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Battling the Big Boys
Bozzuto's hopes to harvest profits at site of failed Milford Grancentral
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Business New Haven
9/20/1999
By: Linda Mele
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With little fanfare, Adam's IGA Supermarket, a subsidiary of the Cheshire-based Bozzuto's Inc., opened a 20,000-square-foot store in the West Shore section of Milford at the site of the former Grancentral Supermarket last month.
The store had been vacant since Grancentral owner Steve Lotstein closed it and two other stores (in downtown New Haven and Fairfield) late last year because, he says, "It was exceedingly difficult to compete with the big guys," in particular the Shaw's Supermarket that opened on Whalley Avenue in New Haven last autumn.
At the time, Lotstein said his was a privately held company, "and it just wasn't profitable to continue operating the stores." At its peak, Grancentral Supermarkets Inc. had 11 stores statewide.
Bozzuto's Inc., a full-service wholesale distributor of food and household products to retailers in New England, New York and New Jersey, traces its roots to Waterbury in 1945.
IGA, founded as the International Grocers Alliance in 1926 by Chicago accountant J. Frank Grimes, is the largest voluntary supermarket network in the world, with retail sales of more than $18 billion annually.
Grimes founded IGA to help independent grocers compete with the chain stores that dominated the grocery business in the 1920s - much as they do today.
IGA built a network of independent retailers who worked together to create "chain-like" advantages for its members, such as buying power for a lower cost of goods as well as shared costs for mass-marketing campaigns.
The 2,000-plus IGA stores in 47 U.S. states employ about 92,000 workers, with a total annual payroll of more than $1.1 billion. The Milford store has 80 full- and part-time employees.
Thomas Spagna, Adam's executive vice president, says his company also opened a store in a former Stop & Shop location on Route 34 in Derby about three years ago, and at a 33,000-square-foot former Big Y Supermarket site in Seymour in May.
Adam's also has outlets in Shelton, Watertown, Bristol and Windsor Locks, but has "no plans for further expansion at this time," Spagna says.
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