History of Freshco & Price Chopper

For today's retail history post, I'll be talking about Sobeys' discount grocery store chain, FreshCo and their failed Ontario discount chain, Price Chopper.

Brief History of Price Chopper

Price Chopper started out in the 90s by the Oshawa Group, which was acquired by Sobeys in 1998 as part of their entry into the Ontario market. Sobeys didn't really do much to their stores, so the stores slowly detereated until Sobeys finally woke up and decided to kill off the Price Chopper and "convert" most of the stores into Freshco. Freshco launched as a brand new discount chain and not just a rebrand of Price Chopper. There were 3 stores left opperating under Price Chopper, but as of the time of writing, only one in Scarborough remains open.

Freshco: Fresher, Cheeper and Successful

Now, I'm going to talk about Price Chopper's de facto sucessor, FreshCo. FreshCo started in March of 2010 by Sobeys converting 8 of their Price Chopper locations in Ontario to the FreshCo banner. Eventually most of the former Price Chopper stores in Ontario were converted to Freshco, along with under performing Sobeys, and more recently out west, under performing Safeway stores (Safeway has been owned by Sobeys in Canada since 2013).

I'm glad that Sobeys now has success with FreshCo. It's a way store better than Price Chopper was.

Until next post,
DZ

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Lost Retail: The history of Knob Hill Farms

A picture of a Knob Hill basket. Credit: Wikipedia For today’s lost retail post I’ll be talking about an old, local chain of grocery stores called Knob Hill Farms. Knob Hill Farms was a chain of 10 warehouse-like “food terminals” in the Toronto area. These stores were pretty large for a supermarket at the time they operated ranging from 65,000 sqft to a gigantic 335,000 sqft. Due to financial issues, Knob Hill Farms closed/sold all their stores in 2000. History Knob Hill Farms was founded in 1954 by Steve Stavro as a more conventional grocery chain operating 9 markets in Toronto. It wasn’t until 1963 that Stravro opened his first 65,000 sqft “food terminal” in Markham. In 1971, Knob Hill Farms expanded into Pickering with its second terminal. Knob Hill Farms than opened their first Toronto store in 1975 and second Toronto terminal opened in 1977. Their fifth store, which was billed as the largest food store in North America at the time, opened in 1978 in Mississauga....

Lowe’s stores in Canada begin re-brand to Rona+

As you might know already, Lowe’s sold their Canadian division to a private equity company, Sycamore Partners, earlier this year. Rona then announced that the Lowe's stores will be gradually re-branded as Rona+. These conversions started at the end of July with 10 stores in Ontario. So far all they did was replace all the Lowe’s logos with Rona+ logos with the Lowe's decor remaining intact. What’s interesting about Rona+ is that some Lowe’s stores were converted from larger Rona stores. So in a way, this will go full circle at some locations. Hopefully this will be successful for Rona. Until the next post (hopefully it won’t be another 2 years), Dom

Pier 1 to file for bankruptcy; close all Canadian stores

Pier 1 logo Today, Pier 1 put a notice on their website saying that they are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as the company pursues a sale of its US business. As a result, Pier 1 decided to cease Canadian operations and close all of their Canadian stores. There goes another retailer killed by a changing industry. :( Via C TV News

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