Marked by lonely boxes of cereal and only the occasional gallon of milk, Brown's Thriftway, located at 43rd and Walnut streets, is soon to be no more.
According to store manager John McLaughlin, the supermarket, operated by entrepreneur Steve Brown will change hands on Friday. However, it will remain open during the approximately two-week transition.
"It'll be back bigger and better than ever," McLaughlin said, adding that it will remain part of the Thriftway chain.
Evening manager Sanjuan Smith identified the new owner as Nick Fiolo, an owner of two other grocery stores in New Jersey and Philadelphia
When Friday's sale is complete, Brown's former chain of three inner-city grocery stores will be liquidated.
Neither Brown or Fiolo could be reached for comment. However, the empty shelves prompted by the switch surprised many shoppers who routinely stopped by the longtime neighborhood establishment.
"They only have two out of the 10 items that I wanted," West Philadelphia resident Oliver Myers said, glancing down at a nearly empty shopping basket. "So instead of buying two here and then go somewhere else, I'll just go there and buy everything.
Myers' next destination was Freshgrocer, located at 40th and Walnut streets. Since its opening last April, the upscale food purveyor has become a favorite of sorts among the Penn community, but McLaughlin insisted that this new neighbor was not a major factor in the decision to sell.
"That was no problem for us," McLaughlin said of Freshgrocer's debut. "It's always healthy to have competition -- it makes you better."
But officials at the other grocery store serving University City, Campus Market, admitted that Freshgrocer was putting a pinch to their bottom line.
"We're a little bit slower, but we are doing better than expected," Kwang Park, assistant manager of the store located at 3925 Walnut Street, said. "Slowly, customers are realizing that our sandwich is better than [Freshgrocer's], so they come back."
Park also said that his store will be going through some changes in the near-term future.
"We're not going to be expanding," Park said. "We're just going to change the style of our business."
Brown's Thriftway was itself the scene of frequent change. In 1998, it became the first store in Pennsylvania to install electronic shelf labels. This system eliminates the need for individual pricing by using a wireless communications network to link small LCD price displays attached to a shelf in front of the product with the store's checkout scanning system.
According to those in the grocery trade, individual pricing was a slow and inefficient process.
In addition to advanced technology, many of Brown's former stores were innovators in cooperating with community-based partners. His store at Broad and Wingohocken streets in North Philadelphia opened in November 1999 in collaboration with the Triumph Baptist Church. Another store at Fifth and Berks streets was operated with a Puerto Rican association.
McLaughlin maintained that the West Philadelphia store also filled a neighborhood void.
"This was a good store years ago, and it'll always be a good store," he said. "People want to shop here -- that's the important thing."
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