retro laundry time at a vintage 1970s supermarket
See the old-fashioned laundry detergent, starch, fabric softener and more
Beauty products, then retro greeting cards & candles
So many bread brands
Checking out with store-brand Pantry Pride products
The checker has a great retro pink shirt as part of her employee uniform
Vintage grocery stores shopping scenes from the seventies
Fazio’s storefront and sign – plus streamers
Finding florist-fresh flowers for the family
Little kid with Chomp Chomp game
The good eating game, from Pantry Pride
A&P vintage 1970s supermarkets
A checker hand-keying a price on a bottle of wine
ALSO SEE: Retro cash registers amazed people by figuring out exact change! (1950s & 1960s)
Busy supermarket checkouts in the 1970s
Busy vintage 1970s supermarket checkout lanes (1973)
Old Red Owl supermarket checkout (1978)
Chips, pretzels and more for just $15.49!
An old-school A&P supermarket checkout
All bagged up and ready to go!
A fashionable ’70s family at the Big Bear supermarket (1974)
This store was at Hart’s Family Center in Arkansas
MORE: 100 vintage 1960s supermarkets & old-fashioned grocery stores
Vintage 1970s supermarket/grocery store prices from newspaper ads
1970s grocery store prices in the Sacramento Bee, California (Feb 18, 1970)
1970s grocery store prices in the Daily News Post, Monrovia, California (Aug 12, 1970)
1970s supermarket prices in Fort Worth, Texas (Oct 4, 1971)
1970s grocery prices in the Fort Worth, Texas (Oct 23, 1972)
1970s grocery prices in the Lincoln Star, Nebraska (Jul 12, 1972)
1970s Safeway prices in Fort Worth, Texas (June 13, 1974)
1970s supermarket prices in Fort Worth, Texas (March 24, 1975)
1970s grocery store prices in the Ithaca Journal, New York (May 6, 1975)
70s supermarket prices in the Orlando Sentinel (Jun 26, 1975)
1970s supermarket prices in the Tallahassee Democrat (Aug 6, 1975)
70s grocery store prices in the Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio (Oct 1, 1976)
70s supermarket prices in the Johnson City Press Chronicle, Tennessee (Jun 29, 1977)
Stop and Shop grocery product prices – Berkshire Sampler, Pittsfield, Mass (March 12, 1978)
1970s grocery store prices in Sioux City, Iowa (Aug, 1978)
1970s supermarket prices in the Press Tribune, Roseville, California (May 22, 1979)
15 Responses
I remember Red Owl in the Twin Cities well into the late 80s, including one location in St.Paul with a large owl sign staring down on the street like a sentinel.That store is now a Kowalski’s market.Other defunct Minneapolis-St.Paul supermarkets I’d love to see vintage photos from include Hove’s (now Lunds & Byerlys), Country Club, Super Valu, Knowlan’s, R.C. Dick’s and Applebaum’s
One of the Red Owl pictures is actually a Howards’ Brandiscount store in the south. Same parent company, but not the same division.
The Harts family center is probably in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Big Bear and Harts did not have stores in Arkansas.
Did anyone notice the Coke bottle in the Pepsi carton?
Yes, I saw that too. I seem to have vague memories of sometimes getting soda in the wrong type of bottle, like a coke bottle with a Pepsi cap for example. Since they were returnable and refillable I think it happened occasionally but it could just be a false memory. More likely someone just stuck a Coke bottle in the wrong carton. I definitely remember how old some of the bottles you’d get were, they would have older logos and be really scuffed up after being reused for many years.
I remember The Pantry Pride we had in Brooklyn in the late 60s and the 70s…Pantry Pride and “Hills” supermarket were the same company and their paper bags had both supermarkets names and logos on them. I’m pretty sure all those stores closed in 1977 because by 1978 the Pantry Pride on Stillwell Ave became a flea market…. The Hills Supermarket in the Korvette’s shopping center became a shopRite…
Circa 1970, we would travel from Queens to the Hills and Korvette’s in Five Towns, Nassau County (on the eastern edge of JFK Airport off Rockaway Boulevard) every Friday night (Dad’s payday) after supper. Korvette’s had great toy and record departments. Bargain Town was also out that way.
I love these old supermarket pictures and seeing the old products; there’s a blog I’ve visited for years called Pleasant Valley Shopping that’s all about this sort of thing. I’m sure a lot of these photos were staged for promotions and advertisements though, like the woman with the cart full of nothing but Nabisco products. I doubt many people actually carried a camera with them to the grocery store and took photos.
I still say that those older women, to me being a kid, cashiers using those NCR cash registers could go faster with less problems than scanners do today. Those numbers would be moving so fast they were a blur. We still have the dinner plates that my mother got at Loblaws in the ’60s. A cart full to the top cost around $35.
Back in the ’60s, Safeway still had a presence in the Northeast, including NYC. Finast (First National Stores) moved in when they moved out, which then became Edwards, which are now today’s Stop & Shop. We also had Bohack and still have King Kullen.
When I was very young, supermarket shopping meant walking up to our local shopping area on Saturday morning (rain or shine – remember the vinyl cart liners with covers?) with Mom pulling the shopping cart (once we actually had our groceries delivered – that was huge!). Some time around 1970, Friday night (when Dad got paid) became shopping night…and that became an excursion, as we would drive from our little Queens, NYC, neighborhood out to a huge supermarket in Nassau County (Hills). It was a weekly event that was sometimes fun, because it often included a sojourn into Korvette’s – which had great toy and record departments!
Hello
I appreciate seeing these but I have to make 1 correction. The Dominick’s with the red writing was built in 1961. Just the photo of it was taken 10 years later.
That’s in the suburb of Park Ridge and I learned the year from old Newspapers at the library Also what location is that other Dominick’s taken?
Here in Buena Park, California (in Orange County, about 30 miles south of Los Angeles) we had Thriftimart –with a giant red neon T that buzzed loudly all night long. We also had Safeway, Alpha Beta, Lucky, Food Giant, Smiths’s, Food 4 Less and Shopping Bag. We still have Stater Bros., Albertson’s, Vons and Ralph’s, all of which have been around for decades. Also, for the more adventurous, Trader Joe’s.
can you see any fat people in any picture above?
Aside from the decor and the mechanical cash registers, grocery stores haven changed much in 50-odd years. Growing up in the 70s, the big stores in my area were Acme (renamed “Super Saver” for a time), Pathmark, Food Fair, Penn Fruit and A&P. The A&P stores were smaller than the other grocery stores (on a par with a modern CVS or Walgreen’s), and for that reason a lot of older folks liked them, finding them more manageable.
I spent 15 minutes perusing these wonderful images and cannot help but notice how healthy everyone looks. Not just showing esteem in their personal presentation, grooming and dress but almost no one is grossly obese. That’s partially because “food science” were independent sectors. Few unpronounceable ingredients