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Apr 19, 2023

Super Giant was a shopping experience ahead of its time

Years ago there were several Super Giant stores in the Washington area. They

Years ago there were several Super Giant stores in the Washington area. They were like large department stores, with furniture, furnishings, appliances, plus a complete store of grocery items. How long did they exist and why did they stop?

— Ruth Brinn, Rockville

Remember about 20 years ago when some Target stores began selling groceries, allowing you to buy bananas and breakfast cereal along with your underwear and shelf paper? This was weird, but if you were older, it may have seemed strangely familiar.

Target was a department store that added a supermarket. But 65 years ago, there was a Washington supermarket that added a department store, at least at some of its locations.

"What we’ve done is to set up a grocery store and a department store and tie them together for a check-out," an official from Giant Food told The Washington Post in May 1958.

The name of the new creation: Super Giant.

"The concept was one-stop shopping," Dave Herriman told Answer Man. Herriman joined Giant in 1961 and retired 40 years later as executive vice president of merchandising.

Giant — which started in 1936 with a single store on Georgia Avenue NW — was well-situated in the grocery business.

"But if you added some other elements, you increased the ability of the shoppers to get all of their needs, as opposed to going to different stores," Herriman said.

Those other elements were varied, indeed. The first Super Giant was in District Heights on Marlboro Pike. It was divided into 35 departments, including clothing, housewares, jewelry, sporting goods, hardware, appliances, cameras and garden equipment.

These goods were separate from the food departments, but customers paid for all their purchases together at a long bank of checkout counters at the front of the store. At 55,000 square feet, the store was twice as large as Giant's food-only locations.

Giant called this a "new dimension" in shopping. Local newspapers were excited, too. It probably didn't hurt that Giant was one of the area's biggest advertisers.

"Sequins in the Shopping Cart?" was the headline of a Post story from 1962 about the latest Super Giant to open, in Rockville. Writer Ruth Wagner noted that clothing — "from high leather boots to suede shift dresses to brocade cocktail dresses to sequined evening sheaths" — was available in the same place women could get steaks and frozen orange juice.

Noted Wagner: "The clothing will be neatly wrapped to protect it from the groceries, but into the basket it goes and right out through the same check-out stand."

Said Herriman: "When we started selling mink coats, our slogan was ‘Milk to mink.’ No one really bought too many mink coats, but we did have them there."

While the milk and the mink at Super Giant were under the same roof, the supermarket chain also launched stand-alone businesses: opticians, hair salons, carpet stores and an outlet called Pants Corral that sold jeans and slacks.

As an example of the area's increasing Giantism, in 1973, Giant opened four new stores at Free State Mall in Bowie. There was a Pants Corral, a Giant Carpet Center, a Giant Garden Center and a Giant department store. The department store didn't sell food. Why not? There was already a Giant supermarket at the mall.

Super Giants walked the earth for nearly 20 years, but the concept was shelved in 1978. Why?

"Eventually they became unprofitable," Herriman said. "Times change. Shopping patterns change. Demographics change. Our particular business plan was not operating effectively so we cut our losses and we went out of the business."

There was an upside: The number and diversity of food products had exploded since 1958. Removing all the toasters, dishware, coat hangers and brocade cocktail dresses left plenty of room for a dozen different mustards and a near-infinite variety of Cheerios.

"It was wonderful," Herriman said. "We could spread out all the food products that were coming in new."

One experiment survived the retrenchment. In 1962, Israel "Izzy" Cohen, son of Giant's co-founder N.M. Cohen, had an idea: Why not put pharmacies in Giant Food stores, starting at the company's Greenbelt location?

This was by no means a sure thing. At first, Herriman said, some drug manufacturers and cosmetics companies didn't want their products sold in supermarkets.

"We had a real fight with name brands," he said. "They didn't sell to us."

Eventually, they were won over and whenever a new brand came aboard, Giant made sure to put out big signs with messages like "We carry Bristol-Myers" and "We carry Squibb."

"This gave us legitimacy in the pharmaceutical end of the business, so the customer would feel comfortable that we had the best products behind the counter," Herriman said.

Supermarket chains across the country followed Giant's lead.

Izzy Cohen died in 1995. In 1998, Giant Food was bought by Dutch company Royal Ahold N.V. for $2.6 billion.

Barry Scher worked at Giant for 45 years, retiring as vice president of public affairs.

"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," he said.

And when the formats stopped being successful, the company retooled. You may not be able to buy a mink coat at Giant these days, but if you fill a prescription, spare a thought for Super Giant.