Beechwood Supermarket celebrates 50 years

Written by Fred Musante
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 16:22

The Beechwood Supermarket in Huntington Center, which turned 50 over the weekend, is really a family business.

“There’s never a time of the day when there’s not a family member in the store,” said Manager Kevin Scanlon.

“When you hear the term ‘mom and pop,’ this is it.”

His father, Robert Scanlon, was the first manager and minority shareholder when the store opened in 1959. Every member of the family old enough to work has been employed there over the years, and Kevin Scanlon said some of the employees are mistaken for family, they’ve worked there so long.

On Friday, the store was full of customers of a certain age, like Julie Prokop of Isinglass Road, who said she has shopped at the Beechwood Supermarket since it first opened.

Prokop said it was a weekly stop for her. “They’ve always treated me with respect,” she added.

“Friday is the best day of the week,” said Scanlon, “because you see all these people who’ve been shopping here forever.”

Beechwood Supermarket was getting ready for Saturday, when Mayor Mark Lauretti issued a proclamation naming Oct. 31 as “Beechwood Supermarket Day” in Shelton in honor of the 50th anniversary.

“It’s a great place to work,” said cashier Pauline Mas, who will turn 82 in February and has worked at the Beechwood Supermarket for 43 years. “I love my job. It’s a happy store to work in.”

Scanlon confided that quite a few customers wait in line when they don’t have to just so Mas will ring up their purchase.

Two other employees, Spike Jones, 60, and Rich Jennings, 55, both went to work for Robert Scanlon when they were 16.

“They were both very loyal to my father,” Kevin Scanlon said. “A lot of people think they are family members.”

Beechwood Supermarket is only 7,000 square feet, about the size of just the produce or frozen food departments in one of today’s super stores. But when it opened, Scanlon said, that size defined a “supermarket,” a new concept in American life, and certainly in Huntington Center, at the time.

Vinny Theodos, the owner of the Beechwood Market on Beechwood Avenue in Bridgeport, decided to expand his business to the suburbs. He picked Robert Scanlon, his meat cutter, to manage the new supermarket in Huntington.

There is a poster-size photo of Robert Scanlon and Vinny Theodos at the market in Bridgeport in the 1950s mounted over the meat aisle.

When Theodos died in 1984, Scanlon and his wife, Priscilla, bought the Beechwood Supermarket from his widow.

Kevin Scanlon, 44, said that when he and his siblings were children, he remembers playing hide and seek in the supermarket when it was closed on Sunday. When they were old enough, he and his brothers and sisters, Co-manager Robert Jr., and Karen, Kim, John and Theresa, all went to work at the store.

“There was one summer when all six of us were working here,” he said.

John and Robert Jr. took over as managers when their father died five years ago.

Priscilla Scanlon has 16 grandchildren, and three of them, Ryan and Michelle Scanlon and Lauren Mastriani, are the third generation of family members working at the Beechwood Supermarket. Kevin said more would join them when they get old enough. “It’s always the discussion at Thanksgiving,” he said. “Who’s next.”

His wife, Kelly, was also working as a cashier on Friday, and Robert’s wife, Sharon, works as a cashier, too.

Two of his brothers married girls they met as co-workers, in fact.

The familial atmosphere, which makes customers feel like family, is part of the Beechwood Supermarket’s success, but Scanlon said there’s also a lot of individualized customer service that brings people back year after year.

He said he has extensive records of special orders his customers have made going back decades. Thanksgiving turkeys are a big special order item, and he has customers who long ago moved out of Shelton, but return in November for special-order holiday birds because their parents bought them at Beechwood Supermarket when they were children.

Kevin Scanlon said the supermarket is celebrating the milestone with an anniversary sale. “It’s a good way to say thanks,” he said, “especially in this economy.”