Grocery Name Changes

When I was growing up, there was a grocery store that was constantly changing names. The first name I can remember is Finest. It was almost like a Sam’s Club in the sense that it had everything you could possible imagine, and amazing samples to try. As kids, my brother and I would love to go there because there was an ice cream place in the front of the store that if we were good, our mom would let us split one. However, after growing up a couple of years with Finest, it was replaced with a Reenie Rego’s. This brought about a lot of change for the store. It was now more focused on groceries and deli items. I remember the store being completely reversed and not being able to find anything that my mom asked me to find. And I particularly had a difficult time as a young kid changing from saying Finest to Reenie Rego’s, especially when my family also had a difficult time and kept referring to it as Finest. It was Reenie Rego’s from the time I was eight years until I was about fourteen. At the age of fourteen, our Reenie Rego’s became a Tops. Which was even more of an adjustment, I presume because I was older. But, I felt like by the time I finally adjusted to the concept of no more Finest, it had to change again. And again, the store was completely reversed. The deli was moved, the meats and frozen sections were switched, and produce was now in the middle of the store. I felt completely dysfunctional, in a new environment that I just could not adapt to. I remember the first time I was in the store, my mom sent me to get potatoes. The search and rescue mission lasted to me, what seemed like an hour at least. I went up and down aisles, saw cans of food, frozen food, and cleaning detergents. But I could not find a sack of potatoes anywhere. And by the time I had found them, I ran into my mom who asked me what had happened. It was the terrible, I felt like I should not have had to felt lost in my neighborhood grocery store. And once I started driving, I would still tell my parents I was going to Reenie Rego’s and they would laugh because it was now clearly a Tops. It is crazy how something as small as a name change can create so many changes. And how it affects our everyday lives. I personally could not believe how it was to simply adjust to a name change. In addition, I could not believe how the name changed the format of the store so much.