WITH SCHNUCKS MIDTOWN CLOSING, CITY SUPERMARKETS DWINDLING

A quarter-century ago, grocery shoppers in the Cape Girardeau Midtown area had their choice of supermarket grocery shopping -- Del Farm National and Hirsch's Thriftway.

Hirsch's Thriftway was open more than 100 years before the store at Sprigg and Good Hope closed it doors in July 1977. In earlier years, Hirsch's featured a half-dozen grocery delivery trucks and provided shoppers everything from rubber boots to produce and eggs.

The National Foods supermarket was on the scene more than 35 years before selling to Schnucks, which kept the store open another two years. Scbnucks announced Monday that it would close its 121 S. Sprigg Street store later this month.

When Schnucks Cape Midtown closes July 26, only one grocery market will remain in the mid-to-downtown area, Save-A-Lot at 19 N. Spanish, owned by Heartland Warehouse Foods of Jackson, which has operations at Jackson, Sikeston and Cape Girardeau.

"We have a full line of groceries -- meats, produce, dairy and other groceries," said Phyllis Wiedefeld, co-manager of the downtown store along with her husband, John Wiedefeld. "But we are limited on space." The downtown Save-A-Lot store, about 10,000 square feet, already receives a lot of downtown traffic, and would welcome the mid-town trade, she said.

The Wiedefelds and Roger Schlimme, manager of the Save-A-Lot on Kingshighway, which is receiving a facelift on the front of its building, were not too surprised at the Midtown closing.

"We'd heard rumors," said Mrs. Wiedefeld.

The Cape Midtown store had played an integral part in the neighborhood for several years, with the first 12,000-square-foot National Store opening in 1959. Two expansions later the store was at 33,000 square feet when it sold to Schnucks in 1995.

Statistics reveal that sales had slowed before National ever sold, especially following the opening in 1992 of Wal-Mart Supercenter, which includes a full-line grocery department.

The closing will leave the city with only two free-standing supermarkets of more than 20,000 square feet -- Schnucks on South Kingshighway and Food Giant on North Kingshighway.

Food Giant officials offered no comments on the Schnucks closing.

The supermarket closing is the third in Cape Girardeau during the 1990s.

Story's Food Giant closed a 40,000-square-foot operation in the 200 block of Broadview in March 1992, and Shop 'n Save closed a 60,000-square-foot supermarket on Silver Springs Road after five years of operation from 1991 to 1996, saying the store "never was able to meet its financial goals in Cape Girardeau."

Other big grocery stores in Cape Girardeau -- A&P Supermarket and Kroger's, both in the Town Plaza Shopping Center -- closed in the mid-to-late 1970s.

The city still has a number of grocery operations -- Wal-Mart stores, which feature a complete grocery operation inside its Supercenter in Cape West Business Park, and Sam's club, which opened recently adjacent to Wal-Mart.

Also on the Cape Girardeau grocery market scene are Aldi Foods Inc., a 15,000-square-foot market that offers a limited assortment of items, two Save-a-Lot stores and a number of quick shops and convenience stores.