Memories of Chicago-Area Grocery Stores, As Shared By Our Audience

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The Poklenkowski family’s life centered on Webster and Hoyne Avenues in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood in the 1950s. St. Hedwig’s church was (and still is) at the intersection, as was Ray’s, a neighborhood grocer where the owner Ray and his wife “would help children distinguish between cabbage and lettuce, as well as sort out change we carried in to pay,” as J. Poklenkowski recalls. Kids sent on an errand waited amongst the towering shelves of goods after passing lists from their mothers to the butcher, who packed the meat “in heavy white paper, marked the price in grease pencil, and closed it with tan tape.”

But when a Jewel opened nearby on Damen Avenue, it was stocked with enough options to make frequent trips to Ray’s and other stores such as a mom-and-pop German bakery unnecessary. The family only had to go to the Jewel, and only once a week.

Those memories track the changing landscape of grocery stores in the Chicago area over the decades, which we recently explored. We also asked readers of our Deep Dish food newsletter (sign up here) to share their memories of grocery stores, and received a thrilling number of responses, including Poklenkowski’s. (We have also collected memories of dearly missed Chicago restaurants.)

“Can’t wait to hear other Chicagoans’ go-tos,” wrote Sarah Coulter Mitchell after recalling weekly trips to Stanley’s at Elston and North Avenues for produce. While there was certainly some overlap – Adrienne from Lincoln Park also misses Stanley’s for its “cheap veggies and fruit that were actually good” – many people mentioned stores like Ray’s that served only a small area of the city and thus were known by only a few – but known very well, and reciprocally by customers and owners.

“Everyone greeted each other” at the family-run Mr. Z’s in Lombard, says Tyler Mo. One of the brothers at J&F Certified Grocery at Addison and Leavitt Streets would take orders by phone and deliver groceries to Ann Warnecke when her children were sick. Howard Zar’s father was a salesman who often visited West Side neighborhood groceries in the 1950s and earlier, including one run by the family of the famous drummer Gene Krupa. “He loved those places: how friendly the people were, how caring for their clientele.”

Bari’s on Grand Avenue at May Street still exists, but Louise Warsaw fondly recalls “when the grandpa (in his nineties) and his cute little wife would stand as sentries with their sparkling white aprons wrapped around them,” while “mom and dad” worked the register, Ralphie shared jokes, and Frank sat quietly “in his little office under the stairs.” 

Sally’s on the far Northwest Side was run by Sally, whose son was the butcher, Mary Ann McMorrow remembers. Bob Steinmetz visited a corner store on the first floor of a six flat called Landi’s. Cara Sawyer says three generations of the same family worked at Franklin Park’s Joseph’s Foods, where the line for food at Christmas stretched down the block and the smell of “garlic and olives and sausage and oregano” permeated the store. Kunzie’s in Avondale was “a local mom-and-pop store right in the middle of our block,” says Sharon Klauser. She would search for discarded glass bottles in the alley to exchange for a penny with which she could buy candy – an entrepreneurial activity recalled by Monica Dragutinovich at the Pick and Save and Joan Conybear at the High-Low as well.

Conybear wasn’t the only one to mention High-Low – or to enjoy candy! In fact, many of the nostalgic memories came from childhood. If six full-size candy bars were on sale at High-Low for 29 cents instead of 30, Ellie Marinier and her siblings got to buy them – one for each family member. Mary Ellen Quinn recalls purchasing candy and ice cream from a small grocery store on Touhy Avenue between Oakley and Bell Avenues, as well as the sound the grocery carts made on the hardwood floor there.

There were several locations of High-Low, and of course chain stores showed up in people’s memories. A&P was one of the first chains to arrive in Chicago, and it was mentioned more than any other store by readers. Cynthia Mitchell says that her father would run into Donald Rumsfeld at the Winnetka A&P, while Mary Chow recalls an S&H green stamp program that led to competitions at school, with ice cream cups as a reward.

Homegrown chains Jewel, Dominick’s, and National Tea also received plenty of mention. Michael Sidell remembers a TV show sponsored by National Tea, with a clown host named Natco. Norm Carlson recalls viewing a display of an “original National Tea store” at the Museum of Science and Industry as a child. Joanne Leger misses the “excellent” pumpkin pie and frozen pink lemonades made by Dominick’s. Melissa Piekny enjoyed fudgies in gold foil wrapping while she and her mother waited for her father to come pick them up from Dominick’s after calling him on the pay phone outside.

Mary J. Janos (and a few others) worked at Jewel – her dad was a butcher and then manager there, her sisters worked there, and she met her husband and numerous long-lasting friends there. Other readers had grocery stores in their family. David Aaron Harbin worked in his Greek immigrant grandparents’ tin-ceilinged store, above which he and his family lived. Cara Sawyer’s great-aunt and -uncle picked up rolls from a bakery in the morning for their store, bringing back any unsold ones to the building on Taylor Street where the whole family lived to enjoy them with coffee.

Robert C. McCullough’s family worked in printing, not the grocery business – but they churned out flyers for local IGA stores.

Gardner H. Stern’s grandfather bought both the chain Hillman’s and downtown’s Stop & Shop in 1925 with two partners. The latter was a popular early upscale store with rare food items. Stern himself worked for the company, which also included Gaper’s Caterers.

Treasure Island was another gourmet store that is fondly missed. Readers recalled their sorbet, their European feel, and their hard-to-find products. “Shopping there was a sensory experience,” says Deborah Garber.

And the senses have an incredible ability to bring back a memory, as Marily Mayer Wiedemann notes. At the A&P where her family deposited cans of bacon grease for the war effort and exchanged ration coins for food during World War II, she always loved when her mother ground coffee beans in the store. “The smell was tremendously intoxicating even to a four year old,” she says. “In stores where you can still grind your coffee beans, I always stand near, with a smile and a long intake of breath and memory of a small store, my mom, and that overwhelming fragrance of ground coffee.”