My guess is this was a lone outpost to the West for National and Schnucks and Schnucks fits this pattern, too. There was a local grocery chain whose name escapes me-they had 3 good sized stores in Columbia and were much loved by by locals, but didn't draw university types. The Safeways (a pylon near near downtown and a shopping center location to the West) were long vacant, although the KC Food Barn chain briefly operated in an old WalMart.
A&P clearly had been in Columbia-am empty relatively large centennial sat near Kroger greenhouse that had been converted to Gerbe's on the NE side of town. HyVee was in Jeff City but not Columbia (they're in Columbia now).
Schnucks had a somewhat outmoded 60s store near downtown where the perimeter was a huge draw. Consequently, it was a market that could support super stores with strong perimeter departments more than elsewhere. Columbia was not without is problem areas, but the schools were judged to be better and despite being rather dull for a college town, it was seen as having more to do-Fulton and Jeff City were boring drives, so one needed a good reason to commute. Columbia was and probably still is a regional suburb-people who worked at state institutions or the colleges in Fulton often commuted from Columbia, ditto state govt types who worked in Jeff City (the capital). Both chains were located to take advantage of college students (more often from St L than elsewhere) and Columbia's general gravitational pull toward St Louis for day and weekend trips, sports affiliations and big shopping would have given them recognition for other people. Schnucks had no other nearby stores and there also was no evidence of National outside of Columbia. I think a lot of it was that Columbia was so different from everywhere else. At least when I lived there, mid-Missouri seemed to have had an odd patterning of chains, perhaps because KC and St L overlapped influence in the region, with St L being the stronger pull.
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