Angeli Foods

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.

Angeli Foods' logo
Angeli Foods' Iron River store at the Riverside Plaza, July 2017
Angeli Foods commemorative playing cards, c. 1968

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][upper-alpha 1]

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:

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]

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][upper-alpha 2] 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

In 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]

See also

Footnotes
  1. 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]
  2. The building would go on to be the home of Northland Grocery and the Marquette Food Co-op.[26]

Endnotes
  1. 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.
  2. "Our History". Angeli Foods. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  3. Proudfit, Theresa (February 4, 2019). "Family-owned Angeli Foods has served Iron River area since 1917". Iron Mountain Daily News. Archived from the original on April 20, 2019. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
  4. "Angeli Wins Small Business Award". Escanaba Daily Press. May 22, 1973. p. 7. Archived from the original on May 20, 2022. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
  5. "Owner of Iron Inn Dies at Iron River". Escanaba Daily Press. October 11, 1950. p. 2. Archived from the original on May 20, 2022. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
  6. "Iron Inn bought by Alfred Angeli of Crystal Falls". Escanaba Daily Press. January 5, 1938. p. 7. Archived from the original on May 20, 2022. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
  7. "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.
  8. "Libero Angeli". Escanaba Daily Press. November 10, 1986. p. 2. Archived from the original on May 20, 2022. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
  9. "MFC Names New Director". Ironwood Daily Globe. May 28, 1992. p. 5. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  10. Tanner, Ronald (August 1984). "Cub's little brother mauls competitors". Progressive Grocer. Archived from the original on 2023-10-03. Retrieved 2022-05-02 – via Gale Academic OneFile.
  11. "Jack's purchases Angeli stores". Eagle Herald. February 16, 2016. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  12. "Tempo Store, M. & M. Plaza, To Become Angeli's Country Market, Opens Early 1983". Marinette Eagle-Star. October 13, 1982. p. 1.
  13. "Angeli's To Undergo Remodeling, Expansion In Menominee". Marinette Eagle-Star. October 18, 1989. p. 1.
  14. "Angeli's To Acquire Food-4-Less". Marinette Eagle-Star. January 22, 1992. p. 1.
  15. "Angeli's On Roosevelt Road Adds Expanded Video Section To Store". Marinette Eagle-Star. May 23, 1992. p. 5.
  16. Desotell, Mike (August 21, 2008). "Angeli not afraid to sink money into stores". Eagle Herald. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  17. "MI Grocers Honor Top Retailer, Partner". Progressive Grocer (Press release). August 9, 2013. Archived from the original on May 19, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
  18. "Michigan Lauds Angeli, Spartan". Supermarket News. August 12, 2013. Archived from the original on September 29, 2022. Retrieved May 22, 2022.
  19. Eggleston, Sam (March 26, 2014). "Angeli Foods in Menominee expands to include organic, natural selections". Upper Peninsula's Second Wave. Archived from the original on May 22, 2022.
  20. Kuhn, Emma (June 28, 2017). "Kwik Trip marks grand opening with donations". Eagle Herald. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  21. Westervelt, Amy (2012). Explorer's Guide Michigan's Upper Peninsula: A Great Destination (Second ed.). The Countryman Press. p. 175. ISBN 978-1-58157-814-0. Archived from the original on 2023-10-03. Retrieved 2022-05-22.
  22. Jawor, Alyssa (March 26, 2020). "Michigan, Wisconsin grocery stores offering curbside pick-up or delivery". Upper Michigan's Source. Negaunee, Michigan: WLUC-TV. Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2022.
  23. "Angeli Foods introduces online ordering option". Iron County Reporter. March 17, 2021. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022.
  24. "Marquette's Angeli Dies". Ironwood Daily Globe. September 15, 1998. p. 13. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  25. "Huge Shopping Center Slated for Marquette". Escanaba Daily Press. May 27, 1971. p. 3. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  26. Martucci, Brian (January 22, 2014). "The sky is the limit for a newly expanded and relocated Marquette Food Co-op". Upper Peninsula's Second Wave. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022.
  27. "Angeli's Closing Marquette Store". Ironwood Daily Globe. November 8, 1989. p. 5. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  28. Depew, Jaymie (January 13, 2019). "What's in store for the Marquette Mall?". The Mining Journal. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019.
  29. "Iron River's Angeli Foods converting to Super One store". Iron Mountain Daily News. March 16, 2022. Archived from the original on March 22, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  30. "Miner's Inc. to purchase Angeli Foods grocery in Iron River". Upper Michigan's Source. Negaunee, Michigan: WLUC-TV. March 15, 2022. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  31. Jawor, Alyssa (May 2, 2022). "Angeli Foods closed Monday, reopens Tuesday with new name". Upper Michigan's Source. Negaunee, Michigan: WLUC-TV. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  32. "Angeli's: The end of an era". Iron County Reporter. May 11, 2022. Archived from the original on May 12, 2022. Retrieved March 21, 2023.
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