Grocery

Baltimore-based advertising firm Gray, Kirk VanSant has landed a $10 million account for a grocery chain that runs the Martin's Food Markets in Western Maryland and grocery stores in five other states, the firm said yesterday.Gray, Kirk VanSant will handle radio and television advertising for Martin's, as well as for the Giant Food Stores in Pennsylvania and Edwards Super Food Stores in New York and New Jersey through an account with Carlisle, Pa.-based Giant Food Stores Inc.Giant Food Stores -- not an affiliate of Landover-based Giant Food Inc., which operates Maryland grocery stores -- chose Gray, Kirk because of its experience with the chain, said Mark Cosby, the chain's vice president of advertising.

The divide over a developer's desire to alter plans for a retail district in upscale Turf Valley came into sharp focus during an often vehement debate over the proposal. More than 120 people packed a County Council meeting room Monday for a hearing on a proposed zoning change that would allow a larger grocery store in the planned community just west of Ellicott City. The proposal would raise the permissible size of food stores in "planned golf course communities" such as Turf Valley from 18,000 to 55,000 square feet.

At 6 p.m. on the last day of 1997, Neal C. Roop turned out the lights and locked up, just as he always does. But this time, he closed the door on 101 years of family history.It was the last day for the mom-and-pop grocery that has been owned by the Roop family for four generations. Roop's Grocery, with its high ceiling and wood floors, has been a fixture in New Windsor since 1896, when John H. Roop left the family farm to build a grocery in the small Carroll County town about two miles away.

A new grocery store anchor for Wilde Lake is not viable, so re- inventing the space as a mixed-used development with residences, offices and retail is the best way to make the village center successful for another 30 years, its landlord said this week. "How do we create a place that's special and vibrant and different from what we already have?" asked Geoffrey Glazer, vice president of acquisitions and development for the mid-Atlantic region of Kimco Realty Corp. "We're trying to make this a very festive place [where]

More than 200 residents of the Bolton Hill and Marble Hill neighborhoods gave a list of demands yesterday to representatives of two grocery chains vying to replace the vacant Super Fresh store on McMechen Street, including specialty sections for patrons and a living wage paid to employees. Teams from the 900-store, St. Louis-based Save-A-Lot grocery chain and the small Baltimore chain of Stop Shop & Save addressed questions from the public at a meeting organized by BUILD (Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development)

Columbia's Town Center does not have most of the traditional amenities that grace the planned community's other nine villages. It has no community swimming pool, no grocery store and the pathway around Lake Kittamaqundi is not a complete circle. Instead, it was designed to be an urban center, offering a mall and offices. But as General Growth Properties and the county are working to transform the area into a bustling downtown with added shops and homes, the question of whether a grocery store is appropriate is surfacing.

A CROWD of more than 1,000 people showed up yesterday for the grand opening of a new Metro Food Market in Oakland Mills village. The promise of $25 in free groceries for the first 500 customers proved a powerful lure, even in affluent Columbia.Two hours after it opened, the supermarket was still limiting the number of customers who could enter so that cashiers wouldn't be overwhelmed. It was an impressive beginning for a store that must play a role beyond being Columbia's newest purveyor of meats and vegetables.

Union workers at Baltimore-Washington area Safeway Inc. and Giant Food Inc. stores overwhelmingly approved new labor contracts yesterday, winning increases in wages and benefits. The new contracts also deny the chains' bid to change the way new employees are assigned and paid for work on Sunday, which has become the busiest grocery-shopping day of the week. The four-year deals cover clerks, cashiers, meat cutters and other shop-floor workers in both chains and in both of the region's main unions.

Positioning itself as a low-cost alternative to existing grocery stores, Food Lion Inc. has begun a major push into the Baltimore metropolitan area, opening a store in Randallstown yesterday and making final preparations to open one in Perry Hall next week.Two other stores in Baltimore County are under construction, and leases have been signed for two sites in Anne Arundel County, said officials at the Salisbury, N.C.-based grocery chain.Several real estate sources said the grocery chain is aiming to open 20 to 25 stores in the Baltimore-Washington area within two years, but company officials are tight-lipped over their expansion plans.

About 29,000 Giant and Safeway supermarket workers in the Baltimore-Washington area are expected to vote today to accept a proposed contract that grocery and union officials have spent weeks negotiating. About 340 grocery stores throughout Maryland and the D.C. area will be closed from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. today so cashiers, meat cutters and other workers - members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union - can vote on the proposed agreement. Union and company officials were saying virtually nothing about the offer on the table or the likelihood of a strike.