History
Big Bear Stores was founded in November 1933 by Wayne E. Brown. The first Big Bear Store opened on February 15, 1934 on West Lane Avenue in Columbus, Ohio in what was once a dance hall, a roller skating rink, and finally a tan bark ring for horse shows, the first Big Bear store opened - the beginning of self-service supermarketing in the Midwest. This first store was adjacent to the campus of the Ohio State University (now the site of the Riverwatch Tower apartments); Within a year, a second store opened in Columbus. By the end of the second year, two more stores had been opened, followed by stores in Lancaster, Marion, Newark and Toledo.
It was the first self-serve supermarket in the Midwest, and was the first supermarket in the country to use cashier-operated motorized conveyor belts, and claimed several innovative services, including its own trolley line. Big Bear introduced shopping carts to their stores in 1937. Big Bear operated a farm north of Columbus (later the site of store #272), as well as the Big Bear Bakery, located near the OSU campus. In 1948, Brown, along with other supermarket operators, founded Topco Associates, and Big Bear distributed their products (i.e. Food Club, Valu Time) as their "house brand", as well as their own private brand "Betty Brown", named after the founder's wife. Like many other stores, Big Bear had a trading stamp program. For many years their orange and blue "Buckeye" stamps were a familiar sight for shoppers.
In the 1950s, Big Bear became the first supermarket in the nation to use new IBM 305 RAMAC mainframe computer. In 1954, a new prototype store was opened in north Columbus' Graceland Shopping Center. With an interior store layout that became an industry standard, the store featured perishable items in the center of the stores and lower displays to highlight products. In the same year, Big Bear Stores Co. purchased Harts Stores, a department store that was operating at the time in the basements of two Big Bears. Harts experienced rapid growth, as Big Bear often opened grocery stores along with a Harts Department Store in an adjacent space.
Over time, Big Bear became a major supermarket chain in Ohio and West Virginia. In July 1988 the company started its hyperstore Big Bear Plus concept in Wintersville, Ohio (140,000 sq ft (13,000 m2)) and Bridgeport, Ohio (100,000 sq ft (10,000 m2)) the stores featured 40 percent food and 60 percent general merchandise. The hyperstore concept was a combination of its Harts Stores (29 stores as of 1991) and the Big Bear Grocery format.
Towards the end of 1990 the company decided to favor the Big Bear Plus store format over the Harts general merchandise format and started to slowly shutter or convert all remaining Harts locations. In 1991, ten side-by-side Big Bear and Harts locations were converted to the Big Bear Plus format. Before the demise of the company there were 21 Big Bear Plus stores.
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