Grocery Store

Game is boon to grocery stores By KIMBERLY YAKOWSKI / Staff Writer Super Bowl Sunday is a holiday for area retailers. Managers from Weis, Martin's and County Market all said their chips, pretzels, nachos and soda were hot sales items Sunday afternoon as shoppers prepared for Super Bowl XXXV parties. County Market manager Ron Long said they "plan around the holiday," stocking up on snacks in anticipation of brisk sales. Many party-planners were buying seafood, vegetable and meat platters, said a manager at Martin's on Wesel Boulevard.

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. ? Authorities believe they have solved the Christmas Eve 2002 theft of about $56,800 in cash, checks and food stamps from Weis Market in Martinsburg, thanks to an e-mailed, anonymous tip received last month. Former store employees Jason Wayne Butts, 27, of 542 Mesquite Lane, and Robert James Suchman, 54, of 740 Boy Scout Road, both were arraigned Thursday on charges of grand larceny and breaking and entering by Berkeley County Magistrate Jim Humphrey, according to court records.

By KIMBERLY YAKOWSKI / Staff Writer photo: RIC DUGAN / staff photographer PINESBURG - The red and white sign outside the former Pinesburg Grocery Store proclaims to all that it is "The happy face place," and for more than 20 years it lived up to its billing. The unassuming one-story building on Md. 68 was a meeting place for local retirees to share coffee and conversation. The business also was a place for area tannery and quarry workers to stop for breakfast and lunch.

By JULIE E. GREENE Staff Writer Plans for a neighborhood store that would deliver groceries to senior citizens were given the go-ahead on Wednesday night by zoning officials, a city official said. The Hagerstown Board of Zoning Appeals approved a special exception permitting the store in an area zoned residential, said Matt Davis, a city planner. The approval was conditional, based on the 401 Center St. store being maintained as a training center, Davis said. There was no opposition, he said.

by Richard T. Meagher / staff photographer click below for larger image MVA placing ATMs in grocery stores By STEVEN T. DENNIS Staff Writer Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration hasn't always had a reputation for striving to be convenient, but the agency is trying to change that with a new automated kiosk at Martin's Food Market on Dual Highway. By using the automated machine, known as Access Maryland, people can renew their license tags while they do their grocery shopping.

By VANDANA SINHA Staff Writer Jim Peterson is tired of taking the $9 taxi ride to the store for bread and milk. He doesn't like paying more than $3 for a 5-pound bag of sugar at a convenience store. And, he says, he is sick of being ignored. An activist for the homeless, Peterson has taken on another cause, this one for the senior citizens, downtown residents and himself. He is circulating a petition with the aim of having a grocery store move into Hagerstown's downtown.

By BRENDAN KIRBY Staff Writer Declaring his conscience no longer allows him to sell liquor and cigarettes, Lenzlea F. Mosby Jr. on Sunday got rid of them once and for all. More than a year after he was stabbed in a robbery at his store, Mosby burned cartons of cigarettes and poured bottles of alcoholic beverages into the gutter outside Mosby's Grocery Mart on Jonathan Street. "I realize what we're doing here is going to be a plus for the community," he said. "I know cigarettes are addictive.

By CLYDE FORD Staff Writer, Charles Town CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. - Barnhart's Super Market will close on March 29 because the owner has reached an agreement with Wal-Mart to sell them his lease. Roger Barnhart said most of the 34 employees at his grocery store in the Charles Town Plaza will be transferred to his Inwood, W.Va., and Ranson, W.Va., stores. He also owns a grocery store in Martinsburg, W.Va. A Wal-Mart Supercenter, which will have a grocery store, is being built at Charles Town Plaza.

A man armed with a baseball bat robbed another man Friday morning, Hagerstown City Police said. Dewayne Mills was walking underneath an underpass with a 4-year-old girl near a grocery store in the 800 block of West Hillcrest Road when a man jumped off the railroad tracks and demanded money, police said. By the time Mills reached the store to call police, the assailant had fled, police said. The robber was described as black, 19 to 21 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall and 150 pounds.