Walk into two stores with the same sign in New Jersey and you may be shopping at two entirely different companies.
Different owners. Different families. Different employees. Different decisions about what to stock.
Same name on the building.
That is not a franchise arrangement and it is not a chain. It is a cooperative, and it is one of the most underappreciated structures in American business.
Hundreds of independent grocers pooled their purchasing, built a shared brand, and created something with the buying power of a large chain and the local ownership of a family store.
In a region where national retailers have struggled for decades, this arrangement has held.
The reason why is genuinely interesting, and the idea underneath it has a direct application to your own money that almost nobody makes.