Bradlees Department Store, more commonly known as Bradlees, was a discount department store chain based in Braintree, Massachusetts, which operated primarily in the Northeastern United States. Bradlees sold various retail items in its stores, including clothing, jewelry, health care, beauty products, footwear, furniture, electronics, housewares, and bedding. At its peak in the 1990s, Bradlees operated over 105 stores in seven states across the Northeast, with close to 10,000 employees. Along with being a part of Stop & Shop from 1961 until 1992, the chain went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2000, with all of its stores eventually closed by March 15, 2001. History Bradlees was named for Connecticut's Bradley International Airport, where early planning meetings were held by the store's founders. The first store was opened in New London, Connecticut, on March 14, 1958. The company was acquired by grocery chain Stop & Shop in 1961, which owned the chain until 1992. After the acquisition, Stop & Shop stores were often featured alongside Bradlees in the same shopping plazas. In some cases, especially in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, stores large enough to house both Bradlees and Stop & Shop under the same roof were constructed. In these early examples of supercenters, one side of the store would operate as Bradlees while the other would operate as Stop & Shop, and shoppers were able to move between one store and the other freely. This practice ended in 1982 when Stop & Shop elected to close its New York metro division; in the case of the supercenter stores, a wall was built to divide the building in half. (Stop & Shop would not return to the area until the fall of 2000, when its then-parent Ahold elected to rebrand its Edwards Super Food Stores chain as Stop & Shop.) Like some of its competition, including Caldor, many Bradlees stores had snack stands/lunch counters that served soft drinks, hot dogs, French fries, soft pretzels, ice cream, prepackaged cookies, and various other food items to shoppers. In 1993, Bradlees added Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Dunkin' Donuts items to some of the stores that did not have snack stands and new stores constructed during this time. Bradlees was known for its TV and print ads featuring the character "Mrs. B." (played by actress Cynthia Harris), depicted as the chain's buyer, who constantly searched for bargains to pass on to her customers. The