Look how high the stuff was stacked! Big outdoor displays were common. The Czech butcher shop! Nearly exactly as it was, ~ 1950. Ours had much much large display cases. And all the bottles were glass! Think of any other differences? Frank
Groceries where my grandmother lived were often in a "general store" that carried many other things. North of Village of Malvern (now Scarborough), Ontario, Canada, circa 1880.
Most of the small towns in Maine have a general store, not so different from historical general stores except, of course, that they carry new items. A lot of the ones in Southern Maine are phony, intended to catch tourists, however. If you've ever looked at the population of Maine, you'd see that most of the towns in Maine are small. Portland, our largest city, has fewer than 70,000 people, and our capital has a population of less than 19,000. In towns large enough to have a supermarket, the old general stores often remain, only they serve more as convenience stores or as neighborhood grocery stores, while people do the bulk of their shopping at the supermarket. Millinocket, for example, has the Katahdin General Store and Rideout's Family Market, as well as a Hannaford Supermarket. We used to have an IGA that turned into a Shop & Save before it closed a few months ago, but that had more to do with politics than anything else. When you're right across the street from another supermarket, where things are cheaper anyhow, it's not a good idea to alienate half the customer base. Rideout's Family Market is located across from the exit gate of the paper mill so, when the mill was in operation, employing most everyone in town, people would stop there for groceries on their way home. When the mill closed, I didn't think Rideout's would survive because it's at the far end of town, no longer on anyone's way to anywhere. However, he has a loyal following and has a good deal with a butcher apparently, because everyone says he has the best meat in town. I haven't been there in more than a decade though, also political. Katahdin General catches people on their way to Baxter State Park in the summer and the snowmobiling places in the winter, plus they are across town from Hannaford, so they are convenient to a couple of neighborhoods. Plus, they are the only store in town open after 9:00 pm. Traveling north of Millinocket, most of the towns you come to don't have a supermarket and a lot of them are thirty or forty miles from a town with a supermarket, so you'll find stores much like the historic general store.
Some of the tiny towns and villages in New Jersey still have authentic old grocery stores. We had one in my town until the 1960s, but convenience stores drove it out.
The Klondike Trading Company - General store in a tent, during the Klondike Gold Rush, Alaska Photo by La Roche, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-22494
Difference to what? Place, time, both? Here are some: First and foremost, they had something to sell and to pile it high. Wearing aprons, collar and tie or bow tie. Pig halves in the salesroom. Only large bottles. Where are the smaller flip-top ones? Piggly Wiggly was definitely not "All over the world."
Publix Supermarkets showcased their wide aisles and a self-service dairy case by driving a shopper around a new store in a tiny car, circa 1957. Photo courtesy of Publix Supermarkets, Inc.
When I was little, my family ran a little neighborhood grocery. It had living quarters in the back, so we lived there as well. The area that we lived in was 2 good-sized rooms, one was the bedroom, and the other one was a combination of kitchen area, and living/dining area. There was no bathroom, but a small woodshed out back and and outhouse . There was not a butcher shop, and I only remember us having processed meats, like long logs of salami, bologna, and several other kinds of lunch meat. There was a huge slicer, so my grandpa Bailey would slice as much lunch meat as someone wanted, and they could choose how thick or thin they wanted the slices. Providers came by with big trucks and brought the food that we sold, so we had the Wonder Bread man, the produce man, and probably several other ones that I don’t remember. Outside of the store was a row of mailboxes, so people had to come there to get their mail, and usually bought something from the store when they came by. Back then, people would send their kids to the store to buy things like cigarettes for themselves, and then the kids got to buy penny candy with the change. In the winter, you could barely even see the store because the plow trucks piled it so high on the sides of every road. Having grown up in a small town, I miss the simplicity that it had compared to life in a larger city like we live in now. This is our store, with the delivery truck , and you can see me standing on the front porch of the store with Grandpa Bailey, waiting for the food to be unloaded.
A proper old fashioned Hardware store instead of a big box store... we still have one in our little market town..... ( one hook and eye sir, ? certainly?... one little washer sir what size?.. )