DID YOU KNOW?
locations around Michigan in those days. At one point, there were about 15 of these department stores across the state. Mervyn’s in Michigan was known for its discount retail model, similar to stores like Kmart and Target. It carried a wide range of merchandise, including clothing and footwear for men, women, and children, bedding and home furnishings, beauty products and jewelry, electronics, and housewares.
into a major restaurant chain over the decades that followed. At one point, Howard Johnson’s was the largest restaurant business in the United States, reaching its peak with more than 1,000 locations.
This was a chain that once seemed to have a location sitting along nearly every highway in the country. Over time, however, it slowly disappeared due to a combination of sell-offs, changes in consumer tastes and behavior, and stronger competition that ultimately pushed it out of the market. The last remaining restaurant location, in Lake George, New York, closed in 2022, marking the end of an era for this once-iconic American restaurant chain.
This next place I have been to in the late 1970s is Builders Square. Builders Square It started in 1970 and eventually closed its doors in 1999. When Home Depot and Menards entered the picture, the sun began setting on Builders Square, which had once been one of the original large-scale home improvement stores. In 2011, the company filed for Chapter 11 and liquidated its remaining 117 stores. Builders Square had already been struggling for several years before that and had been sold off in 1997. Still, the company was never able to turn things around and eventually shut down completely.
Anyway, I am sure many people have heard of Mervyn’s department store. Mervyn's at one time, it was located inside Southland Mall on Eureka Road in Taylor, Michigan, operating there from 1988 to 2006. I only shopped there a few times, but I also remember seeing other
Now, many people may not have heard of this next place, but Great Scott was a very nice grocery store in its time. Great Scott (supermarket) was one of Michigan’s largest supermarket chains, based in Detroit, with a total of 38 locations statewide. The first stores opened in 1953 in former Wrigley and Packer’s grocery store locations.
With numerous television commercials and the strong customer service they were known for, Great Scott built a solid reputation in its day. The supermarket chain, based out of Detroit, Michigan, operated from 1953 to 1990.