By Steve Cichon | steve@buffalostories.com | @stevebuffalo
BUFFALO, NY – In the 1950s, grocery shopping was done primarily at what we’d now consider small-to-medium-sized grocery stores like A&P, Park Edge, Mohican, Red & White– along with small neighborhood corner stores, many of which had been in operation for decades.
As the suburb helped create the supermarket to replace the smaller stores, many of the more successful smaller scale operators became players in the Buffalo supermarket business. The owners of Super Duper, Bells, and Tops all had years of grocery experience before opening the larger stores. The same is true of Wegmans, which didn’t come to Buffalo until the late ’70s.
The only Buffalo name to last is Tops. Tops Friendly Markets grew into a Western New York institution by expanding through franchising, first with Tops Markets, then with B-kwik markets, then with Wilson Farms stores, bringing three different levels of grocery service to Western New York.

B-kwik Main St, Delavan NY


B-kwik, Ensminger Rd, Tonawanda

B-kwik, Seneca St. This store was on the corner of Kingston Street. It moved to the current Tops location several years later when B-kwik took over several area “Food Arena” stores.

B-kwik, Walden Avenue, Buffalo

B-kwik William St, Buffalo

Hy-Top Pharmacy, Main Place Mall

Hy-Top Pharmacy, Maple at North Forest

Tops, Chalmers Ave, Buffalo. Across the street from the Central Plaza

Tops, Clinton Street, Cheektowaga. Current site of Consumers’ Beverage

Tops, Lockport-Olcott Rd. Currently Family Dollar, across the street from current Tops.

Tops, Maple at North Forest. Was VIX, now vacant.

Tops, Medina, NY
This post originally appeared at TrendingBuffalo.com