A supermarket is a self-serviceshop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. Strictly speaking, a supermarket is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market. In everyday American English usage, however, "grocery store" is often casually used as a synonym for "supermarket". The supermarket retail format first appeared around 1930 in the United States as the culmination of almost two decades of retail innovations, and began to spread to other countries after extensive worldwide publicity in 1956.
The supermarket typically has places for fresh meat, fresh produce, dairy, deli items, baked goods, and similar foodstuffs. Shelf space is also reserved for canned and packaged goods and for various non-food items such as kitchenware, household cleaners, pharmacy products and pet supplies. Some supermarkets also sell other household products that are consumed regularly, such as alcohol (where permitted), medicine, and clothing, and some sell a much wider range of non-food products: DVDs, art supplies, sporting equipment, board games, and seasonal items (e.g., Christmaswrapping paper, Easter eggs, school uniforms, Valentine's Day themed gifts, Mother's Day gifts, Father's Day gifts and Halloween).
A larger full-service supermarket combined with a department store is sometimes known as a hypermarket. Other services may include those of banks, cafés, childcare centers/creches, insurance (and other financial services), mobile phone sales, photo processing, video rentals, pharmacies, and gas stations. If the eatery in a supermarket is substantial enough, the facility may be called a "grocerant", a portmanteau of "grocery" and "restaurant".
The traditional supermarket occupies a large amount of floor space, usually on a single level. It is usually situated near a residential area in order to be convenient to consumers. The basic appeal is the availability of a broad selection of goods under a single roof, at relatively low prices. Other advantages include ease of parking and frequently the convenience of shopping hours that extend into the evening or even 24 hours of the day. Supermarkets usually allocate large budgets to advertising, typically through newspapers and television. They also present elaborate in-shop displays of products. (Full article...)
Match is a Belgian multinational chain of supermarkets owned by Louis Delhaize Group. As 2023, the supermarket chain is present with 77 supermarkets in Belgium, 115 in northeast France and 25 in Luxembourg. The network also includes Smatch supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg.
Louis Delhaize Group, which owns Cora, Match and Smatch supermarkets, announced in 2023 that it will exit from food retail by selling activities in Belgium to Colruyt, in Luxembourg to E.Leclerc and in France to Carrefour. (Full article...)
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Independent Grocers of Australia is an Australian chain of supermarkets. The IGA brand is owned by Australian conglomerate Metcash under their Food & Grocery division, but individual IGA stores are owned and operated independently. Its main competitors are Aldi, Coles and Woolworths. IGA is the fourth largest supermarket chain in Australia, following Aldi overtaking Metcash in supermarket revenue. (Full article...)
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Unity Books is an independent New Zealand bookseller. It has a flagship store in Wellington, and a location in Auckland with separate adult and children's bookshops.
The business was founded by Alan Preston in 1967. (Full article...)
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Wesfarmers Limited is an Australian conglomerate, headquartered in Perth, Western Australia. It has interests predominantly in Australia and New Zealand, operating in retail, chemical, fertiliser, industrial and safety products. With revenue of A$43.5 billion in the 2023 financial year, it is one of Australia's largest companies by revenue. Wesfarmers is also one of the largest private employers in Australia, with approximately 107,000 employees.
Wesfarmers was founded in 1914 as a co-operative to provide services and merchandise to Western Australian farmers. It was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 1984 and grew into a major retail conglomerate. (Full article...)
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Woolworths Group Limited is an Australian multinationalretail and finance company, primarily known for the operation of its retail chain Woolworths Supermarkets across Australia, Woolworths (previously known as Countdown) in New Zealand and its discount department store Big W. Headquartered in Bella Vista, Sydney, it is the largest company in Australia by revenue and number of employees, and the second-largest in New Zealand.
Founded in Sydney in 1924 as variety retailer Woolworths Limited, the company entered the New Zealand market in 1929 and has traded in every Australian state and territory since 1960. Woolworths experienced steady growth throughout the 20th century and began to diversify its business, closing the last of its variety stores in the 1980s to focus on its portfolio of other retail brands. Since 2012, Woolworths has undergone significant consolidation, divesting its shopping centre, electronics retailing, home improvement, fuel retailing, liquor retailing and hospitality businesses to concentrate on supermarket retail. (Full article...)
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Superquinn was an Irishsupermarket chain, founded in 1960 and entirely privately owned by the Quinn family. Select Retail Holdings, a property buying consortium, purchased the company from the Quinn family in 2005. A receiver was appointed to the company on 18 July 2011, and the following day the company was bought by Musgrave Group for an undisclosed sum. On 13 February 2014 all remaining units were rebranded as SuperValu. (Full article...)
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Wimpy had branches in New Zealand, including Rotorua, Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Paraparaumu, Wanganui, Palmerston North, New Plymouth, Taupo, Napier and Wellington. These were all rebranded in 2002. One store remained in Rotorua trading as Wimpy, although it was not part of the franchise chain. The last Wimpy in New Zealand was put up for sale in May 2008. (Full article...)
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Pita Pit is a quick-service restaurant franchise serving pita sandwiches with fresh vegetables, grilled meat and sauces. Worldwide, it has two separate owners. Its franchising rights for the United States and its Territories are owned by Pita Pit USA 4.0, Inc., headquartered in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The remainder of the franchising rights (for Canada and the rest of the world, excluding the US) are owned by Foodtastic, which is headquartered in Kingston, Ontario. (Full article...)
Pak'nSave (stylised as PAK'nSAVE) is a New Zealand discount food supermarket warehouse chain owned by the Foodstuffs cooperative. It is one of the three main supermarket chains in New Zealand, alongside Woolworths New Zealand and New World (the latter is also owned by Foodstuffs). There is a total of 58 Pak'nSave stores throughout the country.
Pak'nSave stores are large and have a no frills environment, often with unlined interiors and concrete floors. (Full article...)
As of December 31, 2008, the Luxottica Group operated 2,286 stores around the world, most of those as part of the Sunglass Hut brand. By 2024 there were over 3,000 retail outlets under this brand name. (Full article...)
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Aldi (stylised as ALDI) (German pronunciation: [ˈaldiː]ⓘ) is the common company brand name of two Germanmultinational family-owned discount supermarketchains operating over 12,000 stores in 18 countries. The chain was founded by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht in 1946, when they took over their mother's store in Essen. The business was split into two separate groups in 1960 that later became Aldi Nord (initially Northern West Germany), headquartered in Essen, and Aldi Süd (initially Southern West Germany), headquartered in neighbouring Mülheim.
In 1962, they introduced the name Aldi (a syllabic abbreviation for "Albrecht Diskont"). In Germany, Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd have been financially and legally separate since 1966, although both divisions' names may appear as if they were a single enterprise with certain store brands or when negotiating with contractor companies. Each company is owned and operated independently, but they do have contractual business with one another. (Full article...)
The overall size of the sector has been increasing since the end of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, with retail sales increasing by 30% between 1999 and 2005. One contributing factor was the growth of larger stores with greater buying power and economies of scale, at the cost of smaller bricks and mortar merchants. Another contributing factor was low price inflation, with the price of imported goods falling 12% during that period. (Full article...)
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Donut King is an Australian multinational doughnut company and quick service restaurant. It specialises in Australian-style doughnuts and coffee. Signature menu items include hot cinnamon donuts, quakeshakes, thickshakes, milkshakes and barista-made DK Coffee Blend. (Full article...)
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The Just Group owns and operates a total of seven retail brands: the clothing chains Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Jacqui E, Portmans, Dotti, Peter Alexander Sleepwear, and the stationery chain Smiggle. The group has over 1,000 stores throughout Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The group is part of the ASX-listed investment company Premier Investments. (Full article...)
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The Just Group owns and operates a total of seven retail brands: the clothing chains Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Jacqui E, Portmans, Dotti, Peter Alexander Sleepwear, and the stationery chain Smiggle. The group has over 1,000 stores throughout Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The group is part of the ASX-listed investment company Premier Investments. (Full article...)
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3 Guys (also operating as Gubays) was a New Zealand, Irish and US supermarket chain that operated between 1973 and 2003. (Full article...)
In 2024, Intermarché had 2,496 stores in 4 countries. (Full article...)
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The Coffee Club is an Australian multinational coffeehouse-style café chain. Originally created in 1989 as a place to get "an excellent coffee", the concept includes cafébar/restaurant stores with expanded menus and full table service.
Dunkin' and Baskin-Robbins eventually became subsidiaries of Dunkin' Brands, headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts, in 2004. Dunkin' Brands was purchased by Inspire Brands on December 15, 2020. The chain began rebranding as a "beverage-led company,” and was renamed Dunkin' in January 2019; while stores in the U.S. began using the new name, the company intends to roll out the rebranding to all of its international stores eventually. It is also sometimes known locally in the Northeast as Dunkie's. (Full article...)
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Zara (/ˈzɑːrə/; Spanish:[ˈθaɾa]) is a fast fashion retail subsidiary of the Spanish multinational fashion design, manufacturing, and retailing group Inditex. Zara sells clothing, accessories, beauty products and perfumes. The head office is located at Arteixo in the province of A Coruña, Spain. In 2020 alone, it launched over twenty new product lines. (Full article...)
... that before Angeli Foods was sold this year, the first self-service grocery store in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan had been owned by three generations of a single family?
BritishsupermarketchainMorrisons announces that it will permanently close 52 cafés and 17 stores as part of cost-cutting measures, with the loss of at least 365 jobs expected. (BBC News)
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