Finast was a retail supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

 brand that existed in the northeastern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 until being absorbed by Edwards and its Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 parent Royal Ahold in the mid-1990s. Finast was an acronym for First National Stores. Despite the acronym, many referred to the store as "The First National". Finast was based in Somerville, Massachusetts

Somerville, Massachusetts

Somerville is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, located just north of Boston. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 75,754 and was the most densely populated municipality in New England. It is also the 17th most densely populated incorporated place in...

, prior to the Edwards takeover; its headquarters then moved to Windsor Locks, Connecticut

Windsor Locks, Connecticut

Windsor Locks is a town located in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2000 census, its population was 12,043. It is the site of Bradley International Airport, which serves the Greater Hartford-Springfield region. It is also the site of the New England Air Museum...

.

The stores not absorbed into Edwards, mostly in the Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

 area, retained the Finast name through the 1990s, when Ahold remodeled them into Tops Friendly Markets, its Buffalo, New York

Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

-based unit. Ahold continued to use Finast on its private-label products in its grocery chains, including Giant-Carlisle, after retiring the Finast banner, phasing out Finast in favor of products matching each chain's name.

The First National chain is referred to in H.P. Lovecraft's classic 1936 novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a novella by H. P. Lovecraft. Written in November-December 1931, the story was first published in April 1936; this was the only fiction of Lovecraft's published during his lifetime that did not appear in a periodical....

, as Lovecraft mentions that a local branch in that chain is one the few connections Innsmouth

Innsmouth

Innsmouth is a fictional town in the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, part of the Lovecraft Country setting of the Cthulhu Mythos.Lovecraft first used the name "Innsmouth" in his 1920 short story "Celephaïs" , where it refers to a fictional town in New England...

has with the outside world.