How ShopRite Turned a Canned Food Sale Into a Cultural Touchstone | Eater

"Begun as a cooperative of struggling grocers in Newark in the mid-1940s and rolled out as a store brand in 1951, this regional supermarket chain turned a once-modest January promotion into a multigenerational ritual: the Can Can sale, launched in 1971 to boost slow post-holiday traffic. Its animated commercials — originally featuring a cartoon Frenchman and cancan dancers kicking to Offenbach’s “Infernal Gallop” — and an earworm jingle embedded the sale in family routines across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, prompting shoppers to pile crates of canned goods and stock pantries with bargains (one writer recalls buying 12 Tuttarossa whole peeled tomatoes for $10 and filling carts with tuna, garbanzos, and cannellini). Over time the event expanded from house-brand cans to national brands, added a July edition, and updated its advertising (moving from live dancers to animated or everyday-customer spots and retiring the dancers in 2018), a creative evolution the company frames as refreshes while competitors still study the sale’s sway over customers and vendors. For many, the promotion is as much about nostalgia, family comfort, and practical savings as it is about deals — a ritual that reliably draws communities to sidewalks of haphazardly stacked tins each January (and again in July)." - Mike Diago