New Deal Supermarket - Original New Deal of Mississippi

Original New Deal of Mississippi

Meanwhile, also following the Great Depression, with the success of the New Deal Market chain in Modesto, California, another New Deal Supermarket brand, a discount grocery chain targeting low incomed areas owned by Rayvon Smith, a Mississippi native, based in Jackson, Mississippi was rapidly growing. The chain grew to 50 stores by the 1990s and in 1998, the stores were sold to former Jitney Jungle district supervisors Kenneth Leakes and Greg Price. Greg Price now owns the Jackson Cash & Carry which operates a wholesale grocery store on West Capitol Street in West Jackson. This is a former Kroger, Jitney Jungle, later Winn-Dixie store. For 50 years, the New Deal Supermarket chain of Jackson, Mississippi was a success with stores all over Mississippi and as far off as Camden, Arkansas. New Deal Supermarkets was one of the first grocery retail business to be owned by African Americans, which unfortunately was unlikely during the Civil Rights era. New Deal was also the first to invent the "more for less" discount meat packaged deal aimed for low to middle income families, respectively called the Pick 5, which allowed consumers to pick 5 types of packaged meat all for $19.99. This led to larger chains offering the same. Other local chains, such as McDade's Market, Food Depot, County Market, Vowell's Market Place, Grocery Depot, Ramey's Marketplace also have moved into the more for less discount meat deal. Food Depot offers family sized Pick 5 for $24.95, while Grocery Depot, a relatively new grocery chain which prices with the "shelf plus 10%" pricing format, offers the same for $17.99 plus 10%. Due to rise of larger chain stores such as Kroger and Wal-Mart, the original New Deal Supermarket chain owned by Mississippi native Kenneth Leakes is unable to have a strong presence in Mississippi, unlike its predecessor Jitney Jungle. Due to the rise of fierce competition nearby and consumer theft, given its more urban inner city location, This store recently undergone cuts and has since closed. All other Mississippi New Deal outlets were sold to California based Johnson Grocery Company, which hangs on fairly strong due to its buying power as a larger chain. Winn-Dixie's decision to leave the Central Mississippi area gave other New Deal and other smaller chains room for rapid expansion. Johnson Grocery Company, the largest franchised dealer for the New Deal brand, also reopened several former Jitney Jungle, later Winn-Dixie stores and has since rebranded those stores into the New Deal brand and remains successful today. Johnson's New Deal Supermarket version is probably the closest to being the successor to Jitney Jungle as New Deal Supermarket carries the former brand Food Club, which Jitney Jungle carried for many years before being sold to Winn-Dixie. New Deal Supermarket is also very similar to Jitney Jungle in format, primarily because majority of New Deal stores are former Jitney Jungle locations and have kept the original Jitney Jungle interior decor package and their logos are similar as both had red oval logos. One such Jitney Jungle decor package that is still in many of their former stores is the 1992 decor which has a checker board pattern that emphasizes the sales floor and features a blue wall decor boarder with respective departments written in italic cursive lettering format. This decor package is present in most medium sized former Jitney Jungle locations about 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) in size. Many of these stores' successors have kept this decor as the cost of remodeling these stores makes little sense given the volume. In 2010, Brookshire Grocery Company, announced their intentions to pull out of the Mississippi market leaving behind four stores which they acquired from Albertsons in 2002. Two Brookshire locations will close until a buyer is found while the other two locations were sold and rebranded to Kroger.