Smith's general numbering scheme background
If you added up all the locations across the Western United States where Smith's Management Corporation or it's successor Smith's Food & Drug has opened and closed stores, that number would approach 400. Since the early 70's, the number of active stores has bounced around but averaged a bit over 100 stores. The number scheme until Kroger bought out Fred Meyer was roughly but not always as such:
0-199 Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and Colorado
200-299 California from 1971 until the Lucky's buy out in 1984
High 300's Nevada
Low 300's Arizona
400-499 New Mexico
500 Texas
600 - Unused
700/800 California 1991 to closure of all stores in January 1996.
Purchase of Nevada Pantry Pride stores in 1972
It made sense that to avoid too much confusion and maybe provide the employees a sense that they weren't just eaten wholesale, Dee Smith simply added a three before the existing store numbers. There were ten Las Vegas stores at the time of the purchase. Pantry Pride had one store in Henderson. Due to the fact that a new Skaggs \ Albertsons combination store was built directly behind the Pantry Pride, Dee had no interest in that store. We probably will never know what it's store number was. The rest were:
360-3681 Maryland Pkwy (next to Wonder World)
361- 1221 E Sahara
362- 22 E Oakey
363- 2021 Civic Center
364- 1034 W Owens
365- 3830 W. Sahara (Next to Wonder World)
366- 3065 N Las Vegas Blvd
367- 2897 Las Vegas Blvd N (Former Tobler's Food City not Pantry Pride)
369- 2925 E Sahara (next to Kmart)
370- 2909 W Washington (next to Kmart)
Dee knew these stores were all tired out when he bought them. It was his market entry business plan to try to make them profitable until he could close them and built a replacement store. There's a great article in the Las Vegas Sun in 1982 about this practice.
The replacement stores built from 1975 to the 1990's were
368- 3459 S Jones
371- 232 N Jones
372- 4962 S Eastern
373- 3750 E Flamingo
374- 350 N Nellis
375- 574 N Eastern
376- 6115 W Tropicana
377- 850 S Rancho (Still open)
378- 1941 N Decatur
379- 4910 E Tropicana
380-2710 N Green Valley Pkwy
381- 849 S Boulder Hwy (Still open)
383- 4440 N Rancho (Recently closed)
384- 2275 Las Vegas Blvd N (Recently reopened as a Smiths 306 after being two other banners. 306 was the store number of the Peoria AZ Smiths)
385- 2211 N Rampart
359- 232 N Jones (Remodel and enlargement of 371)
Smith's decided with the building of a new and smaller store at 8555 West Sahara around 1996, to start reusing the closed stores numbers.
