Today is the last day of regular operations for the Lunada Bay Market . Starting Monday, all merchandise will be half off . We will misss the Lunada Bay Market and the Moore family tremendously. We have been goiung to our local corner market for 26 years. Veith , Larry , and their wonderful staff have seen our 3 boys grow up before their very eyes. The market has always been wonderful to our community and they will be missed.
The following is an article published yesterday in the Daily Breeze ( see http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_18626562 ) :
“For three generations over the span of a century, the Moore family has worked in the grocery business. That will change within days as the Moores prepare to close Lunada Bay Market in Palos Verdes Estates. The 6,000-square-foot store, at 2201 Palos Verdes Drive West, will bid farewell to customers today with cake and tears. Then the business will stay open about another week with a buy-one-get-one-free sale to clear out the remaining inventory.
“It’s sad, but it’s time to move on,” said a wistful Shannon Moore Reynolds, 57, who serves as the store’s treasurer and office manager. “It’s
sad, but times have changed and business practices have changed and shopping habits have changed and kids are more mobile and there’s just different expectations from this new generation.”
The Moore family has operated Lunada Bay Market since 1983. However, the family started in the grocery business in 1905. The decision to close their final store was prompted by a combination of things, not just the tough economy and competition from chain stores, family members said.
The current generation of Moores running the store is looking to retire from the family business. And the children have no interest in continuing the tradition.
On Thursday, Burton Moore, 93, sat in a wheelchair surrounded by his three children, daughter-in-law, son-in-law and teary-eyed customers. “Sad. We’ve been here quite a while,” Moore, a Rolling Hills Estates resident, said softly. Tears ran down the face of Cindy Ahearn, an accountant who lives nearby. “You’re family and you’re abandoning us,” Ahearn told Moore. “I’ve been coming here for 25 years. This is pretty serious stuff.” Alice LaMar, a 78-year-old Palos Verdes Estates resident, hugged the family patriarch, noting that she has patronized Moore-owned grocery stores for half a century.
Several black-and-white photos on the wall near the checkout lanes tell the history of the Moore family’s experience in the grocery business. One picture shows the Globe Grocery in Globe, Ariz., which Burton Moore’s father, Arden, purchased in 1905. Arden Moore later bought another store just outside Globe. But he sold the two businesses after local miners who patronized his store told him the nearby copper mills were running out of the semi-precious metal. He then moved to Southern California to work in the oil fields. That was 1923.
The Moore’s Lunada Bau market family ( left to right ) Larry Reynolds , Veith Moore, Alicia, Cindy Moore Southgate, Burton Moore, Marian Moore, Jeff Moore, Natalie Moore, Shannon Moore Reynolds
Arden Moore didn’t like workingin the oil business, so he purchased a small community market on Garnet Street in Redondo Beach. A different picture on the wall shows Arden Moore standing behind the meat counter at the Redondo Beach store. In 1932, he sold that shop and purchased the Palos Verdes Market in the Gardner Building – which later became part of Malaga Cove Plaza. Another photo shows Arden and young son Burton Moore in front of the Palos Verdes Market. The younger Moore was wearing a cap with soda bottle tops stuck into it.
Burton Moore’s grocery career took a detour during World War II, when he served as a navigator for B-24s and survived a crash landing during the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific Theater. After the elder Moore died in 1948, his son took over the business and established Moore’s Market in Malaga Cove in 1951.
A photo from 1974 shows Burton and his son Veith wearing butcher’s aprons and paper hats in front of Moore’s Market. Around that time, the Moore family purchased the property that now houses Lunada Bay Market. At the time, a grocery called Frontier Market operated there. Frontier closed in 1983, and the Moores opened in its place. The family operated both the Malaga Cove and Lunada Bay businesses until 1988, when they closed the older store.
Since then, Lunada Bay Market has been their focus.
My husband Bruce and I saying good bye to Burt Moore
The family had become a fixture in the community, with many local teens working at the store, including two of Burton Moore’s grandchildren. “Many, many high school students have had their first job here, and I do run into them,” said Cindy Moore, 50, Burton’s other daughter. “I was actually in Cancun and ran into somebody and he said, `I used to work for your dad.”‘
The family had considered selling the business in 2007, and even found a buyer. But the family “sat down and decided it probably wasn’t the time,” said Veith Moore, 63, who serves as the store’s vice president. But the time came four years later, with Lunada Bay Market now days away from closure.
“We had hoped that wouldn’t be how it ended,” Shannon Moore Reynolds said. “But it’s OK. It’s the next chapter of our lives.”
Click on the following link to photos Photo Gallery
For more information about Palos Verdes and South Bay Real Estate and buying and selling a home on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, visit my website at https://www.maureenmegowan.com . I try to make this the best real estate web blog in the South Bay Los Angeles and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. I would love to hear your comments or suggestions.
