Pathmark's Corporate Owner Files Bankruptcy

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., or the Montvale, New Jersey-based chain better known as A&P, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday. A&P owns the Valley Street Pathmark in South Orange. The Valley Street A&P in Maplewood , after decades of operation.

Once the country's largest grocery company, the business' debts now total more than $3.2 billion, according to a petition filed in bankruptcy court in White Plains, New York. Yet the company also said it has obtained $800 million in financing through JPMorgan Chase so that it can keep operating while in bankruptcy.

What happens next on Valley Street is uncertain, though there are no reported plans to close the Pathmark store. A&P operates about 400 locations across the country under its namesake banner as well as under other names including Food Basics, Super Fresh, Pathmark and Food Emporium.

In October, the grocery giant reported sales of $1.9 billion for the quarter ending September 11, representing a 7.1 pecent decline. The company reported a near doubling in its net loss to $153.7 million during the same period. A shift in shopper spending to wholesale clubs, supercenters and drugstores hurt sales, A&P said in a regulatory filing.

Locally, shoppers saw the Maplewood A&P, next to Pathmark, close this fall after . One of A&P's founders, George Huntington Hartford, served as mayor of Orange. South Orange's Hartford Road is reportedly named for the family.

The Great American Tea Co. began as a store on Vesey Street in lower Manhattan, selling coffee, tea and spices and dispatching salesmen in horse-drawn carriages through New England, the Midwest and South, according to the company's Web site. The grocer renamed itself The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. in 1869.

By 1950, when Hartford's sons were on the cover ofTime, the magazine reported that, "Of every dollar the U.S. spends on food, about 10¢ is passed over A & P counters."