The late, great B-kwik Food Stores

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.

Tops had only been on the scene for 6 years early in 1969, when Niagara Frontier Services took out a full page ad in the Courier-Express, looking for new franchisees, and bragging about the new stores that had been built in the previous few months.
These are the photos of the Tops, B-kwik, and Hy-Top Pharmacy stores which were built in the second half of 1968, along with the brief franchising pitch.
bkwikdelavan
B-kwik Delavan Ave at Humber

B-kwik Main St, Delavan NY

B-kwik Delevan Ave
B-kwik Delavan Ave at Humber

 

bkwikensminger

B-kwik, Ensminger Rd, Tonawanda

bkwiksenecast

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.

bkwikwalden

B-kwik, Walden Avenue, Buffalo

bkwikwilliamst

B-kwik William St, Buffalo

hytopmainplace

Hy-Top Pharmacy, Main Place Mall

hytopmaplenforest

Hy-Top Pharmacy, Maple at North Forest

TopsChalmersAve

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

topsclintoncheektowaga

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

topslockport

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

TopsMapleNorthForest

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

topsmedina

Tops, Medina, NY

NFS nfsgrowing pitch
This post originally appeared at TrendingBuffalo.com

 

 

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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.