Shop Rite history

In 1949, the company moved into a 15,000-square-foot warehouse in Port Newark, hired a warehouse manager, and contracted the services of a trucking company for the delivery of purchased goods.

Period of Rapid Growth and Change: 1951-60

1956: Wakefern members elect to cut retail food prices ten percent rather than issue trading stamps.

By 1960, some of the old stores, a few originally only 2,000 to 3,000 square feet in size, had been transformed into much larger operations up to ten times their original size.

Under his direction, professional managers were brought in who shaped the family business into a genuine corporation, one that made its debut as a publicly-traded company on the American Stock Exchange in 1972, thirty years after the first store had opened.

Thomas H. Lee paid $212 million for Big V, which after the expansion and contraction of the chain in 1989, comprised 27 ShopRite stores which were collecting $630 million in annual sales.

By the beginning of 1992, 11 of Big V's supermarkets were being outfitted with video centers, with a continued emphasis in this direction promised in the years ahead.

In August 1993, Stuart A. Rosenthal was named president and chief operating officer, succeeding Bronstein, who had narrowed his executive duties to the responsibilities assigned to the company's chief executive officer and chairman posts.