As a child, I was always told that Genuardis, a local grocery chain, was owned by the mob as a front and it explained much.  They had ridiculous hours of 5 AM to midnight and no one was ever there before seven or after 11 and I assumed they stayed open so people could drop protection money or some other such shenanigans.  Their store brand was amazing as I think it was a way to launder money by opening bags of Chips Ahoy! and repackaging them giving you three or four money trails to then follow.  Over the years they went legit and were bought out by Safeway and store I knew and loved was gone forever.  The private label went down to store brand quality and today I sat around for 20 minutes waiting for them to open as their store hours were now 7 to 11.  This also meant I could no longer have my biweekly commune with the stock-people by food-shopping near midnight.

I normally have no strong preference for the local and was fine when B&N took out a local bookseller but I miss my old grocery store.  I’m just not going to be comfortable going to a store with full knowledge that a kid that steals cigarettes will be met by the cops rather than a hirsute Italian man in a 3-piece suit.