Eisner Food Stores was a chain of

supermarkets A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limit ...

in Illinois and Indiana. It was acquired by

The Jewel Companies, Inc. Jewel-Osco is a regional supermarket chain in the Chicago metropolitan area, headquartered in Itasca, a western suburb. In 2007, the company had 188 stores across northern, central, and western Illinois; eastern Iowa; and portions of northwest ...

in 1957. The Eisner stores were rebranded as Jewel in 1985.

History

Albert Eisner opened a few Piggly Wiggly stores in Champaign, Illinois. He soon founded his own chain, Eisner Grocery. It soon grew into a 43-store chain of supermarkets with operations in downstate Illinois and Western Indiana.

Acquisition by Jewel

In 1957, The Jewel Companies, Inc. acquired Eisner Food Stores with its 41 stores in Illinois and Indiana. Eisner continued to be managed from Champaign, Illinois. Within a few years, the Eisner stores began to closely resemble Jewel in both appearance and marketing strategies.

Eisner-Osco Family Centers

In Indianapolis, Eisner opened the first two Eisner Food-Osco Drug Family Shopping Centers in 1972 in which an Eisner Food and an Osco Drug are placed side-by-side underneath a single roof and separate by a partial wall. Following the acquisition by Jewel, most Eisner stores were remodeled into Eisner-Osco stores, which combined the products sold by Eisner and Osco Drug. The new stores included common checkout stands but separate store management, all under one roof.

Turn-Style/Eisner Family Centers

In Indianapolis, Jewel opened three Turn-Style/Eisner Family Centers in late 1970 that combined the two stores under one roof. This concept did not last very long and the three Indianapolis family centers were converted into Osco Drug stores in 1977.

Big E Warehouse Foods

In 1977, Eisner created a warehouse store chain called Big E Warehouse Foods which sold food and other items at deep discounts. This money-losing experiment did not last very long. In Indianapolis, Eisner sold five out of eight Big E stores to rival Preston-Safeway while closing the remain three stores in 1983.

Demise of the Eisner brand

In 1984, Eisner's parent, the Jewel Companies was unable to defend itself from a very expensive hostile takeover by American Stores. After the takeover, American Stores decided to save money by merging Eisner directly into Jewel, converting all stores to the Jewel name, and slowly started to sell off the former Eisner properties. One of the first properties to let go was the former Eisner warehouse facility in Champaign in 1986. With the Champaign warehouse facility gone, many former Eisner locations became less profitable since they had to be serviced from the more distant Jewel warehouse at Melrose Park, justifying the elimination of those locations. The west central Indiana stores, three in Lafayette and two in Bloomington, were sold off in 1990. Jewel also closed central Illinois locations that were formerly Eisner in Decatur (in 1995), Champaign-Urbana (in 1998), and Springfield (2006).

Eisner Park

In 1944, the Eisner family donated 4-acres of land to the city of Champaign for use as a park. The park was later renamed Eisner Park in their honor.

References

{{Supermarkets of the United States Defunct supermarkets of the United States Defunct companies based in Chicago Retail companies established in 1901 Retail companies disestablished in 1981 1901 establishments in Illinois