Jewel-Osco

The Jewel Companies, Inc.

Company type	Subsidiary of SuperValu
Industry	Retail
Founded	1899 (Chicago, Illinois, U.S.)
Headquarters	Itasca, Illinois, U.S.
Key people	Jeff Noddle, Chairman and CEO Mike Jackson, President and COO Kevin Tripp, R.Ph, Executive Vice President; President, Retail Midwest
Products	grocery stores
Parent	Supervalu
Website	www.jewelosco.com

For the defunct Australia supermarket chain see Jewel Food Stores (Australia)

Jewel is an American supermarket chain that has 185 stores across northern, central, and western Illinois; eastern Iowa; and portions of northwest Indiana. Jewel's warehouse and management offices are currently located in Melrose Park, Illinois; however, as of early August 2008, its management offices were being relocated to Itasca. Jewel and Jewel-Osco are currently wholly-owned subsidiaries of Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based SuperValu.

History

A current Jewel-Osco combo store.

Beginning

In 1899, Frank Vernon Skiff founded Jewel in Chicago, Illinois as a door-to-door coffee delivery service. In 1902, Skiff partnered with Frank P. Ross, renaming the venture the Jewel Tea Company. In 1929, the Company built a new office, warehouse, and coffee roasting facility in suburban Barrington, Illinois, creating hundreds of local jobs despite the Great Depression. Area residents nicknamed the new, five-story headquarters the "Gray Lady" due to its sophisticated art deco style.

The Company's expansion continued throughout the mid-20th century. In 1932, Jewel acquired the Chicago unit of Loblaw Groceterias, Inc., then a chain of 72 self-service stores, as well as four Chicago grocery stores operated by the Middle West Stores Company, and began operating them under the name Jewel Food Stores, Inc. In 1934, Jewel Food Stores merged with Jewel Tea Company. In the 1960s and 1970s, Eisner Food Stores, located in downstate Illinois and west central Indiana (Lafayette, West Lafayette, Indiana), were part of the Jewel company; some time in the early 1980s, those stores were converted to the Jewel name. In 1981, Jewel sold its home shopping service.

Before 1970, Jewel stores were typically located on arterial city streets. Between 1970 and 1990, Jewel moved or expanded most of its stores to be freestanding buildings with ample parking. After the Company acquired Osco in 1961, and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Jewel built and operated many side-by-side stores, but most construction after 1983 consolidated Jewel and Osco stores together as one large store under one roof. Today, the two stores present to the customer as one unit; for instance, a customer can check out any items at Jewel or Osco registers, find Jewel and Osco merchandise co-mingled throughout the store, and can call one telephone number to reach their Jewel-Osco. However, each operating unit keeps its own separate marketing identity to the public as a "food store" or a "drug store."

Until 2010, Jewel and Osco stores under the same roof have had separate operations, managers, ordering and receiving procedures, budgets, and employees. A 2010 cost-saving measure will bring both Jewel and Osco oversight under one store director for each site.

American Stores

In 1984, American Stores acquired the Jewel Food Stores brand.

To consolidate the names of some of its subsidiaries under one title with nationwide recognition, American Stores renamed some of its Skaggs Alpha Beta stores to Jewel Osco in mid-September 1991. American replaced the Skaggs Alpha-Beta name with that of Jewel Osco on all 76 stores in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arkansas. Within months, the renamed stores in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas would be sold to Albertsons.

Albertsons and SuperValu

Albertsons acquired American Stores' holdings, including Jewel and Jewel-Osco stores, in 1999.

Seven years later, parent company Albertsons and its stores would be taken over by two separate groups. On May 30, 2006, shareholders approved the break-up of Albertsons. All Jewel-Osco and Jewel Food Stores outside of Springfield, Illinois were now wholly owned by SuperValu. The Springfield stores, meanwhile, were acquired by an investment group led by Cerberus Capital Management. Both of those have since been sold to Niemann Foods, an independent operator of grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores in Central Illinois which now operates them under the Cub Foods-County Market brand. All free-standing Osco drugstores are now owned by CVS. SuperValu continues to license the Osco name for pharmacies within Albertsons, Jewel, Star Market and Shaw's.

SuperValu announced on January 5, 2007, that it would offer for sale its Jewel-Osco stores in the Milwaukee area. Pick 'n Save agreed to take five of the 15 stores. Two other stores were purchased by Lena's Food Market. SuperValu announced to its workers that the remaining stores, if unsold, would close at the end of March.

Today

Currently, Jewel-Osco employs more than 45,000 associates. Its customer base gives it a 45% share of the grocery market in Illinois, where the chain shares a virtual duopoly with the Safeway Inc.-owned Dominick's chain (ranking second at 15%). Consumers from 80% of all households in the Chicago metropolitan area visit a Jewel-Osco store at least once a month.

Jewel Grand Bazaar

In 1973, the chain opened an experimental Jewel Grand Bazaar, on the southwest side of Chicago—a store that encompassed an entire city block at the northwest corner of 54th Street and Pulaski Road. This store featured bulk packaging, free samples on weekends, and 24-hour service. See photos: photos This experimental store was in service from 1973 until the 1980s, when it was reformatted as a standard Jewel-Osco combo store. A second Grand Bazaar was opened in 1974 at 87 W. 87th St in Chicago and in 1977, a "Jewel Grand Bazaar" was opened at 6505 W. Diversey in the Brickyard Mall. During the 1990s, the Diversey Avenue Grand Bazaar was reformatted to a regular Jewel grocery store, but continued to carry some of the traditional "Grand Bazaar" features such as bulk foods. With the reconstruction of the Brickyard Mall in 2003, the Grand Bazaar store was demolished and replaced with a smaller Jewel grocery store. Rockford, Illinois also had a Jewel Grand Bazaar.

Other ventures

Over the years, Jewel has tried other concepts and ideas. It is credited with selling the first generic brand product line in 1977. The packaging had no name or pictures — just a list of contents, UPC code and required nutritional information on a white package with a pseudo-army-surplus, olive-green stripe. The generic line was given the brand "Econo Buy" in the early 1990s.

Jewel once operated a store branded No Frills, a very basic store that only sold generic products, similar in concept to ALDI. In Rockford, Illinois, a store called Magna operates as an upgraded version of No Frills whose offerings include name-brand products.

Jewel has also experimented with the Market concept, with smaller stores in neighborhoods. Only one of these concept stores remains, in Arlington Heights, IL.

In 1961, Jewel opened a new chain of discount department stores in the Chicago area called Turn Style. This chain was moderately successful throughout the 1960s, but in 1978 most locations were sold to May Department Stores and converted to the Venture format. Other stores were converted into large Osco Drug Stores.

In 1979, Jewel, under the Osco division, sold four of its five Republic Lumber locations to R & L Lumber, parent company of Handy Andy Home Improvement Center. They were located on the west side of Chicago at 4052 W. Grand Ave, Oak Lawn, Arlington Heights and Chicago Heights. A fifth location in Norridge was closed early in 1979 when the lease was not renewed; it later became an Joseph Lumber location.

Beginning in the 1990s, Jewel began installing "Jewel Express" gas station / convenience stores on its outlots . Today, less than 100 locations have Jewel Express services.

In 2008, SuperValu converted one of its closed Sunflower Market stores on Clybourn Avenue to an "Urban Fresh by Jewel," a smaller store than the usual Jewel, with more upscale and organic products. It was announced that this store would close on October 31, 2009, and there are no plans to open anymore stores under this banner.

In October 2008, Jewel-Osco opened its first LEED certified store at Kinzie & Des Planes in Chicago. This new store was built with recycled materials and recycled 98% of its construction debris. It features a rooftop garden, uses water-saving devices, has non-ozone-depleting refrigerants in cooling equipment, uses a refrigerant detection system, and has energy efficient lighting.

President's Choice house brand

Jewel-Osco has been offering the Canadian staple President's Choice branded products since the early 1990s. President's Choice is a house brand created and distributed by Loblaw Companies Limited of Toronto, Ontario. Even though both Jewel-Osco and Loblaw's carry President's Choice products, both companies' past and present owners are unrelated. At Jewel, President's Choice has since been supplanted by other house brands, including Culinary Circle and Wild Harvest.

Chain expansion

Jewel-Osco has steadily expanded in the Chicago area. Only eleven of the chain's Chicago stores are the stand-alone Jewel Food Stores that date back to the 1950s and '60s; the rest are all newer Jewel-Osco concept stores. At one time, Jewel had Osco stores in Florida and small discount grocery stores called Jewel-T, a play on the original company name Jewel Tea. In 1989 American Stores expanded to Florida using the Jewel-Osco name but operating as a separate division distinct from the midwest Jewel-Osco operations. Florida was considered a good market for Jewel because of the high number of Chicagoans who had relocated to that state. However, after a few years, Jewel closed those stores.

In the late 1990s, Jewel purchased a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, food chain and opened fifteen Jewel-Osco combo stores in the Milwaukee metro area, some of which employed urban designs.

Workers at Chicago area Jewel stores are members of the UFCW Local 881, make higher wages than workers in nonunionized stores, and constitute a stable workforce. Meat and deli employees are members of UFCW Local 1546.

Organizational philosophy

A 1972 book written by Jewel senior leaders, The Jewel Concepts, stressed good citizenship within the community, "watching the horizon," and sponsorship of young people.

In an Illinois Retail Merchants Association online article, retired Jewel-Osco chairman Don Perkins reflects, "Jewel has a tradition of people orientation." One of these traditions came in the form of the "first assistant" philosophy of management. Each higher-level manager was to see himself or herself as serving the employees he or she managed. On the store level, this would mean that the manager would be the "first assistant" to the employees by making personal contact and taking personal interest, solving problems, suggesting solutions, and using flexibility in order to best serve the employees' concerns. Then the floor employees' duty was to be in service as the "first assistant" to the customers.

Jewel also was progressive in creating partnerships with vendors, at a time when the practice was rare.

Stores

• These stores are now owned by SuperValu
  • Jewel-Osco and Jewel, Chicago Metro: 170
  • Jewel-Osco and Jewel, Central and Western Illinois, Eastern Iowa: 10
• These stores are now owned by Niemann Foods and were rebranded as Cub Foods-County Market
  • Jewel-Osco, Springfield, Illinois: 2 (originally acquired by Cerberus)
• All freestanding Osco stores (90 Illinois and Wisconsin) are now owned by CVS and were rebranded as CVS/pharmacy.

See also

• Osco Drug for a history of Osco Drug

External links

• Jewel-Osco Official website
• "Jewel Tea Building Demolished". Preservation Online. December 10, 2003.