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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