The history of A&P in Canada

File:View of A&P, Loyalist Market, Belleville, ON..jpg
Old A&P store located in Bellville, Ontario. Photo source: Wikipedia
Today on our new Lost Retail in the GTA series, I'll be talking briefly about the history of the former American supermarket chain, A&P's Canadian operations. A&P operated stores under various banners, including A&P, Dominion, and discount store, Food Basics, in Canada until 2005, selling their Canadian operations to Metro, whom rebranded most of the stores as Metro in 2008.

History of A&P Canada


A&P started their Canadian operations in 1927, opening their first store in Canada in Montreal. They used to also have stores in Ontario and Quebec, but in 1984, they decided to pull out of the Quebec market. In 1985, they acquired the Dominion chain of stores and sold their stores outside of Ontario to various buyers.A&P also purchased the  Miracle Food Mart and Ultra Food Mart chains in 1989, and The Barn Markets chain, in 1995. Also that same year, A&P opened its first discount store, Food Basics.On July 19, 2005, Metro brought A&P Canada for $1.7 billion. In 2008, Metro rebranded all of the A&Ps, Barn Market, Miracle Food Mart, and Dominion stores under the Metro name ending A&P's 81 years of operation in Canada. Food Basics, however wasn't rebranded because it's a discount store.

Today

Today, Metro continues to operate a majority of A&P's old stores under their namesake banner and discount stores under the Food Basics name, as well as having new-built stores of their own. Unfortunately, some of the old A&P/Dominion stores either closed completely, or rebranded as Food Basics. Most of these old A&P stores has been untouched by Metro and still retain older A&P/Dominion decor, others has since been renovated by Metro to their own decor packages.
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I hope that you've  enjoyed this Lost retail history post on A&P's Canadian operations!

Until Next Post,
-DZ
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Sources used for this Post
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/2105119-dominion-a-p-brands-kaput/ 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26P_Canada

Comments

  1. Retail RetellFebruary 22, 2019 at 1:23 AM

    Cool to know that A&P Canada kinda-sorta lives on, since it never went bankrupt but simply had a name change! Frankly I'm surprised that the name change didn't occur immediately after the sale in 2005; I wouldn't have expected A&P to go ahead and sell the naming rights to Metro along with the stores themselves. Of course, I suppose it could very well have been the plan to rename from the beginning, and it simply took until 2008 for the sale to be completely consummated and a transition period to go by, etc....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DomFebruary 27, 2019 at 2:47 PM

      Sorry fot the late response. I don't think A&P gabe the naming rights to Metro for the stores. It just took until 2008 for Metro to rebrand their stores.

      Delete

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