From the store entrances to the checkout experience, we have collected more than 100 photos of grocery stores in the olden days to help you make a little trip back in time.
The vintage 1960s supermarkets featured below include family favorites like Kroger, Winn-Dixie, A&P, Safeway, Food Giant, Fazio’s, Gamble-Skogmo, Food Fair, Big Bear, Lucky and others.
For more, don’t miss checking out vintage 1950s grocery stores and 1970s supermarkets.
Vintage 1960s supermarkets & old-fashioned grocery stores
Old A & P food store
SEE MORE: Classic cars and trucks from the ’60s
Winn-Dixie grocery storefront in 1966
Food Giant signage/lettering in 1961
Vintage Food Fair supermarket storefronts in 1963, 1964 & 1968
The sign on an old Lucky supermarket in 1960
Safeway in the ’60s
These are Safeway stores: a variety of styles and sizes in various areas — big city, suburban shopping center, valley town.
While the theme is unmistakably “Safeway,” the architectural style varies to harmonize with local surroundings or to fit in with community development plans.
Also making for more variety than in the past is our use of the newer structural materials and techniques that are becoming increasingly available. These often simplify construction and save on cost while enhancing utility and beauty.
Besides being modern and attractive, our stores must be convenient, to make shopping in them a pleasant experience. This means the proper location in town and the right layout of building and parking lot.
Within the stores it means convenient and efficient arrangement of aisle space and merchandise, and modern checkstands providing fast and efficient service.
The vital nature of this objective is well understood. This is the front line; this is our lifeline. This is where we meet the customer and compete for her favor.
A&P store in 1967
Storefront roof includes a quaint weathervane
Vintage 1960s supermarkets: A&P in 1969
Fazio’s old grocery stores – 1969
MORE: Vintage Target stores: See 40 pictures from the ’60s to the ’90s & the original logo
The entrance of an old Safeway store in 1964
What food shopping used to be like
Shopping the aisles and special displays
Vintage ’60s grocery store produce departments
MORE: 50+ sexist vintage ads so bad, you almost won’t believe they were real
Vintage 1960s supermarket butcher/meat departments
Vintage Fisher Foods bakery department (1967)
Old Safeway supermarket Bake Shops in 1961 & 1968
Fisher Foods frozen food department (1967)
A full shopping cart at a Red Owl store (1968)
This shopping cart in a Red Owl Family Center shows a “mix” of food items, drug products, and non-food merchandise…
ALSO SEE: See vintage drugstores 100 years ago, selling lots of things you can’t (legally) buy anymore
Full shopping cart at a vintage Safeway supermarket (1968)
A carton of the store’s Lucerne brand milk and a tub of sour cream shown here among other Safeway branded products
Cashier at the checkout of an old-style grocery store (1960)
Big Bear supermarket scene from 1961
Customers like the wide, clear aisles and conveniently arranged checkout lanes
Vintage Safeway store staff & checkout lanes in 1960
Food Fair vintage grocery store (1963 & 1967)
MORE: Inside vintage 1950s grocery stores & old-fashioned supermarkets
Automatic cart unloading: An A&P first (1967)
A way to just push your cart up to the checkout so it would open and empty onto the conveyor belt… a process that didn’t last.
Vintage sixties supermarket: Busy checkouts with long lines
Quaker products at a store checkout
MORE: Remember these? 50+ of your favorite vintage breakfast cereals from the ’60s
Safeway checkouts in the ’60s
Products after cashier has manually entered prices
The vintage supermarket check-out cash register (1966)
What happens when “the office machines company” enters your supermarket? You exit faster.
New Victor cash registers are designed to step up the tempo of any check-out line. Their keyboards respond instantly to the lightest touch, and eliminate the time-consuming chore of pre-sorting taxable and non-taxable items.
MORE: Retro cash registers amazed people by figuring out exact change! (1950s & 1960s)
“Help you to your car, ma’am?”
Back when it was typical for you to get help from someone to load your groceries
MORE: Take a look back at vintage station wagons
NOW SEE THIS: Check out 100 vintage 1970s supermarkets & retro grocery stores
9 Responses
I used to work in a supermarket in 1968. This brings back many memories however I don’t see any BOHACK SUPERMARKETS
My first job was at Piggly Wiggly in Albuquerque New Mexico. I was 14 but you had to be 15 and a work permiT, I was in Middle school. I was a bag boy and I loved it. Didn”t last cause I lied about my age so I had to quit. Never forget a customer asked me about Best Foods Mayonaisse known as Hellmans east of the Rockies I told her so!!
Aside from the mechanical cash registers and lack of barcode scanners, not much has changed in supermarkets over the last 50 years. Target and Walmart killed off most of the smaller chains in my area, but newer stores like Aldi and Lidl are starting to make inroads, as well as the premium chains like Wegman’s and Whole Foods.
In Houston, TX in the 60’s it was Weingarten. Massive store it seemed to me. When you first walked in, there was huge candy counter. I always checked out the toys to see what I could buy with my allowance. Nice memories!
What do you know about a Supermarket called Wonder World that Opened in Yuba City Called Wonder World in the late 1960s and closed in the early to mid 1970s?
I lived in South Central , LA , in the 60ties, there was a Supermarket called “Harmms” if Im not mistaken, it got burned down then was rebuilt as Best Foods Supermarket. But cant find anything about either of these Stores anywhere.
In California a family owned grocery store from the 50s still is family owned with 78 stores
Raley’s is the best in town
My mom used to buy Mother’s Oats it came with cups saucers bowls etc. inside and we used to do our Monthly Shopping at Safeway got Lucerne Milk and Edwards Coffee as well as Skylark Bread.
One of the things I remember, from when I was a child, is the self serve pedestals containing either roasted peanuts in a shell or Brach’s candies. Oh yes it was a learning experience for every child who lived. There isn’t a person my age who doesn’t have the story of the day their mom said, “what do you got in your mouth?”
If you were truly being a bratty child you might get a few swats right in the store, but in my opinion it was a worse punishment when your mom parked the cart and took you out to the car.
Liberals made corporal punishment a shameful act as a parent, but as we see in society today it should have never stopped.