Jewel (supermarket) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

For the defunct Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

supermarket chain see Jewel Food Stores (Australia)
Jewel Food Stores (Australia)
Jewel Food Stores was a discount supermarket chain in Australia that is now defunct. The chain was originally owned and operated by the Fleming family. They are not related to the American supermarket chain "Jewel" now owned by Supervalu....

Jewel-Osco is a supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

chain

Chain store

Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses. In retail, dining and many service categories, chain businesses...

headquartered in Itasca, Illinois

Itasca, Illinois

Itasca is a village in DuPage County, Illinois, United States. The population was 8,302 at the 2000 census.In 2009, BusinessWeek rated Itasca as the 'Best Affordable Suburb' in the state of Illinois...

, a Chicago suburb. Jewel-Osco has 182 stores across northern, central, and western Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

; eastern Iowa

Iowa

Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

; and portions of northwest Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

.Jewel-Osco and Jewel are currently wholly owned subsidiaries

Subsidiary

A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...

of Eden Prairie, Minnesota

Eden Prairie, Minnesota

As of the census of 2000, there were 54,901 people, 20,457 households, and 14,579 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 21,026 housing units at an average density of 649.2 per square mile...

-based SuperValu

Supervalu (United States)

SuperValu Inc. is a United States grocery retailer and distributor. The corporation, headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has been in business for over a century. It is the third-largest food retailing company in the United States , and ranks #51 on the Fortune 100 list.On June 2, 2006,...

Beginning

In 1899, Frank Vernon Skiff founded Jewel in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

, as a door-to-door coffee

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

delivery service. In 1902, Skiff partnered with Frank P. Ross, renaming the venture the Jewel Tea Company. In 1929, the company built a new office, warehouse, and coffee roasting facility in suburban Barrington, Illinois

Barrington, Illinois

Barrington is a suburban village in Cook County, Illinois and Lake County, Illinois. The population was 10,327 at the 2010 census. Located approximately northwest of Chicago, the area features wetlands, forest preserves, parks and horse trails in a country-suburban setting...

, creating hundreds of local jobs despite the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. Area residents nicknamed the new, five-story headquarters the "Gray Lady" due to its sophisticated art deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

style.

The company's expansion continued throughout the mid-20th century. In 1932, Jewel acquired the Chicago unit of Loblaw Groceterias, Inc., then a chain of 72 self-service stores, as well as four Chicago grocery stores operated by the Middle West Stores Company, and began operating them under the name Jewel Food Stores In 1934, Jewel Food Stores merged with Jewel Tea Company. In 1957, Jewel acquired Eisner Food Stores
Eisner Food Stores
Eisner Food Stores was a chain of supermarkets in Downstate Illinois. It was acquired by The Jewel Companies, Inc. in 1957. The Eisner stores were rebranded Jewel in 1981.-History:...

, located in downstate Illinois

Downstate Illinois

Downstate Illinois refers to all of Illinois outside of the Chicago metropolitan area. This term is flexible, but because it is generally meant to refer to everything outside the Chicago-area, some cities in Northern Illinois, such as Rockford and DeKalb, , are considered to be "downstate".The term...

and west central Indiana (Lafayette

Lafayette, Indiana

Lafayette is a city in and the county seat of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, northwest of Indianapolis. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 67,140. West Lafayette, on the other side of the Wabash River, is home to Purdue University, which has a large impact on...

, West Lafayette, Indiana

West Lafayette, Indiana

As of the census of 2010, there were 29,596 people, 12,591 households, and 3,588 families residing in the city. The population density was 5,381.1 people per square mile . The racial makeup of the city was 74.3% White, 17.3% Asian, 2.7% African American, 0.16% Native American, 0.03% Pacific...

), and in 1981, the Eisner stores were converted to the Jewel name. Also in 1981, Jewel sold its home shopping service, which now operates under the name "J.T's General Store".

1960s-1970s Expansion

In the 1960s, Jewel expanded by acquiring several chains. Jewel acquired Osco Drug
Osco Drug
Osco Drug is a chain of pharmacy stores which today operate as in-store pharmacies under SuperValu Pharmacies. Osco Pharmacy is found in Jewel-Osco, Albertsons, Shaw's and Star Market, while Sav-on Pharmacy is found in Acme and Albertsons. Since 2006, Osco is a wholly owned subsidiary of...

in 1961, and soon started building Jewel-Osco stores. In 1964, Jewel acquired Star Market
Star Market
Star Market was a New England chain of supermarkets owned by the Mugar family and based in Greater Boston. The company was sold to The Jewel Companies, Inc. in 1964, and was later sold to Investcorp, which sold the chain to Shaw's Supermarkets...

, expaning the chain eastward all the way to New England. The acquisition of Star Market also gave Jewel Brigham's Ice Cream

Brigham's Ice Cream

Brigham's Ice Cream is an ice cream manufacturer and franchised restaurants. Brigham's is sold in quart cartons throughout New England, and served at franchised restaurants located in Massachusetts. It was founded in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts. Since the purchase by HP Hood, its offices are...

. In 1965, Jewel expanded into the convenience store

Convenience store

A convenience store, corner store, corner shop, commonly called a bodega in Spanish-speaking areas of the United States, is a small store or shop in a built up area that stocks a range of everyday items such as groceries, toiletries, alcoholic and soft drinks, and may also offer money order and...

business by opening Kwik Shoppe, only to be rename the chain White Hen Pantry
White Hen Pantry
White Hen Pantry was a Lombard, Illinois-based chain of approximately 261 predominantly franchisee-owned convenience stores located in the greater Chicago and Boston / New England areas of the United States...

. In 1966, Jewel acquired
Buttrey Food Stores
Buttrey Food & Drug
Buttrey Food & Drug was a chain of grocery stores founded in Havre, Montana and formerly headquartered in Great Falls, Montana. The company was founded in 1896 as a chain of department stores branded Buttrey Department Store. The company opened grocery stores in 1935 and sold off its department...

, expanding the chain westward all the way to Montana.

Before 1970, Jewel stores were typically located on arterial city streets. Between 1970 and 1990, Jewel moved or expanded most of its stores to be freestanding buildings with ample parking. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Jewel built and operated many Jewel-Osco side-by-side stores, but most construction after 1983 consolidated Jewel and Osco stores together as one large store under one roof. Today, the two stores present to the customer as one unit; for instance, a customer can check out any items at Jewel or Osco registers, find Jewel and Osco merchandise co-mingled throughout the store, and can call one telephone number to reach their Jewel-Osco. However, each operating unit keeps its own separate marketing identity to the public as a "food store" or a "drug store."

Until 2010, Jewel and Osco stores under the same roof have had separate operations, managers, ordering and receiving procedures, budgets, and employees. A 2010 cost-saving measure brought both Jewel and Osco oversight under one store director for each site.

American Stores

American Stores Company was an American public corporation and a holding company which ran chains of supermarkets and drugstores in the United States from 1917 through 1999...

made an offer to acquire the Jewel Companies in 1984. The Jewel Companies, Inc. chairman Weston Christopherson was opposed to a merger and Sam Skaggs

Skaggs family

]The Skaggs Family, starting from a small frontier town in southern Idaho, came to have an important impact on merchandising across much of the United States. During most of the 20th century, the Skaggs name became prominent on hundreds of store fronts throughout the West...

was forced to engineer a hostile takeover. On June 1, 1984, American Stores tendered an offer worth $1.1 billion for 67 percent of Jewel's outstanding shares at $70 per share.

For two weeks, Jewel's management refused all comment on the offer, maintaining its silence even at a stormy shareholder's meeting before which Jewel shareholder groups controlling 20 percent of the company's stock had come out in favor of negotiating with American Stores. Finally, on June 14, Sam Skaggs

Skaggs family

and Jewel president Richard Cline reached an agreement after an all-night bargaining
. American Stores raised its bid for Jewel's preferred stock, increasing the total bid to $1.15 billion in cash and securities. In return, Jewel dropped plans for a defensive acquisition of Household International Inc. and accepted American Stores' offer. American Stores soon sold Buttrey Food Stores, Star Market, and White Hen Pantry, to pay off debt and for other reasons.

1990s Expansion

In 1989, American Stores expanded to Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

using the Jewel-Osco and Jewel-T names, but operating as a separate division distinct from the midwest Jewel-Osco operations. Florida was considered a good market for Jewel because of the high number of Chicagoans who had relocated to that state. However, after a few years, Jewel closed those stores.
To consolidate the names of some of its subsidiaries under one title with nationwide recognition, American Stores renamed some of its Skaggs-Alpha Beta stores to Jewel-Osco in mid-September 1991. American replaced the Skaggs-Alpha Beta name with that of Jewel-Osco on all 76 stores in Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

, New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

, and Arkansas

Arkansas

Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...

, expanding the chain south.

In the late 1990s, Jewel purchased a Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

, food chain and opened fifteen Jewel-Osco combo stores in the Milwaukee metro area, some of which employed urban designs.

Albertsons and SuperValu

Albertsons, Inc. acquired American Stores' holdings, including Jewel and Jewel-Osco stores, in 1999.

Seven years later, parent company Albertsons and its stores would be taken over by two separate groups. On May 30, 2006, shareholders approved the break-up of Albertsons. All Jewel-Osco and Jewel Food Stores outside of Springfield, Illinois

Springfield, Illinois

Springfield is the third and current capital of the US state of Illinois and the county seat of Sangamon County with a population of 117,400 , making it the sixth most populated city in the state and the second most populated Illinois city outside of the Chicago Metropolitan Area...

were now wholly owned by SuperValu

Supervalu (United States)

. The Springfield stores, meanwhile, were acquired by an investment group led by Cerberus Capital Management

Cerberus Capital Management

Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. is one of the largest private equity investment firms in the United States. The firm is based in New York City, and run by -year-old financier Steve Feinberg. Former U.S...

. Both of those have since been sold to Niemann Foods

Niemann Foods

Niemann Foods is a company headquartered in Quincy, Illinois that owns and operates about 90 supermarkets, convenience, pet and hardware stores mostly under the County Market, County Market Express, Cub Foods, ACE Hardware, Pet Supplies Plus, Pick-A-Dilly and Save-A-Lot banners in Illinois, Iowa,...

, an independent operator of grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores in Central Illinois which now operates them under the Cub Foods

Cub Foods

Cub Foods is a supermarket chain with seventy-three stores in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based SuperValu...

–County Market brand. All free-standing Osco drugstores are now owned by CVS Pharmacy. SuperValu continues to license the Osco name for pharmacies within Albertsons, Jewel, Star Market and Shaw's

Shaw's Supermarkets

Shaw's, along with companion store Star Market, are wholly owned subsidiaries of Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based SuperValu. Together, Shaw's and Star Market comprise the third-largest grocery chain headquartered in New England; behind Stop & Shop and Hannaford, although Shaw’s is the largest grocery...

.

SuperValu announced on January 5, 2007, that it would offer for sale its Jewel-Osco stores in the Milwaukee area. Pick 'n Save agreed to take five of the 15 stores. Two other stores were purchased by Lena's Food Market. SuperValu announced to its workers that the remaining stores, if unsold, would close at the end of March.

Today

Currently, Jewel-Osco employs more than 45,000 associates. Its customer base gives it a 45 percent share of the grocery market in Illinois,, trailed by the Safeway Inc.

Safeway Inc.

Safeway Inc. , a Fortune 500 company, is North America's second largest supermarket chain after The Kroger Co., with, as of December 2010, 1,694 stores located throughout the western and central United States and western Canada. It also operates some stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern...

-owned Dominick's

Dominick's

Dominick's Finer Foods, Inc. is a grocery store chain and subsidiary of Safeway Inc. with locations mainly in the Chicago area, Illinois, USA. Dominick's distribution center is located in Northlake, while its management offices are located in Oak Brook....

chain (ranking second at 15 percent). Consumers from 80 percent of all households in the Chicago metropolitan area visit a Jewel-Osco store at least once a month.

Past ventures

Over the years, Jewel has tried other concepts and ideas. It is credited with selling the first generic brand

Generic brand

Generic brands of consumer products are distinguished by the absence of a brand name. It is often inaccurate to describe these products as "lacking a brand name", as they usually are branded, albeit with either the brand of the store in which they are sold or a lesser-known brand name which may...

product line in 1977. The packaging had no name or pictures — just a list of contents, UPC, and required nutritional information on a white package with a pseudo-army-surplus, olive-green stripe. The generic line was given the brand "Econo Buy" in the early 1990s.

Jewel Grand Bazaar

In 1973, the chain opened an experimental Jewel Grand Bazaar, on the southwest side of Chicago; a store that encompassed an entire city block at the northwest corner of 54th Street and Pulaski Road. This store featured bulk packaging, free samples on weekends, and 24-hour service. See photos: photos This experimental store was in service from 1973 until the 1980s, when it was reformatted as a standard Jewel-Osco combo store. A second Grand Bazaar was opened in 1974 at 87 W. 87th St in Chicago and in 1977, a "Jewel Grand Bazaar" was opened at 6505 W. Diversey in the Brickyard Mall. During the 1990s, the Diversey Avenue Grand Bazaar was reformatted to a regular Jewel grocery store, but continued to carry some of the traditional "Grand Bazaar" features such as bulk foods. With the reconstruction of the Brickyard Mall in 2003, the Grand Bazaar store was demolished and replaced with a smaller Jewel grocery store. Rockford, Illinois also had a Jewel Grand Bazaar. There was also one on Grand Ave. and Kostner Ave. on Chicago's West side

Turn Style

In 1961, Jewel acquired a chain of discount stores in the Chicago area called Turn Style
Turn Style
Turn Style was a chain of discount department stores and was a division of Chicago-based Jewel, the parent company of the Jewel Food Stores supermarket chain. Each Turn Style had an Osco Pharmacy, at the time very uncommon for a discount store in the 1960s and 1970s...

. This chain was moderately successful throughout the 1960s. Some locations were combined with Jewel's supermarket brands to form Family Centers. In 1978 most locations were sold to May Department Stores

May Department Stores

The May Department Stores Company was a national department store chain in the United States, founded in 1877 by David May. The company ceased to exist in 2005 when it was merged with Federated Department Stores, Inc . Prior to the merger it was headquartered in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri...

and converted to the Venture

Venture Stores

Venture Stores, Inc., was a chain of retail stores that operated in the American Midwest. The company operated over 70 stores with major market share in St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City, being headquartered in the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, Missouri....

format. Other stores were converted into large Osco Drug Stores.

Other ventures

In 1979, Jewel, under the Osco division, sold four of its five Republic Lumber locations to R & L Lumber, parent company of Handy Andy Home Improvement Center. They were located on the west side of Chicago at 4052 W. Grand Ave, Oak Lawn, Arlington Heights and Chicago Heights. A fifth location in Norridge was closed early in 1979 when the lease was not renewed; it later became a Joseph Lumber location.

Beginning in the 1990s, Jewel began installing Jewel Express gas station / convenience stores on its outlots. Today, less than 100 locations have Jewel Express services. These are currently being rebranded to Shell

Shell Oil Company

Shell Oil Company is the United States-based subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational oil company of Anglo Dutch origins, which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world. Approximately 22,000 Shell employees are based in the U.S. The head office in the U.S. is in Houston, Texas...

gas stations/Circle K

Circle K

Circle K is an international chain of convenience stores, founded in 1951, in El Paso, Texas, United States. It is owned and operated by the Canadian-based Alimentation Couche-Tard.-Overview:...

convenience stores.

In 2008, SuperValu converted one of its closed Sunflower Market

Sunflower Market

Sunflower Market was a grocery store chain with five stores in the Midwestern United States. The company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based SuperValu. Sunflower Market which operated five stores planned to open fifty stores in five years...

stores on Clybourn Avenue to an Urban Fresh by Jewel, a smaller store than the usual Jewel, with more upscale and organic products. It was announced that this store would close on October 31, 2009, and there are no plans to open anymore stores under this banner.

In October 2008, Jewel-Osco opened its first LEED

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design consists of a suite of rating systems for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings, homes and neighborhoods....

certified store at Kinzie & Des Plaines in Chicago. This new store was built with recycled materials and recycled 98% of its construction debris. It features a rooftop garden, uses water-saving devices, has non-ozone-depleting refrigerants in cooling equipment, uses a refrigerant detection system, and has energy efficient lighting.

President's Choice house brand

Jewel-Osco has been offering the Canadian staple President's Choice

President's Choice

President's Choice also known as “PC,” is a private label or store brand owned by Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada’s largest food retailer. As the company’s premium line, President’s Choice includes a wide variety of grocery and household products, in addition to financial services and mobile...

branded products since the early 1990s. President's Choice is a house brand created and distributed by Loblaw Companies Limited of Toronto, Ontario. Even though both Jewel-Osco and Loblaw's carry President's Choice products, both companies' past and present owners are unrelated. At Jewel, President's Choice has since been supplanted by other house brands, including Culinary Circle and Wild Harvest.

Organizational philosophy

A 1972 book written by Jewel senior leaders, The Jewel Concepts, stressed good citizenship within the community, "watching the horizon," and sponsorship of young people.

In an Illinois Retail Merchants Association online article, retired Jewel-Osco chairman Don Perkins reflects, "Jewel has a tradition of people orientation." One of these traditions came in the form of the "first assistant" philosophy of management. Each higher-level manager was to see himself or herself as serving the employees he or she managed. On the store level, this would mean that the manager would be the "first assistant" to the employees by making personal contact and taking personal interest, solving problems, suggesting solutions, and using flexibility in order to best serve the employees' concerns. Then the floor employees' duty was to be in service as the "first assistant" to the customers.

Jewel also was progressive in creating partnerships with vendors, at a time when the practice was rare.

Current stores

SuperValu owns these Jewel-Osco stores:
- Jewel-Osco and Jewel stores (170 stores), located in Chicago metro area, including northwestern Indiana.
- Jewel-Osco and Jewel stores (10 stores), located in Central and Western Illinois, Eastern Iowa.

Former stores

These former Jewel-Osco or Jewel stores are now owned by Niemann Foods and were rebranded as Cub Foods–County Market
- Jewel-Osco (2 stores) located in Springfield, Illinois
  Springfield, Illinois
  Springfield is the third and current capital of the US state of Illinois and the county seat of Sangamon County with a population of 117,400 , making it the sixth most populated city in the state and the second most populated Illinois city outside of the Chicago Metropolitan Area...
  
  (originally acquired by Cerberus)
All freestanding Osco drugstores (90 stores in Illinois and Wisconsin) were sold to CVS and rebranded as CVS/pharmacy.