Company of the Year  Nash Finch, Minneapolis, MN

Store of the Year

Hy-Vee (Barlow Plaza) Rochester, MN

Oddity of the Year   Lynn's Dakota Mart, Sturgis, SD

Blast from the Past  Ernie's Family Foods, Melrose, MN

Small Store of the Year

Fix's Family Foods, Wadena, MN

This is the page where we write down all the grocery stores that we visit.  At the left you will see some of them.

Why do we visit grocery stores?

Well there are a lot of reasons we visit Grocery Stores.  Grocery Stores can tell you a lot about the town or cities you are visiting, the size, the economy, aesthetic value.  Grocery stores can tell you all this and much more.  Another big reason is that Grocery stores are universal.  Every major community has to have some outlet to allow it's citizens to buy food.  This gives us an abundant and varied topic to study that can be found all over the world.

Grocery Store Century Club



If you have ever been to a SO road trip you know we

like to stop and critique every grocery store we can

get to.  If you accompany a Star Officer (Currently

that is Mike, Joel and Bill, and you can't count

yourself) into a grocery store then give it a rating

on the SO grading scale (which will be described to

you before every SO Trip) then we will add that store

to our list with your rating.  If you collect 100

ratings then you become a member of the Society of

Orion Grocery Store Century Club.

Good luck and get

shopping. 

See our Grocery Store ratings at the following link:Grocery Store Ratings

The Great Red Owl Mystery

Before the colossal juggernaut called Super Wal-Mart, before Cub Foods and Rainbow butted heads, even before oldies like Country Club were around, one bird held control over the majority of Minnesota's grocery shoppers.  That bird was called Red Owl.  Red Owl was once one of the largest chain of grocery stores in the world.  It was bought out at some time by the then up and coming Supervalu (owner of Cub Foods and largest grocery supplier in the United States).  After that the Red Owl name began to disappear as the face of the grocery business changed to the big box format you see in the Cubs, Hy-Vee, Rainbows, and other large retailers of today.  But some of the Red Owls still exist, in one form or another.  I found one in the heart of Green Bay, WI, owned by the Mason Brothers still flying under the Red Owl banner.  It has survived in the middle of the bustling city by providing a niche role to it's surrounding community.  Other former Red Owl stores changed their banner and now fly as independents, just like Ernie's Family Foods in Melrose, MN.  We got to chat with Ernie himself who is a Second Generation grocer whose father started his own grocery business under the Red Owl Banner.  Ernie showed us his family heritage in the sit down section of his store where he prominently displays remnants of the great Red Owl Area.  So if you stop into Green Bay or Melrose look these two grocery stores up and take a walk through them and enjoy the history and the blast from the past we call Red Owl. 

The Society of Orion recommends the following food store chains to anyone living in or visiting  the area:

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