Chain presence, at honest size

1926 – the present · brief, as chains warrant

A&P: the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company's Mishawaka stand survives, in the record reached, as a building's first tenant. The West End Bakery's building at 414 West Seventh Street — a hundred years old in 2026, on the city's redevelopment record of the bakery's makeover — began as an A&P grocery store, passed to an electrical shop, and has held the bakery since 1928, on the bakery's own building history. A chain store of the 1920s in the Belgian West End, gone before the bakery's second decade: that is A&P's whole documented course here, printed at that size.

Woolworth: the five-and-dime took the town's grandest room and cut it down. In 1937 the western portion of the Phoenix Block at Lincolnway and Main — the block rebuilt after the Great Fire, its upper floors holding Burt's Opera House, later the Century Theater — was radically remodeled for F. W. Woolworth, the theater floors removed outright; the Woolworth store opened in 1938 in the one-story remainder and remained for nearly four decades, into the 1970s, on the South Bend Tribune's 1937 report as recovered in the Round the Bend building history. The ground floor still stands on Lincolnway West.

Kresge and Kmart: the Kresge line came twice. A Kresge five-and-dime stood at the Town & Country Shopping Centre and closed a year after downtown South Bend's Kresge closed at Christmas 1974, on the Tribune's retail retrospective. The discount successor planted the bigger box: the Kmart on McKinley Avenue opened in 1966 — the second Kmart in the area — and when it closed on 3 September 2017 it was the last Kmart in the region, the Tribune marking the end of an era in area retailing.

Kroger: the Cincinnati chain's present Mishawaka state is two stores, on the company's own store list as this section is written: 906 South Merrifield Avenue and the Town & Country store at 2330 Hickory Road. A 1970s Kroger at Merrifield stands in the local photographic record, debated between Merrifield and Town & Country by the residents who shopped it — memory, printed as memory. The chain's arrival date here is not in the record reached; see the gap below.

Meijer: the Michigan supercenter chain entered Indiana through this city: Meijer's own history records that in 1994 the company "entered the State of Indiana with the opening of the Grape Road store in Mishawaka" — 19 April 1994 in the chain's timeline record — the first Indiana Meijer, on the corridor the mall annexation had built. It trades there still.

The regional line: Martin's Super Markets — South Bend-founded in 1947, SpartanNash's since the sale announced in November 2018 — has carried Mishawaka stores for two generations (the owners roster of this build banks a Martin's Super Markets Inc. line in Mishawaka's 1971 directory), and is printed here at corridor size as a regional chain's presence, not a Mishawaka firm.

The arrival dates that remain open: when A&P first opened in Mishawaka beyond the West End building's implication, and when Kroger first opened here, the records reached do not state — the web and trade record gives present stores and remembered stores, not first openings. That is a named gap, not a silence: the settling sources are the classified Grocers headings of the Polk Mishawaka directory run (1921–1956 and after), read year by year, and the Mishawaka Enterprise on film at the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library, whose advertising columns date a chain's arrival to the week.

Sources:

1. West End Bakery, the bakery's building history (2026) and South Bend Tribune (July 2026) — the 414 W. Seventh Street building's A&P first tenancy, the electrical-shop interval, the bakery since 1928, and the building's hundredth year.
2. South Bend Tribune (1937), as recovered in Round the Bend Now and Then, "The Lost Floors of the Phoenix" — the Phoenix Block's 1937 remodeling for Woolworth, the theater floors removed, the store opened 1938 and remaining nearly four decades.
3. South Bend Tribune, retail retrospective (24 August 2017) — the Town & Country Kresge and its closing a year after South Bend's (1974); the McKinley Avenue Kmart opened 1966, closing 3 September 2017 as the region's last.
4. The Kroger Company, store list for Mishawaka, read November 2026 — 906 S. Merrifield Ave. and 2330 Hickory Rd. (Town & Country).
5. Meijer, the company's published history (Newsroom, "Our History") — "1994: Meijer entered the State of Indiana with the opening of the Grape Road store in Mishawaka"; the chain's timeline record for the 19 April 1994 date.
6. Supermarket News (November 2018) — SpartanNash's acquisition of Martin's Super Markets, founded 1947, with stores across the South Bend–Mishawaka area; the owners-roster file of this build — the Martin's line in Mishawaka's 1971 directory.