Grand Union - Champagnes.

Supermarkets are one of those places that retain their old name long after they have been sold and resold and haven't been called that for years.  Its name is its name, to the people who knew it in childhood, and sometimes there were differences even then.  On of my sons tells me it is the same for stadiums and arenas, and I thought of a local one immediately.  Many people still call it The Verizon Wireless Arena even though it has been the SNHU Arena for a decade, and all the signs leading to it from the highway exits still call it the Manchester Civic Center, left over from 25 years ago. The official names of the parks in many cities are known only to the police and the mapmakers, but in Manchester I think there is only one known almost entirely by its unofficial name, "Pretty Park."

This came up because of Demoulas/Market Basket.  It has been a mess for years, with a family that tries to skirt laws but has also inspired employee loyalty.   There are about a hundred of them now.  It was originally Demoulas in Massachusetts, gradually spreading to other New England states, but there was a limit on how many of one store could sell beer and wine, so the family split off some and renamed them Market Basket.  It was largely a ruse. Still, there are stores that are still named Demoulas and others that have been Market Basket for years but are still called Demoulas by most of the locals. If you move into Concord, NH and call the downtown store Market Basket people will look at you in puzzlement.

A&P and pieces of A&P were bought, sold, combined, split, and recombined for 150 years. A few blocks down from where I lived as a boy it remained a supermarket after being sold off, and was just called "The Old A&P" for years after.  I don't remember its new name, and I doubt anyone else does either without looking it up.

But the interesting ones in Manchester, NH were the three Grand Union - Champagnes.  The first was built on the deeply French-Canadian West Side, the second was built in the South-Central part of the city, which was all ethic groups, and the third was built in the very fashionable not-very French-Canadian North End just before the lot of them (plus a few in other towns) were all sold to Grand Union.  Even though they were technically all named the same thing and their advertisements and fliers were identical, the one on the West Side was always just called Champagnes, the South-Central one was usually called Champagnes, and the snobby North Manchester one was always called the nice WASP-y Grand Union. My grandmother, a bit of a social climber who always resented that her husband had built their house just four blocks short of the North End, gladly switched from A&P to Grand Union in the 1950s.  She would never have gone to a Champagnes.

Full story of Romeo Champagne from the wonderful Cow Hampshire site.