The Story of Winn-Dixie #2626: Hattiesburg, MS
This store has gone from a discount diva to a Louisiana lagniappe while aiming to please everybody in between.
Rouses Market #96: 2026-
Winn-Dixie #2626 (2011-2026)
SaveRite #2626: 2001-2011
Sack and Save #63: 1989-2001
TG&Y Family Center: 1984-1986
AIM for the Best: 1982-1984
Westwood Square Shopping Center | 4400 Hardy Street | Hattiesburg, MS 39402
Welcome to the second edition of Grocery South and to the second installment of this year’s Marketplace Madness series. Last time, we traveled to the small town of McRae-Helena, Georgia, to look at a Harveys supermarket with quite the storied past. It isn’t often that you find a rural grocery store sparking big city newspaper headlines, but Winn-Dixie #42 did just that back in 2005.
As far as I’m aware, today’s store wasn’t as controversial. It has, however, undergone a much more dramatic transformation to craft it into the unique space we’ll see today.
Consistent with the theme of Somebody Else’s Cart, we’ll also learn about another storied brand (or two) that Winn-Dixie succeeded to transform into little more than a memory. What do you say, shall we dive in?
Today, we will head west about 500 miles from our last stop to the town of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Situated on Interstate 59 roughly halfway between Meridian, Mississippi, and Slidell, Louisiana, Hattiesburg is home to just under 50,000 people and is Mississippi’s fifth largest city. Hattiesburg is known as The Hub City thanks to its central location between Jackson, Meridian, New Orleans, Mobile, and the Gulf Coast. The town primarily lies in Forrest County; however, today’s Winn-Dixie was built in unincorporated West Hattiesburg and is just across the line in Lamar County.
Our story begins with a short-lived spinoff of the once-popular TG&Y chain of discount stores. Launched in 1982, AIM for the Best was designed to be an upmarket spin on TG&Y’s typical discount stores. According to The Macon Telegraph, “AIM stores will be positioned in the market to attract the customer presently shopping in department stores and specialty stores, as well as better discount stores, the company said.” Houston Historic Retail points out how one of the biggest selling points AIM offered was affordable prices on designer clothes from the likes of Calvin Klein, Catalina, and Nike. This, paired with a full-service shoe department, was intended to set AIM apart from typical the TG&Y Family Centers and other popular discount stores of the time. AIM made its debut with three stores which opened in Macon & Warner Robbins, Georgia, on June 1, 1982.
The concept was originally touted as the replacement for all TG&Y Family Center stores (that is, locations larger than 40,000 sq ft). The Oklahoma-based company hoped to grow the brand to over 400 stores by 1986 and intended to make $4 billion in sales (close to $12 billion in today’s dollars) that same year. The rapid ambitions stemmed from the success of rival discounters, like Kmart, Target, and Woolco, in light of the consequent decline of the “traditional” variety store format.
This all sounds well and good, except for the fact that TG&Y corporate was not prepared for the rough road ahead. The Daily Oklahoman states in a 1984 article that, “Distractions have been plentiful at the nation’s sixth-largest mass merchandiser during the last three years.” In addition to the rollout of AIM for the Best, 1982 also brought the company’s first ever annual loss.
The next year involved battles with multiple lawsuits, a massive management shakeup, and a revolving door of chief executive officers leading the firm. By August of 1984, somebody had to try and right the ship, and the AIM initiative was, likewise, scrapped. The two years of effort only resulted in a launch of thirteen locations nationwide, including the three around Macon, three in the company’s home market of Oklahoma, and one in Hattiesburg.
The new 60,000 sq ft AIM store opened in Hattiesburg as an anchor to the Westwood Square shopping center on November 18, 1982; it was joined in the plaza by a K&B Drug Store, a Jitney Jungle supermarket, an Otasco store (similar to a Western Auto or a small town Sears), and a Value Shoe Store, among several other retailers.
According to a 1983 article in The American, AIM manager Gordon Jeffcoat said that, “We’ve done remarkably well, better than our projections,” after a year in business. It seems that Hattiesburg either was the right market for the concept or the manger’s projections were too low because time would ultimately beg to differ. Companies never like to admit failure, after all.
That is, until their hand is forced.
Less than a year after those comments, on September 7, 1984, the Hattiesburg AIM for the Best officially transitioned into a TG&Y Family Center. Interestingly enough, the article above asserts that the change was in name only and did not affect, “personnel, merchandise assortment and interior design.” It’s hard to believe that a change in name could revive a failing concept; however, TG&Y was not the first to give this strategy a try. It is far from the last corporation to do so, either. Furthermore, the Hattiesburg store may have performed better than the other AIM locations.
It still, however, must not have done that well given the store’s abrupt closure in 1986 following TG&Y’s purchase by McCroy’s Variety Stores. The final days at Westwood were compared to an eccentric garage sale with various and sundry items filling a sparse selection of display tables in a room largely devoid of merchandise. “There were Pia Zadora albums, patterns for clothing, a Duracel (sic) battery, a book called The Titan, a print of a monkey with the word “BOOZE” printed across the bottom and one spoked hub cap.” This sounds to me like a nicer version of an Amazon bin store one would encounter today.
With TG&Y dead and gone from The Hub City, the 60,000 sq ft storefront in Westwood Square sat vacant for close to three lonely years.
Enter Jitney Jungle
For those who aren’t familiar, Jitney Jungle was once Mississippi’s largest supermarket operator and one of the largest private grocery chains in the country. The Jackson-based company started in 1919 as a pioneer of self-service cash-and-carry style markets – as opposed to the traditional counter-service and credit-based operations which were more expensive to run. Jitney slowly expanded into the surrounding states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
According to The Mississippi Encyclopedia, “Local legend held that the name Jitney Jungle resulted from a printer’s error in the first newspaper advertisement that transformed Jingle to Jungle. According to W. H. Holman Sr., however, the name was a play on slang terms of the early twentieth century. Jitney was a popular name for the cheap taxis many customers used to travel to the store as well as a slang term for a nickel, thus echoing the firm’s slogan and advertising emphasis on saving money: ‘Every Jitney would be a jungle of bargains that could save the customer a ‘jitney’ on a quarter.’ The Jitney partners estimated that customers could save 20 percent based on the cash-and-carry policy and self-service design, a viewpoint that inspired the longtime Jitney Jungle slogan, ‘Save a Nickel on a Quarter.’”
Fast forward to the 1980’s, warehouse-style discount supermarkets became all the rage just as membership clubs, like Sam’s and Costco, were beginning their national ascent. Outfits like Cub Foods (Delhaize), FoodMax (Bruno’s), Table Supply (Winn-Dixie), The Happy Penny (Sing Oil), and Sack and Save were launched and expanded to offer shoppers everyday discounts on food while boasting some variety of a no-frills, warehouse-style, shopping environment. These stores were still a far cry from today’s discounters, like ALDI and Lidl, considering how they were often twice the size of a typical supermarket and three times the size of the average modern ALDI. On the other hand, they still formed a rapidly growing sector of the market – one that would dominate bleeding edge of the industry until the rise of the Wal-Mart Supercenter.
I believe the Sack and Save concept launched in 1983 at Clarksdale, Mississippi’s former Warehouse Food Center (yet another Jitney Jungle concept). The pitch for S&S stated that it was, “an expanded store with a larger meat department and a deli that will have consistent, competitive pricing . . . As part of the new concept, customers are asked to sack their own groceries with bags furnished by the store.” Heck, the newspaper advertisements even won an Addy award in 1983!
In July 1989, Jitney announced plans to transform the 60,000 sq ft former TG&Y into its 15th Sack and Save store. The discount supermarket opened on the morning of November 6, 1989, and replaced an older 24,000 sq ft “regular” Jitney Jungle next door (occupied by Michael’s today).
A Pump and Save gas station was also constructed in the parking lot to join the new store. Interestingly enough, the Pump and Save name actually outlived its Sack and Save parent close to a decade. Hattiesburg’s Pump and Save #768 sold gasoline under the brand from 1989 through roughly 2011.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll gloss over a few details of the Jitney story, but what matters for today’s post is that Winn-Dixie purchased 89 locations from the Mississippi-based chain in 2000, including Hattiesburg’s Sack and Save. Jitney Jungle was laden with debt, forcing it to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1999. Rather than attempt to restructure, the company was split and sold off as parts, mostly to Winn-Dixie and Bruno’s.
Despite this purchase not being the root cause of Winn-Dixie’s 2005 bankruptcy, it almost certainly was one of the final nails in the coffin. If the massive expansion of the Marketplace concept, and subsequent unchecked spending spree, was not enough to sink The Beef People, the sizable amount of debt used to acquire nearly 90 new stores from Jitney Jungle was.
Oh well, that crippling debt wouldn’t fully rear its ugly head for another four years, when the majority of the purchased stores would close outright. The former Jitney Jungle, Delchamps, & Sack and Save stores, in the meantime, continued on in blissful ignorance while Winn-Dixie got to boast about returning to long-forgotten markets in Mississippi. One of those “Double-Dixies,” as I have referred to them in the past, was located a few miles away on Lincoln Road.
This Sack and Save store, on the other hand, reopened under Winn-Dixie’s SaveRite division on January 18, 2001, and was renumbered #2626 to reflect this change. SaveRite stores were seemingly separated into two regions, with the Florida and Mississippi stores receiving a 2600-series number while the Georgia stores donned numbers in the 2700-series.
It wasn’t long before the Sack and Save name was retired at all of the new Mississippi stores, after a brief transition period, in favor of Winn-Dixie’s own SaveRite discount banner.
Moreover, Winn-Dixie was much newer to the grocery game with SaveRite than Jitney Jungle was with Sack and Save. Winn-Dixie’s format launched in late-2000 with a converted store in Jacksonville, Florida, and expanded rapidly through the conversion of most Atlanta-area Winn-Dixie stores in 2002. Despite the recent decline of other discount formats, such as Cub Foods, Winn-Dixie claimed that SaveRite could succeed due to its smaller store sizes and more limited selection. It still was marketed as a Grocery Warehouse, though, and doesn’t seem to have been a vast departure from its predecessors, including Winn-Dixie’s own Table Supply. Hopefully Winn-Dixie had learned a few lessons from its previous discount attempts in the 1980’s . . .
Or not!
All Atlanta-area SaveRite and Winn-Dixie stores closed by 2005 as part of the grocer’s bankruptcy restructuring. The Mississippi and Florida SaveRite stores at least showed more success than their counterparts up north given that the brand lived on for another six years. I imagine that these locations eventually became little more than a Winn-Dixie in sheep’s clothing, much like the remaining Harveys stores have in recent years.
In the end, Winn-Dixie admitted defeat and announced it would convert all six remaining SaveRite stores to standard Winn-Dixie outlets by November 2011. Three of these six stores, ironically, would later undergo yet another conversion to a “discount” format: the Tampa store in addition to the two Jacksonville locations were converted to the Harveys banner in 2016.
Eventually, all of these conversions didn’t seem to make much of a difference. The Orlando store, which started as a Table Supply in 1985, closed as a Winn-Dixie in 2014, while locations in Jacksonville, Laurel, and Tampa all closed during the 2018 bankruptcy round. Only two locations, Hattiesburg and Harveys #1694 in Jacksonville, survived to see 2026.
In October 2025, Southeastern Grocers, the parent company of Winn-Dixie and Harveys, announced plans to rebrand as The Winn-Dixie Company while refocusing its efforts on the grocer’s core market of Florida. Several weeks later, it was announced that New Orleans-based Rouses Markets would purchase the Hattiesburg store, along with nine other Winn-Dixie supermarkets, and convert them on a staggered basis to the new name.
The Hattiesburg Winn-Dixie officially closed on February 1, 2026, and was the last operational supermarket for The Beef People in Mississippi at the time. Rouses reopened the store just over a week later on February 9th.
That still begs the question of what will come of the last Winn-Dixie store in The Magnolia State.
As of February 2026, Winn-Dixie continues to run a standalone liquor store in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, with seemingly no plans of closing it. I was afforded the opportunity to visit this location last month, and while it was closed on that Sunday, it was very much still open for business. The parking lot was littered with signs stating that, “This liquor store will stay open,” or , “Winn-Dixie Liquor Now Open.” I would imagine that most of these were emphasizing the fact that the spirits store survived the strike of ALDI next door; however, they also seemed adamant that the business would remain open well into – or past – the year of our Lord 2026.
With our history lesson complete, let’s dive into how this Winn-Dixie looked during my 2022 visit. I would also like to thank Retail Retell for letting me use his exterior photos of this store considering the lackluster quality of mine.
I have to admit that I slid this visit into a work trip and brought an unknowing co-worker along for the ride. He mentioned that he forgot to pack toothpaste, and I happened to know just the place to find some . . .
This building was interesting because it featured two sets of entry and exit doors: one of each on either side of the vestibule. That concept may not blow your mind, but the fact that AIM for the Best shifted the vestibule to be off-centered was unique. The right set of doors was located under a glass “wedge” overhang and is where my attention was drawn as a shopper. Meanwhile, the left set of doors sat under the center “signage” portion of the façade and was likely intended to be the exit.
Despite my eyes being drawn toward the glass awning, we decided to enter the store through the left set of doors. You can see how several rows of shopping carts filled the vestibule and separated the two points of egress.
The front layout of this store was very familiar for a Winn-Dixie and featured large displays of promotional items between the cash registers and the produce department. This store also received a style of “Customer Service” sign that I don’t recall seeing before, despite the look matching other signage from Winn-Dixie’s “Down Down” interior package.
The produce department sat in the front right corner of the store, as it likely has since Sack and Save opened in 1989.
The beer section, along with several parallelized displays of soft drinks, separated the produce and seafood departments. Notice the lack of wine shelving & signage that would typically be found in this portion of a Winn-Dixie – that’s because Mississippi law does not permit wine sales in supermarkets. I wonder if that rule is one of the main reasons why7 the Ocean Springs liquor store remains open (and existed to start with) . . .
The seafood department rounded out the back right corner of the store and was complete with both fresh and frozen catches. How timely that my 2022 tour took place during Lent given that the season of remembrance, fasting, and fish began just over a week ago.
Glancing down several of the grocery aisles, we find the Dollar Shop on aisle 2, water and soft drinks on aisle 4, and coffee on aisle 6.
Standing in the back of the store, we see the typical seafood meat and dairy departments. I find it interesting how much more emphasis was placed on the seafood counter, in conjunction with the lack of a butcher counter. All of this, along with the random red floor tiles, was a carryover from Sack and Save.
Despite the original service department locations, I believe Winn-Dixie rearranged the inner grocery aisles to align with the company’s typical layout. Health and beauty products, likewise, were found on aisle 11.
Aisles fourteen and fifteen hosted paper products and frozen foods, respectively.
It is so strange for me to see pictures of an active pharmacy in a Winn-Dixie; then again, the grocer closed all of its in-store pharmacies nearly three years ago.
The deli and bakery counters round out the left side of the store and exhibit a configuration undoubtedly left behind by Sack and Save.
I’ll conclude the post with several shots of the registers at the front of the store. While it is a shame to see the last supermarket purchased from Jitney Jungle close, I’m at least happy to know it will continue on as a Rouses Market rather than an ALDI. The people of Hattiesburg have some delicious king cake in their future!
I hope that y’all enjoyed this supermarket story, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, and comment! I’ll be back in two weeks with the third part in this year’s Marketplace Madness series, so be sure to check back.
Until then,
- Sing Oil Media
Great research on this post; I had no idea about this store's history. Pretty neat that it was one of very few AIM stores, and may well have been the most successful, to boot! I also had no idea the Michaels was a former Jitney (although it was pretty obvious it was a former *something* when I was inside).
l_dawg2000 used to work for the old Sack & Save in Southaven, which was torn down over a decade ago but still has its old tile floor pattern intact on the concrete slab. And I still see a number of old Pump & Save gas stations littered around the state, too.
Interesting seeing mercury vapor at W-D! Now I have a question, do you see Winn-Dixie ever returning to territory they exited in the 2000s (TX, KY, Carolinas, VA)?