Feldbergs decided to forego the mill building route and launch with a newly constructed store when the opportunity presented itself. That opportunity came in late 1955 when Stop & Shop, Inc. approached them with an offer to build them a store alongside a new Stop & Shop supermarket to be constructed in Hyannis, Massachusetts. On September 20, 1956, the Hyannis Zayre opened with 5,000 square feet of retail space. The store was soon expanded to 7,500 and then 10,000 square feet, and was replaced in 1962 with a 45,000 square foot unit directly behind it. A second Zayre store opened in September 1956 in the Roslindale section of Boston, a much larger 39,000 square feet. Within a few years, Zayre stores would average 70,000 to 90,000 square feet. Longtime New York Times retail writer Isadore Barmash explained the origin of the chain's name in a 1985 article: After a careful period of initial growth through the end of the 1950s, Zayre began to expand rapidly. Only six Zayre stores operated in 1959, approximately the same time that Zayre's volume reached that of the Bell Shops/Nugent stores. By 1962, there were 27 Zayre stores open, with ten to twenty new ones added annually for many years afterward. That same year, Zayre Corp. became a public company and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The 1960s Beginning in 1960, Zayre embarked on a program to open stores in major markets all across the eastern half of the U.S., with a presence in nearly every state east of the Mississippi River by the middle of the decade. The company opened new stores in clusters, so as to maximize brand presence and advertising efficiency. By the end of 1966, Zayre had 92 stores with major concentrations in the Chicago metropolitan area, Miami, and its home turf of Boston. Medium-sized Zayre markets at the time included Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Cleveland, Columbus, Jacksonville, Tampa, and Providence. Some of this growth came through acquisition. Several locations in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Florida were acquired through the bankruptcies of discount chains Towers Marts in 1963 and Consumers Mart of America in 1965. In December 1966, Zayre bought out Northern Enterprises, Inc., owner of four Shopper's City stores in Duluth, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, Minnesota, rebranding the stores as Zayre Shopper's City stores. In Zayre's early years, the stores' product mix leaned heavily toward softlines due