Avon Lake Food Center Ad – Jan. 7, 1954

From seventy years ago, here's a nice nearly full-page ad for the Avon Lake Food Center, which was located in the shopping center on Lake Road. As you can see, our old pal Sparky– mascot of the Sparkle Markets grocery store chain – makes an appearance in the ad, albeit without his name on his hat. Perhaps that's because the Food Center wouldn't officially become part of the Sparkle Family until January 1957 (which I wrote about here).

The ad ran in the Lorain Journal on January 7, 1954.

Note the location of the store is given as 'Stop 65,' the old interurban designation that lives on today there. Surprisingly, the items for sale in the ad are simply staples of everyone's pantry and fridge: sugar, catsup, butter, etc. Perhaps that was just to get you in the store, where you might be buffaloed into buying some of the 'choice cuts of Ohio Steer Beef.'

But what's really interesting in the ad is the free Royal Scot Plaid dinnerware offered as a part of a cash register receipt redemption program. I tried unsuccessfully to find some on eBay. Maybe there's still a lot of it being used in Avon Lake to this day.

But the ad got me to remembering when grocery stores offered all sorts of incentives to shop there regularly. I know Mom bought a whole set of Funk & Wagnall's New Deluxe Encyclopedias (buying a book a week) at A&P around 1966. We used those things for years. And I remember trying to put together a set of dishes from the Avon Lake IGA back in the 1980s.

These Funk & Wagnall's Encyclopedias should look familiar to many of you if your mom shopped at A&P in the 1960s