Inside Michigan’s Abandoned 1954 Thrifty-Scot Grocery Store

Back in the 1950s, Thrifty-Scot grocery stores were where families went for budget-friendly shopping. They were part of that big shift when supermarkets started popping up everywhere, especially in Detroit. It was just an easier way for people to grab everything they needed in one trip. It’s wild to think about how these places were once the heartbeat of neighborhoods, and now some have been erased from existence or frozen in time.

Thrifty-Scot grocery stores were once a thing, but like a lot of smaller chains, they couldn’t keep up as the big guys took over. Their parent company, National Tea, hit some serious money trouble and filed for bankruptcy in 1999. By the early 2000s, Thrifty-Scot had pretty much disappeared. It’s one of those names that faded into history, but you can still find traces of its past in abandoned locations like this one.

By 2015, a couple of independent Thrifty-Scot stores in Detroit were still open, under the same name. However, they were no longer part of the chain.

According to Detroit Unseen, this former Thrifty-Scot grocery store was located at 3431 Joy Road in Detroit. The store was built in 1954 and continued to operate until 2015 when it was permanently closed.

Four years after these photos were taken in 2018, the building was renovated, which must have seemed like an impossible task.

The building is now home to Dollar General.

It's nice to see that building didn't go to waste.