Part 2: Laramie grocery stores after 1900
In 1901, Laramie had seven grocery stores and four meat markets, most in the downtown area. The one exception was John Anderson’s market at 308 S. Pine on the West Side. Meat and sometimes fresh produce were mostly sold at separate businesses then and none were self-service as we know it today.
The downtown address of 318-322 S. 2nd (now Altitude Restaurant) had a large grocery store for the longest time of any in Laramie—77 years, from 1883 (Trabing Brothers) to 1960 (Safeway). During that time, grocery stores evolved from customers walking to the store and ordering their groceries to be delivered—by horse and wagon—to today’s self-serve model. By the 1920s, most customers took home their own groceries. Electric refrigerators meant fewer trips; cooks and maids had all but disappeared so housewives did their own shopping.
Neighborhood groceries
In addition to seven relatively large grocery stores downtown, in 1908 there were two others: C.L. Houston’s at 907 S. 1st and the one at 308 S. Pine then operated by Christina Prahl. Twenty years later the number had grown to 15 small groceries, four were on the West Side, and 11 on the east side of the tracks, with another eight (presumably larger stores) that were still downtown.
Home-based or neighborhood groceries became possible partly because Morey’s Wholesale Mercantile warehouse opened at 580 N. 3rd in the 1920s. Small operators could then obtain their stock locally, in quantities small enough that they didn’t need their own warehouse.
On the east side, a typical neighborhood grocery was one owned by Charles H. and Alba Friday at 506 S. 8th. The Fridays lived upstairs; the store was in their basement. Starting in 1924, it lasted for over 30 years. In 1954 both died in their 80s; their son Edward kept the store open for a few more years. It was only a half block from Laramie High School (now the Laramie Plains Civic Center). Students remember the outside window for placing orders—the house is entirely residential now but still has the window.
Piggly-Wiggly
In 1922, Piggly-Wiggly (P-W) opened; it was Laramie’s first “chain” grocery store, though the Trabing Brothers had pioneered the idea with five Wyoming stores in the 1870s but closed all except Laramie’s in the 1880s. An announcement in the Dec. 22, 1921 issue of the Republican newspaper stated that P-W had bought the Co-Op grocery business that had recently moved from 321 S. 2nd. to 210 S. 3rd, into the 1896 International Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.) building that is now Falcon Computers.
P-W store manager was Robert B. Davidson who was the meat market manager for P-W through 1938 when the Laramie store closed. The “Piggly-Wiggly” painted sign was still visible high on the north side of that two-story brick building on 3rd in 1965—but it has disappeared now. The silly name was chosen to stick in shoppers’ minds.
Piggly-Wiggly, founded in 1916, was the first nationwide chain in the U.S. It was started in Memphis by Clarence Sanders. With open shelves, it was almost completely self-service. Sanders franchised the name and set up standards as well as central buying and distributing. According to the Denver Public Library, there were once 90 P-W stores in the Denver area. Now there are none. P-W stores still exist in Texas and east of the Mississippi.
Safeway and Ideal
The next Laramie chain came in 1928 when a precursor of the Safeway grocery opened at 305 S. 2nd; it was called “Skaggs Safeway Store” at first. That location had been William Hogben’s grocery in 1924. By 1939 the store was in the former Laramie Grocery Co. building at 318 S. 2nd.
In 1961, the trend away from downtown began with Safeway’s new store at 611 Grand Ave. (now Ace Hardware and Advance Auto Parts). It lasted there almost 20 years, until 1980 when the current Safeway at 554 N. 3rd opened. That left only two located downtown of the 18 grocery stores listed in the 1961 City Directory.
In the late 1960s, Nebraska natives John and Janice Shuster purchased three medium-sized local grocery stores. They began in 1967 with the two Sheaffer Food Centers at 520 S. 2nd, and 715 Shields, and finally the Midwest store at 411 S. 21st Street. For a while, the original names were retained.
The Shusters operated all three until 1977. That year all of them were consolidated into Ideal Super Foods at 1575 N. 4th, a new and larger store the Shusters built. Janice Shuster recalls that when they came to Laramie in 1967, most grocery stores still offered in-house credit. Nationwide credit cards used today didn’t catch on until the late 1970s. “Those companies charged the merchant about three percent, so we hated to have to raise prices,” Shuster says. “We preferred cash or checks.”
Shuster also says that around 1990 their Ideal store was the first grocery store in Laramie to introduce computerized scanning for groceries. It meant new equipment and manufacturers had to put bar codes on everything the store sold. Customers were skeptical, she recalls, so at first staff continued putting price stickers on each item as well. Soon most grocery stores followed suit and stickers on individual items were discontinued.
There were other 20th-century groceries. To name a few, they included Pioneer Warehouse Market at 2130 Garfield. It opened in the 1970s, utilizing open cases on the floor. By 1983 the building had been repurposed as the First Christian Church. Whole Earth Grainery at 111 Ivinson was operated by Vince Arbour from 1970 until he died in 2012. Now it is the Big Dipper ice cream shop. Whole Earth had been famed for its large collection of bulk spices and grains, imported cheeses, and fresh seafood. Its niche is somewhat occupied now by Big Hollow Food Co-op, a specialty and organic grocery originally located at 119 S. 1st and now located at 112 S. 2nd Street. It opened after Medicine Bow Natural Foods located at 101 Ivinson Ave. closed.
Three new chains
Albertsons came to Laramie in 1966 when it built a store at 1209 S. 15th; Buttrey Food and Drug built a store at 3112 Grand in 1977. In 1996 the Shusters sold the Ideal store business but not the building to Buttrey, which operated two stores for a while. Albertsons took over the lease on the Ideal building but if they opened a store there, it was short lived because by 2000 Albertsons was in the former Buttery location on Grand Ave. In the late 1990s, Smith’s Food and Drug operated the grocery in the former Albertsons location on south 15th, but closed in 2002, leaving the building empty —in 2009 the site became a University of Wyoming remote parking lot.
Albertsons vacated the Ideal building when it moved to the old Buttrey building on Grand (now Ridley’s Family Market). John Shuster died in 2012 and his widow Janice sold the Ideal building to Goodwill Industries of Wyoming in December 2015.
In 1990, Green’s Grocery on the West Side at 367 W. Clark was no longer listed in the City Directory. The new occupant, Bernie Sanchez, sold some groceries as well as Mexican videos. Within a few years, Sanchez purchased the building, discontinued groceries and opened a hamburger-type restaurant. Late in 1995, with his wife as the chief cook, they turned it into “Bernie’s Mexican Restaurant.” That marked the end of grocery stores on the West Side.
In 1993, Walmart (then spelled Wal-Mart) opened a “discount retail market” at 4037 Grand; the store sold groceries but not much in the way of meat or produce. In 2008, the Walmart “Supercenter” at 4308 E. Grand opened with a full line of groceries, produce, meats, and dairy. Self-service became more so when self-checkouts became an option as well as at Safeway and Albertsons. By 2008 all mom-and-pop groceries had been replaced with a proliferation of over 20 convenience stores and truck stops selling groceries along with gasoline.
Today, for full grocery service including prescription drugs, fresh meats, produce, and an in-store bakery, there are only three Laramie stores (in order of their local longevity): Safeway, Walmart, and Ridleys. Big Hollow Food Co-op, which opened in 2007, is an alternative for those who like the co-op concept and its unique items. Anyone can shop there, membership in the co-op is not required.
Laramie also now has a proliferation of specialty food vendors downtown during the summer Farmer’s Markets on certain days as well as mobile food trucks which do business all year at various Laramie locations on set schedules—some of which deliver. As in the old days, there are still a few specialized meat markets and bakeries around town.
By Judy Knight
Editor’s Note: Judy Knight is collection manager at the Laramie Plains Museum. Information here comes mostly from Polk City Directories available at the Albany County Public Library, and from the website wyomingnewspapers.org. Excellent photos of 1930s-era downtown Safeway and Piggly-Wiggly stores in Laramie can be found on the Ludwig-Svenson Studio Digital Photo Collection at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center.
Caption: Ideal Super Foods as it appeared in the early 1980s after additions had extended both the north and south sides. It existed here from 1977 to 1996. Briefly after that, Buttrey and then Albertsons rented the building. In 2015 it became a Goodwill store with independent offices on the south side.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Janice Shuster