It was back in my thin waist days when I first walked through the door. The date, according to my friend Rebecca Deem in the Bridgeport Finance Department, was Sept. 1, 1991.

 

I was a ripe 23 years old, still relatively fresh out of college, and pretty much dead broke. If there were bargains on food, clothing, medicine, or just about anything else, I was all in.

 

That is why that first day of September that particular year was a good one. It was at that time the doors opened to a store on the Meadowbrook Mall campus known as Phar-Mor.

 

I am betting a vast majority of those reading this will remember the store. As a refresher course, it was not part of the main building of the mall. Rather, it was in the building that today houses Dick’s Sporting Goods.

 

No offense to the business there today, but I sure do wish Phar-Mor were still there and Dick’s Sporting Goods had another location at the Meadowbrook Mall. Yeah, I liked it that much. And there was one key reason, among many, that brought me back over and over to the store.

 

Cereal.

 

Yep, for whatever reason, Phar-Mor had not only the largest selection of cereal I have ever seen in a West Virginia grocery store to this day, it was also the cheapest. Maybe they used it as a way to lure you into the store, and if that was the case it certainly worked for me.

 

The thing was, Phar-Mor had a little bit of everything. In fact, it seemed like more of a retail store as opposed to a pharmacy. Honestly, to this day, I know I brought plenty of medicinal items there, but I am pretty certain I never once had a prescription filled there.

 

It’s arrival in Bridgeport actually seems like an obvious one looking at Phar-Mor’s history. It was based in Youngstown, Ohio, which perhaps not so coincidentally is also the home to Cafaro Company. That is the same company that owns and operates the Meadowbrook Mall.

 

By the time the company opened in Bridgeport, it was near its zenith. A year later, in 1992, they had more than 300 stores and employed more than 25,000 people. Not too bad of an expansion over a 10-year time period.

 

In the years after it opened in Bridgeport, I was a regular. As noted above, I was there on nearly every occasion to get cereal – in particularly to get Cinnamon Toast Crunch, so much so that it helped add to my addiction to it when it came out for the first time in the mid-1980s.

 

Much like going to Big Lot’s or even Ollie’s today, if I went there for one thing, I walked away with plenty of other items. While that happens today if I visit a pharmacy, it is almost always something medically related, or perhaps a greeting card.

 

From the cereal and large amounts of food to music selections, video rentals and much, much more, Phar-Mor was different. It was a retail store masquerading as a pharmacy. I was fine with that because nearly everything, and I mean nearly everything, was cheap. It even had a music section where I would load up on cassettes (for you youngsters, Google that) of artists and they even had blank cassettes cheaper than just about anywhere else.

 

The other thing I remember about Phar-Mor. It was packed. It was always packed.

 

Perhaps that is what led to founders Michael Monus and David Shapira to aggressively expand. Perhaps the reason the prices were so low was because the stores were so packed.

 

Based on a little bit of easy research via the internet, it seems Monus had some issues. Plenty of them. A 1995 New York Times article said he was ousted as company’s president and found guilty of $1 billion in fraud that appeared to have started when Phar-Mor’s CFO worked to hide losses – in other words, cooking the books. Eventually, an appeals court overturned the embezzlement, but the damage was done.

 

Ironically, the same article lists Phar-Mar filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August of 1992 – less than a year after it opened in Bridgeport. Eventually, reorganizational plans were approved as the company continued

 

By 1995, Phar-Mor emerged from bankruptcy, but it was down to just under 150 stores. Wal-Mart was a monster, and it had company in Target and even at the time Kmart. Those stores also had pharmacies in them, or a large portion of them did.

 

The strategy that seemed to work, fuzzy bookkeeping or not, did not work when those competitors were buying at the same large scale and selling at lower prices because they had many more stores meant the end was at hand.

 

In September of 2001, bankruptcy was back on the table. By July of 2002, the sale of Phar-Mor was approved.

 

The only positive? I still remember going in after the store announced its closure and the already cheap items were ridiculously cheap. For some reason, and I have no idea why, I remember getting a Stone Temple Pilots cassette for less than a dollar.

 

Then, at least according to the Bridgeport Finance Department, the Phar-Mor account was terminated on Sept. 30, 2002.

 

No more cereal. No more cheap cassettes. No more movie rentals and beer purchases.

 

Phar-Mor was no more. Today, it is only around in my memories, and hopefully this will stir yours as well.

 

Perhaps I can talk Dick’s Sporting Goods into a new cereal display. Although at 53, it’s more about Fiber One than Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which is a blog no one would want to read about.

 

Editor's Note: Top photo shows the front of one of the now defunct Phar-Mor stores, while an advertisement is shown in the second photo. Bottom photo ((Mike Kalasnik/Flickr) shows one of their orange buggies with one of its iconic slogans on the side.