Although the building is gone, residents say the legacy of J&L Supermarket will live on

The corner that for three quarters of a century was home to J&L Supermarket now sits empty. The grocery store opened in 1940 and was a mainstay in downtown Macon for decades. As time passed, it became a rarity and a relic as supermarkets abandoned the business district.

Its second-generation owner, Jesse Lamar Fincher, whose parents started the business at Third and Arch streets, died last year at age 77.

The sprawling brick-walled food emporium along with the property where it sits was acquired by the neighboring Macon Water Authority, which in recent days demolished the building’s shell to — until another use can be found for the space — make room for additional parking.

J&L appears to have been named for its founder Jesse Lee Fincher.

Along with his wife, Claudine, he opened the supermarket at the beginning of World War II, not far from the old downtown Farmer’s Market and half a block or so from where the Bibb County Department of Family and Children Services now sits.

In its heyday, J&L was a fixture along the southern edge of downtown. A 1966 advertisement in The Telegraph declared the store “a worthwhile stop for the shopper who wants a wide selection of quality meat and the best in groceries at bargain prices.”

An ad a few years later reminded patrons that J.L. Fincher ran the business “on the principle of a small margin of profit, passing the savings on to the customer.”

The place harkened to a time when customers knew their butchers by name. In the 1960s, the store opened at 6 in the morning and closed at 9 on weeknights. (It stayed open an hour later on Fridays and Saturdays.) In the early ‘50s, sliced bacon there sold for 45 cents a pound. Fat back went for 18 cents a pound, eggs were 70 cents a dozen and a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes cost 20 cents a box. Oh, and “fresh, jowls-on” pig heads were a quarter a pound.

The other day as crews cleaned the remains of the demolished building, a man named Terrell Smith, who had happened by, looked on and recalled shopping there as a child with his grandmother. He said she had been a housekeeper for the Finchers, who were kin to the proprietors of the well-known Fincher’s Barbecue.

“It was a monumental site right here,” Smith, 50, said of the supermarket. “A lot of us growed up right here in this store.”

The supermarket had been closed for some time, but until seeing it knocked down on Tuesday Smith said he had held out hope that it might reopen.

“It was,” he said, “like a part of the family.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2019 at 9:48 AM.