US retail bloodshed has echoes of the Great Depression – Sydney Morning Herald

That changed, though, with the advent of the first chain stores. These included general-merchandise stores like Woolworths, which sold cheap factory-made goods, and the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P. These and other early chains pioneered new methods of retailing that eventually became the norm.
As historian Marc Levinson has shown, A&P began building stores that were the forerunners of today’s supermarkets. A&P sold standardized packaged foods and built stores with predictable…

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