Quoting Michael Loo to Nancy Backus on 05-19-18 11:18 <=-

The Canadian division which was still making money was sold off
to Quebec based Metro Stores long ago and their Ontario stores
rebranded as Metro while A&P in the USA folded completely
(bankruptcy) a few years later.

Somewhat sad...

Maybe, but it's a hard knock life, and when a
company rests on its bay leaves, kaboom is
almost inevitable.

Still a sad thing, though...

A&P was a leader and an innovator in the early days and became the number one grocery chain in North America but then they rested on
their laurels and stagnated while others got bigger and and better.

A familiar pattern...

One that would be okay if more of the
enterprises focused on the better part.

True...

Do the Metro stores still exist...?

Yes. It's one of the Big 3 in Canada.

So at least the ghost of A&P still remains... ;)

Pretty much only in the persistence of
the 8 O'Clock brand.

Now available at BJ's... (Just saw a coupon for it there) I do
remember Daddy getting that regularly at A&P.... :)

Sounds like a different marketing climate in Canada... :)

Yep. And it's hard to identify exactly what that difference is. The unanswered multi billion dollar question is why does Tim Horton's
beat Dunkin Doughnuts here but vice versa in the US when their
products are so similar? Or why the Bay thrives when Sears fails?
And why did Canadian shoppers reject Target?

Probably something that seems minor, but makes a bigger difference than
one would think... Interestingly (as I may have mentioned before) Tim Horton's is pretty big here in Rochester... I'd guess that there are
easily as many Tim Horton's as there are Dunkin Donuts around here, and
they seem to be flourishing.... except for one that was recently built
on the site of what once was one of our favorite places, Yangs... They bought the property, tore down the old restaurant building, put up a brand-new building... and were open for all of one day... We are still scratching our heads over that one... That smacks of behind the scenes problems, not necessarily related to the chain itself... The building
still stands there, with the Grand Opening sign torn down, but otherwise
as it was...

The reason why I posted this - chain doughnuts
are pretty interchangeable, except for Krispy
Kreme, which might be marginally better when
hot and fresh but become wretched when old and
cold - I suspect the issue is the grease used.

And the one Krispy Kreme in our area came with great fanfare (and
rejoicing, in some circles)... and a few years later, faded away... I
was unimpressed by them, even hot and fresh....

I didn't see a substantial difference between
Dunkin and Tim Horton's, though I might have a
regional-based prejudice in favor of the former
(and the fact that a friend's father was the
inventor of the Munchkin (prior to his intervention,
the punched-out dough balls were worked back into
the mass, and when that became economically
unfeasible, discarded altogether - he made a profit
center out of an annoyance and liability).

I remember a donut shop near where we lived in Willow Grove that sold
donut holes as well as their donuts... I don't remember any cutesy
names, just called them donut holes... Probably not part of a chain...
this would have been somewhere 1959-65... We'd go down there and buy a
few holes for a snack...

ttyl neb

... The only one who gets things done by Friday is Robinson Crusoe.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
* Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)