The Independent Edition

  Up next -- we head to Charleston! And a few other towns around it in South Carolina. We begin to the northwest of the city in Summerville, then we wander through West Ashley and other northern parts of Charleston (note: not North Charleston, a separate city), before heading straight into downtown. We'll make one stop east of Charleston in Mount Pleasant, then travel out to Folly Beach on the coast outside of Charleston. Folly Beach is on Folly Island, one of the many islands off the coast of South Carolina, and we'll be exploring several of them. After Folly Island, we'll stop by Johns Island, Kiawah Island, and finally Wadmalaw Island. That's going to take us about a month, so sit back and enjoy! This is an interesting area, and it's also one I visited recently (January 2022, as a matter of fact) so it's pretty fresh in my memory. Hopefully, that makes for more exciting blog posts. As always, thanks for reading and following me all around the area and I'l...

Quik N Save Owner: Yogendra Shah Opened:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  3234 Cromwell Dr, Norfolk, VA Photographed:  January 2020 I'm not too much of a fan of convenience stores, but this roughly 2300 square foot store caught my eye mostly because of the sign on its roof. You can't see it too well unless you zoom in and really focus, but there's actually (above the Convenience Store sign) a series of individual letters spelling out MARKETS. I can't find anything on what this was previously, and because of the building's size and apparent age I doubt "markets" referred to a full grocery store, but instead I bet it was a chain convenience store. It's not the oldest or most exciting relic out there, but I thought it was worth snapping a picture of nonetheless. Tomorrow, we're heading about two and a half miles southeast for a look at two supermarkets and one former supermarket in the Janaf area!

 Look at that, we're moving on to our next mid-Atlantic group tomorrow! And yes, there's a slightly different banner design here prompted definitely by my desire to update the blog's look to keep it trendy and modern, and definitely not prompted by the fact that an unfortunate incident involving an external hard drive lost about a year and a half worth of stuff that I had saved. Anyway. We are moving on to the greater Norfolk area, and this part of Virginia is referred to as Hampton Roads. Virginia Beach and Newport News are some of the other cities in this area, although we won't be visiting Newport News sadly. As I mentioned yesterday, this is not the most exciting group of stores simply because I was only in the Norfolk area for a family reunion, which is not the most conducive to photographing large quantities of supermarkets. But I was able to get some, so we'll be spending about two weeks in the Norfolk area. Come back tomorrow to jump right into a store tour ...

Matthews Market Owner: Bruce Matthews Opened:  1991 Cooperative:  none Location:  14141 Lankford Hwy, Mappsville, VA Photographed:  December 2019 As devoted readers of my blogs will know, I enjoy visiting the unique and out-of-the-way stores. So when I drove by the Matthews Market in Mappsville, VA, I knew I had to see it. And it didn't disappoint. Although the 5500 square foot store is on the older side and a bit dingy, it didn't disappoint. It's packed full of a huge range of groceries given its small footprint. The store opened in 1991 in a former IGA, but I don't know if it was previously a different supermarket before the IGA. A local news outlet did a great profile of the store back in 2016 for the store's 25th anniversary. Let's head in and check out what's inside! In the first aisle, all the way to the left, we have frozen foods and produce, plus lots of snack and candy items. We have, coincidentally, two very different height photos from this same...

Snow Hill Food Rite Owner: Thomas Brittengoff Opened:  2009 Cooperative:  Food Rite Location:  308 E Market St, Snow Hill, MD Photographed:  January 2020 Let's take a look inside the small supermarket just outside of downtown Snow Hill, MD! We're about 15 miles southeast of Salisbury and about 115 miles due east of Fredericksburg, although of course to cross that distance you have to go across the Chesapeake Bay. This 13,000 square foot supermarket includes a liquor store, and has a deli-hot food-bakery counter here on the front wall, making it a little bit like a large convenience store. There's a small meat department, plus produce and frozen, so it is a full supermarket but it's pretty small. It's a good spot for local shopping, though, especially since Snow Hill doesn't have any other large supermarkets. Deli/bakery are in the front left corner, across the store from the entrance. Frozen and produce are in the first aisle, with meat and dairy on the back wa...

Italian Market Owner: unknown Opened:  2019 Cooperative:  none Location:  3150 N Dupont Hwy, Dover, DE Photographed:  January 2020 Well, we finished off New Jersey with an Italian grocery store so it's only fitting that we start Delaware with one, too! This is an interesting one for sure, in a former gas station-mini mart combination, and while the pumps have been removed the canopy remains, just painted green. I am amused by the hand-painted "ITALIAN MARKET" on the side of the building, but hey, if it works, it works. The place had just opened up when I snapped this photo back in January 2020, and it looks like the core business of this 2900 square foot store is the sandwiches and salads from the deli. We're right by the Dover Speedway here, by the way, and the former Dover ACME (which is now a Hobby Lobby) is just south on Dupont Hwy. There's also a Redner's a little over a mile north and a Safeway, LIDL, and ALDI about three miles south. Tomorrow, we...

 Welcome back, everyone, to our regularly-scheduled programming of supermarket coverage! We are progressing south along the eastern seaboard of the United States, as promised, through first the Delmarva Peninsula, the first stop south of New Jersey. The peninsula extends south from the Wilmington/Newark, DE and Elkton, MD areas down through Cape Charles, VA. The entirety of the tiny state of Delaware is on the peninsula, along with the eastern part of Maryland, and the southern part of the peninsula is Virginia. The cities paralleling the peninsula on the mainland include, from north to south, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Richmond, and Norfolk is just to the south of the southern tip of the peninsula. So we're going to take a look at a few stores primarily along the US-13/113 corridor as we wander down to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which connects Cape Charles to Norfolk. Come back here tomorrow for our first Delaware stop, which is interesting, to say the least!