Pick-N-Pay Supermarkets was a chain of

supermarket 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 ...

s which operated in the

Greater Cleveland The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2020 United States Census results, the five-county ...

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

area. The company's origin can be traced to the year 1928 and the opening of a small dairy store in Cleveland Heights, Ohio by Edward Silverberg who then expanded his operation and created a chain of such stores which he called Farmview Creamery Stores. In 1938, Mr. Silverberg opened a supermarket on E. 185th Street which he called Pick-N-Pay. In 1940, he changed the name of all his stores to Pick-N-Pay Supermarkets. He grew the chain to a total of 10 stores and in 1951 sold the company to Cook Coffee Company (later, as of 1969, Cook United, Inc.).First National Supermarkets
First National Supermarkets, Inc. - The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Retrieved 2012-06-04 Under Cook Coffee's ownership, the chain continued to grow through expansion and through Pick-N-Pay's acquisition of the Foodtown supermarkets in 1959. In 1972, it was sold to a group of private investors led by Julius Kravitz (previously the head of Foodtown), who continued the use of the brand for the newly independent company. Principal competitors in the Greater Cleveland market were the Fisher-Fazio-Costa, Stop-N-Shop, and

Heinen's Heinen's is a family-owned and operated regional supermarket chain that was founded in 1929. The chain has locations in Northeast Ohio and in the Chicago metropolitan area. It was founded by Joe Heinen, a butcher, who opened the first store n ...

grocery chains. During the company's heyday, shoppers at Pick-N-Pay stores were attracted by the stores' emphasis on higher-end meats and produce. The stores also participated in the Eagle Stamp ( green stamps) trading stamp program, a project of the May Company of Cleveland.Eagle Stamps
Exploring St. Louis - Eagle Stamps. Retrieved 2012-06-03. Shoppers would earn stamps at the time their orders were rung up based on the total retail dollar spent at the grocery. These stamps were then pasted into booklets, which, when "completed" (filled), were taken to a local May Company store, where they were redeemed for $3 vouchers towards May Company merchandise. Employees of Pick-N-Pay worked under a union contract, like those of most other major Cleveland area grocers. While still under Cook United's ownership, the stores were often paired in shopping centers with Cook's and Uncle Bill's,

discount department store A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down cost ...

s which were owned and operated by that company. In 1978, Pick-N-Pay acquired First National Stores of Boston, Massachusetts and the name of the company was changed to First National Supermarkets, Inc. with corporate headquarters in Maple Heights, Ohio. While expansion was the goal, that plan was sidelined after Kravitz was murdered in 1979 in a botched kidnapping-for-ransom attempt. The entire chain including Pick-N-Pay, Edwards Food Warehouse (the company's entry in the then popular fewer-"frills"-mean-lower-prices style of operation), and Finast branded stores was subsequently purchased by

Ahold Koninklijke Ahold N.V. was a Dutch multinational retail company based in Zaandam, Netherlands. It merged with Belgium-based Delhaize Group in 2016 to form Ahold Delhaize. History Growth in the Netherlands The company started in 1887, when A ...

(Koninklijke Ahold N.V.) of the Netherlands.

Notes

External links

Lehman Brothers Collection, Twentieth Century Archives
{{Supermarkets of the United States Defunct supermarkets of the United States Cleveland Heights, Ohio Retail companies established in 1928 1928 establishments in Ohio