Once upon a time, in May 1958, a new grocery store was born with a funny name, “Nut,” which later changed to Super Giant. According to Dave Herriman, who worked there for four decades, the concept was one-stop shopping, and boy, did they mean it. The first Super Giant in District Heights on Marlboro Pike, spanning 55,000 square feet, was twice as big, with 35 departments where you could buy clothing, housewares, jewelry, sporting goods, appliances, cameras, garden equipment, and, of course, groceries.
This “new dimension” of shopping got local newspapers excited, especially since Giant was one of the area’s most prominent advertisers. Headlines like “Sequins in the Shopping Cart?” in The Washington Post in 1962 talked about women buying anything from high leather boots to sequined evening sheaths where they got their steaks and frozen orange juice—all under one roof! But don’t worry about the minks! When Super Giant started selling mink coats, Giant’s slogan stated, “Milk to Mink”. While it was a catchy phrase, there weren’t many actual sales of mink coats though.
Super Giant was so big that it even had its own stand-alone businesses in opticians, hair salons, and carpet stores. Ever heard of Pants Corral? It was a store within Super Giant that sold jeans and slacks. By 1973, Giant even opened four new stores at Free State Mall, Bowie, where shoppers could find a Giant Carpet Center, a Giant Garden Center, a Giant department store, and, of course, a Pants Corral, all in one place. The only thing the Giant department store didn’t sell was food, clearly because there was already a Giant supermarket at the mall. But as we all know, all good things come to an end.
Super Giants changed shopping in a way, but eventually, they weren’t profitable anymore, despite being around for nearly 20 years. Times change, demographics change, and if your particular business plan isn’t effective, it’s time to cut your losses and move on. But hey, at least losing Super Giant gave Giant more space to stock up on newer food products. Plentiful space meant they could expand by stocking up on over a dozen different kinds of mustards and an infinite variety of Cheerios.
It wasn’t all sad news for Giant. One experiment survived the retrenchment, and it was pharmacies. Ironically, it was initiated at Giant’s Greenbelt location not by a big shot manager but by Israel Cohen, son of Giant’s co-founder N.M. Cohen. Initially, putting pharmacies in grocery stores wasn’t easy because some drug manufacturers didn’t like the idea of their products being sold in supermarkets. “We had a real fight with name brands,” Herriman said. “They didn’t sell to us”. But eventually, they came around, and Giant made sure to put out big signs announcing new brands like “We carry Squibb” and “We carry Bristol-Myers” to give potential customers trust and confidence in the quality of the pharmaceutical products behind the counter.
Other supermarket chains followed Giant’s lead before Royal Ahold N.V., a Dutch company, bought Giant Food in 1998 for $2.6 billion. Barry Scher, who worked with Giant for 45 long years and retired as the Vice President of public affairs, said, “Giant was proud of being a local chain that blossomed and grew to have so many types of retailing formats that were successful when they first launched.” So if you need any pharmaceutical items, don’t forget to think of Super Giant.
Serious News: washingtonpost
