John Cifrino, 1879-1952 Paul Cifrino, died 1945
No. 14980 John Cifrino at ceremony to open Purity Supreme Market at Fields Corner, 1965
Others in photo from left: Mrs. James Cifrino, Mrs. John Cifrino; and Mrs. Paul Cifrino
The following is from http://www.supremeliquors.com/bio
Young brothers John and Paul Cifrino immigrated from Campagnia, Southern Italy in 1900. John worked as a meat cutter and in 1907 he opened his first butcher shop on Salem Street in the North End. By 1919, the brothers owned seven shops around the city.
1919 [sic, but see date of 1915 below] was a year of change for the Cifrinos, as they closed their butcher shops and opened The Uphams Corner Market at 600 Columbia Road in Dorchester. The Uphams Corner Market is considered by many to be the world’s first supermarket, and at the time, it was the largest market in the world. They opened another supermarket in 1922. It was named The Manhattan Market and was located in the Central Square area of Cambridge. After selling both The Uphams Corner Market and The Manhattan Market in 1929, the brothers retired.
Retirement did not last long for John and Paul and in 1934 the brothers launched a new company, “Supreme Markets”. Between 1934 and 1938 they opened three stores under the Supreme Market name. The stores were located in the Wollaston area of Quincy, Gallivan Boulevard in Dorchester, and South Boston. The Cifrinos first applied for a liquor license for their Dorchester location in 1936.
No. 10949 Paul Cifrino
Much of the following comes from the National Register description of the Uphams Corner Market buildings. The illustration shows the buildings at the time the Elm Farm chain opened its 38th store in this location in 1951.
The Uphams Corner Market, an early predecessor of the modern supermarket, was founded at the corner of Dudley Street and Columbia Road at 786 Dudley Street by brothers John and Paul Cifrino in 1915.
Like many other merchants in their field, the Cifrino brothers had immigrated to the United States from a small southern Italian hilltown near Naples in the first decade of the twentieth century. Their first store – the first Upham’s Corner Market – was a simple fruit and vegetable store in a simple storefront located at 786 Dudley Street in Dorchester, at the corner of Dudley Street and Columbia Road.
In the 1920s they moved to the Uphams Corner Market complex at 600 -618 Columbia Road in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. The complex was comprised of three distinct buildings constructed and/or occupied between 1920 and 1927. At its heyday in the late 1920s, the Uphams Corner Market encompassed over 50,000 square feet of retail space, had a tremendous diversity of products ranging from shoe repair to a chop suey counter, and was the largest general merchandise food market in the largest residential section of Boston.
William Marnell, author of Once Upon a Store (New York 1971), worked as a teenager at Cifrino’s Uphams Corner Market. He wrote that unlike other markets, it stocked a complete line of groceries and was a self-service store, the prototype of the modern supermarket.
In the early years of the twentieth century there were no food retailing establishments resembling today’s modern supermarket. Instead, a shopper would buy his or her groceries and meat at the meat market; fruits and vegetables at the vegetable and fruit store; eggs, butter, milk, and cheese at the butter and egg store; and on Wednesdays and Fridays, fish at the fish market. Nearly all establishments extended credit and made deliveries.
Marnell described the marketing philosophy of the Cifrino brothers as simple: No credit … No deliveries … Sell only the best quality merchandise at prices that substantially undercut the competition. This was a revolutionary and some might say impersonal philosophy, but it was a philosophy that sold merchandise, and the store prospered.
The Cifrino brothers conveyed title to the Uphams Corner Market to United Markets, Inc., in 1928. The brothers stayed on as managers until 1933, Paul as president, John as vice-president. In 1934 they opened a new store at 530 Gallivan Boulevard. Supreme Market, as this store was known, further refined the brothers’ revolutionary merchandizing philosophy. By expanding the self-service component of the Uphams Corner Market and by introducing one-stop check out service, the brothers established what can correctly (technically) be described as a super market.
In 1951, the Elm Farm Market chain opened their 38th store in the buildings that formerly housed the Uphams Corner Market.
The Cifrino brothers’ Supreme Market was so successful that in 1968 it was merged with Purity Markets to became the corner stone of the Purity Supreme chain of super markets. Paul Cifrino remained active in the food sector until the1960’s, quoted and referenced in trade publications as late as 1963.. The story of John Cifrino’s later years is less clear, but clearly he too had earned his place in history as a visionary.
John Cifrino died at 16 Lingard Street, Dorchester, on April 12, 1952. .