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WHITE OAK-A former commercial pilot, Mark Scozio experienced what might be described as a crash landing in 2000 as his family built what was to be a new Shop 'n Save grocery store in Penn Township.
With one-third of the new store's $4.4 million construction completed, Mr. Scozio said, Shop'n Save's parent company, Minnesota-based SuperValu Inc., pulled out of the project.
While the reasons SuperValu did so remain a mystery even three years later, Mr. Scozio said he realized his longtime family business's relationship with SuperValu clearly had to change.
And, in an era in which Wal-Mart is causing major reverberations throughout the grocery industry and independents find it harder and harder to survive, the Scozios are now growing their operations more quickly than ever-reaching $80 million in sales last year.
The Scozios eventually opened the Penn Township store under the Festival Foods banner, and Scozio Supermarket Group continues to look outside SuperValu for growth opportunities.
After years of stability operating six Shop'n Save stores in the region, the Scozios now have eight stores under four different brands with a ninth to open soon. THe brands are: Shop'n Save, Festival Foods, Sparkle Markets and Save A Lot. The Scozio family also finds itself juggling three different distributors, along with a court case with SuperValu.
"The dynamic of being an independent operator has changed," said Mr. Scozio, 40, who became president of the family business four years ago. "Big corporations operate a lot differently than independents do."
As part of its ongoing difficulties with SuperValu-which still serves as a distributor for three of Scozio Supermarket Group's stores-the Scozios filed a federal lawsuit in late January against the company. The lawsuit accuses SuperValu of...