Wakefern Food Corporation 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

1953: Company builds first large warehouse in Cranford, New Jersey, and adds more staff members.

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.

1966: Supermarkets General Corp. forms and subsequently leaves Wakefern to form Pathmark.

Initiated in 1989, Supermarket Careers was created to help special needs students train for work in ShopRites or other stores.

In 1992, one of its largest members, Big V Supermarkets, opened the first PriceRite mini-warehouse club, hoping to get a share of a market dominated by Sam's Wholesale Clubs.

By 1996, the year in which Wakefern reached it 50th anniversary, those stores were serving over three million customers per week in a five-state network, and in sales the co-op was ranked 14th in the nation among supermarket chains.

In July 2007, the cooperative announced that for the first time it was offering its wholesale services to third-party supermarket operators, in the Northeastern United States and other areas of the country.