Southern Ontario Retail Blog

Image: ABC News Grow up no more Toys R us kids! Toys R us is revived! Toys R Us is opening their first new US store since the 2018 bankruptcy at  Westfield Garden State Plaza  in Paramus, New Jersey just i n time for the holiday season. A  second location is expected to open next week at  The Galleria  in Houston.  The new store has a treehouse in the middle and many toys on display for kids to play with in different sections for each brand and genre and it has kiosks where you can order items online from Toys R Us' online store.

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...

Google Maps Street View of the now former Zellers Update October 15th 2019: Both Zellers will close in fall of this year according to the description of this Flickr photo by zayre 88.

Yesterday,  fast fashion retailer Forever 21 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy . As part of its restructuring strategy, Forever 21 plans to close most of their shops in Asia and Europe, but will continue operations in Mexico and Latin America. They will also close all their Canadian stores as a result of the bankruptcy. This came as a shock to me because this is their second bankruptcy, and I thought Forever 21 was doing pretty well. But I guess not. It's sad to see them enter the retail graveyard. Until next post, DZ

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....

Zellers' logo from 1975-present Today’s lost retail post is about the “Truly Canadian” discount store, Zellers. Selling everything from A-Z, Zellers was basically like a Kmart in the sense that it was struggling and that their stores were old, but had updated signage for the most part. That’s ironic considering they brought most of the Canadian Kmarts in 1998. However, the merchandise they sold was more like what Target sold. Sadly HBC sold Zellers’ leases to Target in 2011 and closed all but two stores in 2013 as a result. Early years The first Zellers store was founded on August 4 th , 1928 by Walter P. Zeller in London ON. Because the stores were doing good, an American retailer called Schulte-United brought them out. In 1931 Zeller brought 14 Canadian stores from Schulte-United and reverted them back to the Zellers brand. In its first year, Zellers had 12 stores in southwestern Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick with 11 being former Schulte-United stores and the Ki...

Today's post is my first to feature pictures of a store. I did a mini tour around the renovated Clothing department in the Heartland Walmart Supercentre. Here's a streetview of the store. Store description This store opened in the mid 2000s with pre-impact and got a decor swap to 2nd gen Project Impact in 2011ish. The store features the market section on the left instead of the right side. The pharmacy is also in the middle, typical of early impact stores. This store recently got a remodel to the clothing department with new signs, fixtures and spotlights. They also have newer self checkouts and a PickUp tower at the front. However, the rest of the store still has Project Imapct Signs. This store has a pharmacy in the middle and a old original sign featuring the old Wal*Mart logo. Remodeled clothing department The last bit of this post features photos of the remodeled clothing department. Sorry about the bad quality.  Here's an example of new department si...