Loblaws

I love shopping at large grocery stores. The reason I do is because I can get everything I want at one place and then go on with my day doing fun stuff (grocery shopping is not something I consider to be “fun stuff”). One of the bigger stores in our city is Super Store, which is owned by Loblaws. I found out something very interesting about the founders of Loblaws. When Theodore Loblaw and Milton Cork opened their tiny Toronto grocery store in 1919, they introduced a new concept in grocery retailing. They combined self-serve and cash-and-carry shopping contrary to conventional food stores of the time where customers waited for a clerk to give them items from behind a counter. Loblaw and Cork were laughed at by other business people and were told that there new concept would not work. They believed it would work and – as they say – the rest is history. Within ten years the small-time store had over seventy locations across Canada and U.S. Today, it is Canada’s largest food distributor and has over 1000 stores from coast to coast. It employs 138,000 employees. No matter where you shop now, customers help themselves, bring the items to a counter, pay for them and carry them out. Who knew this method was started by two small business men in Toronto? I wonder what Loblaw and Cork would think if they could see what their company has evolved into? It is a great Canadian company that has remained true to its roots for almost one hundred years. Shopping at the most convenient store and finding out it has a great Canadian story behind it . . . it’s a good thing!