Angeli Foods, also known as Angeli's Central Market or Angeli's Super Valu, was an American grocery store chain founded in Iron River, Michigan.[1] Italian immigrant Alfred Angeli opened the first store in 1917, and the company grew to encompass several locations dotted across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Angeli Foods remained under family ownership for three generations until its sale in 2022.
History
Italian immigrant Alfred Angeli founded Angeli Foods in 1917 at 402 W. Adams St. in the growing mining community of Iron River, Michigan.[2][3] It was the first self-service grocery store to open in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the first to offer a frozen food locker, and the first to offer a five-day workweek. They were also the Upper Peninsula's first independent retailer to offer profit sharing and medical insurance.[4]
Early in Angeli Foods' existence, it delivered groceries around Iron River using a 1924 Ford Model TT truck. They retained the vehicle as an in-store display after it was retired.[3] According to the company's official history, over the next few decades Angeli Foods branched into several other industries, including a 2,000-acre (810 ha) farm, the Iron Inn hotel, a feed warehouse, and pet supplies.[2][A]
After Alfred Angeli's death in 1950,[5] his grocery store remained within the family for two more generations.[2] Alfred's son Libero worked quickly to build a new Iron River store location, on which construction began in 1953.[7]
Under Libero, Angeli Foods continued expanding into the 1990s. They helped develop and anchored Riverside Plaza, Iron River's first shopping center,[4][8] constructing a 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m2) location a short distance east of the town.[9] By 1973, Angeli Foods was grossing $7.4 million in revenue, and Libero won the Small Business Administration's "Small Businessman of the Year for Michigan" award for his work in developing the Upper Peninsula.[4] By the 1990s, Angeli Foods had opened or acquired several other stores in the region, including:
Angeli Foods' Iron River store at the Riverside Plaza, July 2017
A 12,500-square-foot (1,160 m2) store, opened in 1967[10] or 1972;[11] it was closed in the course of opening a larger location[10]
A 48,000-square-foot (4,500 m2) store, opened in the M&M Plaza in 1983 as a SuperValuCounty Market;[10][12][13] it was later expanded to 72,000 square feet (6,700 m2)[9]
Marinette, Wisconsin: a 45,000-square-foot (4,200 m2) store[9] along Roosevelt Road[14][15] that opened in 1992;[11] it would eventually include an associated gas station[16]
In 2013, third-generation owner Fred Angeli was given the Michigan Grocers Association's first Al Kessel Outstanding Achievement Award.[17][18] In the following year, Angeli Foods began offering organic food at their store in Menominee.[19] They sold their grocery locations in Menominee and Marinette to Jack's Fresh Market in 2016,[11] and the Marinette gas station by 2017,[20] leaving only their original Iron River location.[11]
As of 2019, the last remaining Angeli Foods store in Iron River employed over a hundred people with additional temporary workers taken on during the busier summer.[3] The location was known for its unusually expansive array of Italian products.[3]Explorer's Guide had previously lauded the store as an "extraordinary market", and added that its variety of fresh food options seemed "entirely out of place for tiny Iron River."[21] Non-grocery operations included an attached Verizon mobile phone store, a UPS parcel drop-off and pick-up location, dry cleaning, a Stormy Kromer outlet center, and a sporting goods store. The latter replaced an Angeli-run video rental store in 2017 due to a rise in video streaming.[3]
At the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Angeli Foods worked with volunteers to allow customers to phone in their orders for contactless pickup at the store.[22] A year later, it launched a website where customers could order their groceries for later pickup.[23]
Related businesses
Angeli Foods commemorative playing cards, c. 1968
Mike Leonard Angeli, part of a separate branch of the Angeli family, opened an Angeli grocery store in Marquette, Michigan in 1959.[24] The 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) building[25] was located near the intersection of Washington and 7th Streets.[26][B] This location closed in 1975[27] after Angeli became a founding and anchor tenant in the Marquette Mall complex. Angeli's new purpose-built mall store was 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2) large and carried SuperValu branding.[25] It opened in 1973 and closed due to an increasingly competitive local grocery scene in 1989.[24][27][28]
Sale
On 15 March 2022, Angeli Foods announced that it had reached a tentative agreement to sell itself for an undisclosed amount to Miner's, Inc., the owner and operator of Super One Foods, a chain of grocery store located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. As part of the arrangement, Angeli's last extant store in Iron River would be rebranded and become the thirty-second Super One.[29][30] The sale concluded in May, and the store was closed for a day to begin the changeover.[31][32]
Footnotes
^The Iron Inn was described by the Escanaba Daily Press as Iron River's "leading" lodging establishment[5] and purchased by Angeli in the late 1930s.[6]
^The building would go on to be the home of Northland Grocery and the Marquette Food Co-op.[26]
References
^Lopez, Monique (July 6, 2017). "Angeli's Turns 100". Upper Michigan's Source. Negaunee, Michigan: WLUC-TV. Archived from the original on May 28, 2022. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
^"Peninsula Paragraphs". The Evening News. Sault Ste. Marie. November 4, 1953. p. 5. Archived from the original on May 20, 2022. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
^ ab"Libero Angeli". Escanaba Daily Press. November 10, 1986. p. 2. Archived from the original on May 20, 2022. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
^ abc"MFC Names New Director". Ironwood Daily Globe. May 28, 1992. p. 5. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
