The original Woodman's Food Market sign was revealed while renovating the building to make way for Rock Realty on Milton Avenue in Janesville. The grocery store business was founded here in 1921.
A renovation project in Janesville has revealed a piece of Wisconsin's grocery history that has created quite a buzz.
Rock Realty is remodeling a building at 922 Milton Ave. for a real estate office. The building most recently was home to a thrift shop but when the awning was recently removed it revealed a sign for Woodman's Food Market.
The grocery company was founded on the site in 1921, two years after John Woodman opened a stand to sell produce grown on the Woodman farm. Their first store was 580-square-feet and was ultimately expanded three times before the Woodman family built an 11,000-square-foot store in 1956 at 1266 Milton Ave.
"We are looking into the possibility of safely removing the sign from the exterior," Rock Realty posted Monday on its Facebook page. "In the meantime, make sure you swing by for a look at this blast from the past."
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The original Woodman's Food Market sign could be removed from a building at 922 Milton Ave. in Janesville and preserved. The sign was uncovered during a renovation of the building for Rock Realty.
Woodman's, of course has grown into a grocery powerhouse. It expanded to Beloit in 1971 and in 1975 was the first grocery operator to use UPC scanners at its checkout counters. The company built a store on Milwaukee Street in Madison in 1979, added the West Side store in 1984 and a store in Sun Prairie in 2012, according to the company's website.
The original Woodman's grocery store at 922 Milton Ave. in Janesville. The store opened in 1921 and was expanded three times before an 11,000-square-foot store was constructed a few blocks away in 1956.
The company, which built a new corporate headquarters in Janesville in 2009, now has 19 stores in Wisconsin and Illinois, $2 billion in annual revenue with the average size of its stores clocking in at 230,000 square feet, almost 400 times the size of the original store.
Photos: Len "Crazy TV Lenny" Mattioli
Mattioli has sold his electric bike shop and is retiring from retail after 54 years.
Len Mattioli
Steve Lindenau, left, has purchased Crazy Lenny's Electric Bikes from Len Mattioli, who opened the business in 2013. Lindenau, who grew up in Madison, has worked at the Odana Road store for the past two years and has a long career in the biking industry.
Len Mattioli
Kim Swenson, right, a saleswoman for Crazy Lenny's Electric Bikes, goes over the controls of a bike being test-ridden by Reba Luiken of Madison.
Len Mattioli
Crazy Lenny's Electric Bikes is the largest electric bike store in North America. Its showroom on Odana Road is filled with over 250 electric bikes.
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Len Mattioli checks his phone at Crazy Lenny's Electric Bikes on Odana Road. Mattioli is retiring after selling the business in February.
Len Mattioli
Crazy Lenny's Electric Bikes opened in a 4,000-square-foot space in 2013, but in 2017 moved to a much larger location on Odana Road.
Len Mattioli
Len Mattioli, who became known in the 1970s for growing his late brother's small television, appliance and furniture store in Madison into American TV & Appliance, has sold his Crazy Lenny's Electric Bikes store and is finally calling it quits.
E-bikes
Crazy Lenny's E-bikes sold more than 3,000 e-bikes last year, more than it had in any previous year, owner Len Mattioli said.
Len Mattioli
When this picture was taken in 1984, Len Mattioli was known as "Crazy TV Lenny." Mattioli made his own television and radio commercials for his American TV & Appliance stores that grew to 15 locations in the Midwest.
Crazy Lenny's E-Bikes
Len Mattioli's current 4,000-square-foot store on Odana Road, Crazy Lenny's E-Bikes, is crammed with electric bikes, leaving little room for customers or service technicians.
Crazy Lenny's E-Bikes
After four decades in retail, Len Mattioli is still a showman who enjoys his work. On Wednesday, Mattioli will open a new location for his Crazy Lenny's E-Bikes at 6017 Odana Road. The new 12,000-square-foot store is three times larger than his current location.
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Len Mattioli, former CEO of American TV & Appliance, questions why the Madison-based furniture and appliance chain went out of business earlier this year. Mattioli now owns Len's Electric Bikes in Madison.
Len Mattioli
Len Mattioli, at American in 1976, created Crazy TV Lenny to promote the business he took over from his ailing brother in 1970 and built it into a retail empire that at its peak had annual sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Len Mattioli
Former American TV & Appliance owner Len Mattioli -- known for his ubiquitous "Crazy TV Lenny" commercials -- stands among televisions for sale in this file photo from Oct. 14, 1976. Mattioli retired about five years ago from the company, which announced Monday it would soon close, putting nearly 1,000 out of work.
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Owner Len Mattioli stands on the floor of the updated American TV and Appliance store in this undated file photo.Â
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Len Mattioli reads a script for one of his radio ads for American TV in this 1984 file photo.
