From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Feb. 26, 1989:

The JL’s Groceries, the last two stores in the former Rusty’s IGA supermarket group formerly prominent in the Lawrence grocery business, had been sold. Jim Lewis, owner of the JL’s stores, said notices had been mailed the previous Friday to creditors of the supermarkets at Ninth and Iowa and Sixth and Kasold advising them of the change of ownership. The new owner, Joe Schmidtberger, was planning to operate the stores under the name of Alvin’s IGA. Employees of the two JL’s stores had been informed of the change, but Lewis said that whether employees would continue to work under the new name would be decided by Schmidtberger on a case-by-case business. “Joe is just going to go around and talk to each of them individually and take applications. Then they can decide after they talk it over,” Lewis said. Lewis added that Schmidtberger had been a sales and service representative for Fleming Foods in Topeka. (Fleming Foods licensed and supplied local IGA stores.) Schmidtberger had managed the Safeway store at 23rd and Iowa in the early 1970s, Lewis said, before that store had been closed in 1981 and later reopened as Food Barn. Lewis also clarified that he was planning to continue owning and operating Checkers, the supermarket he had opened in June 1987 at 23rd and Louisiana.