Sav-A-Center

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Sav-A-Center was a trade name owned by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company.

The Sav-A-Center name was first used for a chain of 20 supermarkets in the greater New Orleans, Louisiana, area. The division operated throughout Louisiana, and had two stores in Mississippi.^[1] In addition, the Sav-A-Center division included three regular A&P stores, one of which was a small "corner grocery" in the French Quarter of New Orleans that A&P had been operating since 1931.

By August 2005, Sav-A-Center operated primarily in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans metropolitan areas, and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Many stores sustained damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Twenty-one stores reopened within a few months of the storm; two others following remodeling to repair flood damage. Five stores were closed permanently due to severe damage to the stores and surrounding areas.^[2][3] In April 2007, the chain exited the Baton Rouge area.

By May 2007, A&P announced that it was planning to exit the New Orleans area, and was seeking buyers for its 21 remaining Sav-A-Center stores. A&P cited the need to focus on its operations in the Northeast, and its merger with Pathmark, as the reason for the sale.^[4]

It was announced in September 2007 that the remaining Sav-A-Center stores would be sold to the locally owned Rouses chain. Rouses took over 16 Sav-A-Center stores, including the Mississippi stores and the French Quarter A&P, sold one to competing chain Breaux Mart, and closed the others.^[1][5][6]

The Sav-A-Center name was also added to many of A&P's Northeastern and mid-South Atlantic stores in the mid-1980s, shortly after A&P purchased most of Stop & Shop’s New York metro area stores following the chain’s exit from the market area. After the sale, A&P found itself sharing strip-mall space with many Bradlees stores, which at the time were owned by Stop & Shop, and in some cases the two chains shared a building in a manner not unlike today’s Walmart supercenters. When A&P took over the supermarkets, a common wall was built to separate the businesses. In many areas, including Tidewater region/Hampton Roads, Virginia, in North Carolina, plus most of A&P's Northeastern area, traditional A&P stores were remodeled as Sav-A-Centers; the classic A&P sign's red, orange, and yellow colors became shades of kelly green.

In the Northeast, the former Stop & Shop stores were larger than most of the traditional A&P stores. The company tried to use the Sav-A-Center conversion as a part of its "We've Built a Proud New Feeling" campaign, which was created to shed the company's high-price, stodgy perception. The campaign featured images of larger, cleaner, modern-style stores, happy, upscale-looking shoppers, and friendly, cooperative staff. (It was during this time that A&P debuted its Futurestores.) The Sav-A-Center stores were renovated with oversized graphics of fresh-looking produce and baked goods; they also were outfitted with IBM-POS checkouts. However, A&P had trouble shedding its high-price perception; gradually, the low-volume Sav-A-Centers lost sales and shoppers to stores such as Pathmark (later a division of A&P) and NYC area-leader ShopRite (the Wakefern retailers' cooperative). Some of the stronger Sav-A-Centers survived, but many eventually closed, or were re-branded in the mid-to-late 1990s as A&P Food Market. A&P's southeastern and Carolina divisions were sold in 1998; some of the smaller New York metro-area stores that survived were rebranded beginning in 2001 as Food Basics.

After A&P purchased the Kohl's Food Stores chain, based in Wisconsin,^[7] some of those stores were re-branded as Kohl's Sav-A-Center. These stores were later re-branded as Kohl's Food Market or Kohl's Food Emporium before that chain went under.

In the 1980s and 1990s A&P rebranded many locations of its Southern United States The Family Mart chain as Family Mart Sav-A-Center.^[8]

Beginning in the late 1980s, A&P Canada opened several stores in the Toronto area under the Save-A-Centre name. Its logo was the same as the American Save-A-Center, with the exceptions of being red rather than green, and Centre being the Canadian spelling of center. In the late 1990s, these stores were rebranded as Dominion Save-A-Centre (Dominion was another Canadian supermarket chain owned by A&P) and some remained in operation, eventually converted to Metro stores by 2009, following Metro's acquisition of A&P's Canadian properties, including Dominion.

A&P revived the Sav-A-Center name on newly remodeled Pathmark locations in New Dorp, New York, Irvington and Edison, New Jersey; Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania, and in three stores in Philadelphia. In addition, A&P's website rebranded Pathmark as Pathmark Sav-A-Center. here. Before being branded Pathmark Sav-A-Center, many of the chain's locations were branded Pathmark Super Center.

• List of Canadian supermarkets

• Rouses Website