This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2009) |
Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 1853 |
Defunct | 1993 (as stores) 1996 (as a store brand) |
Fate | Acquired by Pick-N-Pay Supermarkets and later Ahold Converted stores to Pick-N-Pay, Edwards and Tops Friendly Markets Finast store brand phased out later on |
Headquarters | Somerville, Massachusetts (original) Maple Heights, Ohio (later) |
Key people | Michael O'Keeffe (Co-founder and first president) |
Products | Grocery |
Parent | Ahold |
Finast was a retail supermarket brand that started in the northeastern United States, with headquarters in Somerville, Massachusetts. Finast was a syllabic abbreviation for "First National Stores." Commonly referred to as "The First National", the stores operated under the First National name for decades, while the Finast acronym was reserved for its store-brand products. Several years later, most of its stores were renamed Finast during a modernization effort.
Finast was incorporated as a merger between three regional chains: M. O'Keeffe's, Inc., the John T. Connor Company, and the Ginter Company. The merger occurred on December 28, 1925 and First National Stores was incorporated. M. O'Keeffe's was the largest of the three companies with 330 outlets in 1922, in comparison with 307 Connor stores and 150 Ginter stores that same year. By the time of the 1925 merger, there were 650 M. O’Keeffe stores throughout New England. Initially concentrated in the Boston area, the chain expanded throughout New England and entered New York and New Jersey. It purchased the Safeway stores in New York City metropolitan area in 1961. [1]
The co-founder and first president of First National Stores was Michael O'Keeffe, an immigrant from County Clare, Ireland. His son Arthur O'Keeffe would go onto succeed him as president in 1933, who would later be succeeded by Michael's nephew Adrian O'Keeffe.
The company was purchased by Pick-N-Pay Supermarkets of northeast Ohio in 1978, and the regional headquarters for New England and New York were moved to the distribution center in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, while corporate headquarters were moved to Maple Heights, Ohio. Pick-N-Pay began rebranding the Northeast stores under the Edwards Super Food Store brand. Pick-N-Pay changed its corporate name to First National Supermarkets, Inc. and began rebranding its Pick-N-Pay stores to Finast stores.
One of the largest Finast supermarkets was located in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers, New York. One of the features, as with a few other Finast stores, was the conveyor belt system that allowed customers to drive up to the side of the store and get their grocery bags placed into their cars for convenience.
The Dutch retail food conglomerate Ahold, which had entered the U.S. through its purchase of Bi-Lo Supermarkets in the Southeastern U.S. in 1977, purchased Finast in 1988. Ahold completed the process of converting the last Pick-N-Pay stores to Finast in 1994. [2]
After purchasing the Stop & Shop grocery chain in 1996, Ahold rebranded most of the Edwards stores to Stop & Shop, while divesting the rest because the FTC required the divestiture of approximately 20 stores as part of the acquisition. The remaining Midwest Finast stores were rebranded as Tops Friendly Markets, Ahold's Buffalo, New York–based unit at the time. Ahold continued to use the Finast brand on its private-label products in its grocery chains, including Giant-Carlisle. The company eventually phased out the Finast brand in favor of products matching each chain's name.
The Kroger Company, or simply Kroger, is an American retail company that operates supermarkets and multi-department stores throughout the United States.
Acme Markets Inc. is a supermarket chain operating 161 stores throughout Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, the Hudson Valley of New York, and Pennsylvania and, as of 1998, is a subsidiary of Albertsons, and part of its presence in the Northeast. It is headquartered in East Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania, near Malvern, a Philadelphia suburb.
Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, delicatessen, floral and pharmacy, as well as Starbucks coffee shops and fuel centers. It is a subsidiary of Albertsons after being acquired by private equity investors led by Cerberus Capital Management in January 2015. Safeway's primary base of operations is in the Western United States, with some stores located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern Seaboard. The subsidiary is headquartered in Pleasanton, California.
Price Chopper Supermarkets is an American supermarket chain owned by Northeast Grocery, headquartered in Schenectady, New York. The chain opened its first supermarkets in New York's Capital District in 1932, and changed its name from Central Market to Price Chopper in 1973. It operates 129 stores in six states: Upstate New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. It operates stores under the Price Chopper, Market Bistro, and Market 32 banners.
Weis Markets, Inc., or doing business as Weis and stylized as weis, is an American food retailer headquartered in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. It currently operates 200 stores with over 23,000 employees in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, Virginia, and Delaware.
Food Lion is an American regional supermarket chain headquartered in Salisbury, North Carolina, that operates over 1,000 supermarkets in 10 states:. The chain employs over 82,000 people. It was founded in 1957 as Food Town, a single grocery store in Salisbury. It later expanded to many locations across North Carolina. It was independently operated until it was acquired by the Belgium-based conglomerate Delhaize Group in 1974. In 1983, the company changed its name and branding to Food Lion to allow it to expand into regions where Food Town was already in use by unrelated stores. Following further mergers and acquisitions, Food Lion, LLC is currently owned by Ahold Delhaize. The mascot’s name has been Leo the Food Lion since January 17, 1997.
Albert Heijn, often abbreviated to AH and informally to Appie, is the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands with a market share of 34.8% in 2020. It was founded in 1887, and has been part of Ahold Delhaize since 2016.
The Stop & Shop Supermarket Company, known as Stop & Shop, is an American regional chain of supermarkets located in the northeastern United States. From its beginnings in 1892 as a small grocery store, it has grown to include 406 stores chain-wide.
SuperValu, Inc., was an American wholesaler and retailer of grocery products. The company, formerly headquartered in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, had been in business since 1926. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of United Natural Foods (UNFI).
Alpha Beta was a chain of supermarkets in the Southwestern United States. Stores under this brand existed between 1917 and 1995. Former Alpha Beta stores have all been purchased by other grocery chains and rebranded.
Tops Friendly Markets is an American supermarket chain based in Amherst, New York, that operates stores in Upstate New York, Vermont, and Northern Pennsylvania. The chain operates full-scale supermarkets. Tops is a subsidiary of Northeast Grocery, which also owns the Price Chopper and Market 32 supermarkets based in Schenectady, New York. As of June 2024, the company operated 148 stores and 59 gas station/convenience stores. The chain formerly operated stores in Ohio and Massachusetts.
Grand Union Supermarkets, later known as Grand Union Family Markets and often referred to simply as Grand Union, is an American chain of grocery stores that does business in upstate New York and Vermont, and used to do business throughout most of the northeastern United States. It operated stores in other areas of the country, including the midwestern and southeastern states, and internationally in the Caribbean and Canada. The company was founded and headquartered in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and moved to Brooklyn, New York, in the early 20th century. Grand Union moved again to Elmwood Park, New Jersey, and finally to Wayne, New Jersey, before the company was forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2001 and sold to C&S Wholesale Grocers.
Woolworths is an Australian-owned New Zealand full-service supermarket chain and subsidiary of Woolworths New Zealand, itself a subsidiary of Australia's Woolworths Group. Previously known as Countdown, the business is currently in the process of rebranding all stores as Woolworths.
The Giant Company is an American regional supermarket chain that operates in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia under the Giant and Martin's brands. It is a subsidiary of Ahold Delhaize, and headquartered in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. As of September 2020, the company operated 190 stores, 133 pharmacies, and 105 fuel stations. The chain also provides online shopping and delivery to New Jersey through Giant Direct.
Giant Food of Maryland, LLC is an American regional supermarket chain with 166 stores located in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. It is a subsidiary of Ahold Delhaize, and headquartered in unincorporated Prince George's County, Maryland, near Landover.
Red Food Stores, Inc. was a supermarket chain company headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It operated stores mostly in northwest Georgia, northeast Alabama, and southeast Tennessee. Around 55 stores were operated in the same three states. According to The Chattanoogan, Red Food was a longtime icon in Chattanooga history.
Pick-N-Pay Supermarkets was a chain of supermarkets which operated in the Greater Cleveland, Ohio area. The company's origin can be traced to the year 1928 and the opening of a small dairy store in Cleveland Heights, Ohio by Edward Silverberg who then expanded his operation and created a chain of such stores which he called Farmview Creamery Stores. In 1938, Mr. Silverberg opened a supermarket on E. 185th Street which he called Pick-N-Pay. In 1940, he changed the name of all his stores to Pick-N-Pay Supermarkets. He grew the chain to a total of 10 stores and in 1951 sold the company to Cook Coffee Company. Under Cook Coffee's ownership, the chain continued to grow through expansion and through Pick-N-Pay's acquisition of the Foodtown supermarkets in 1959. In 1972, it was sold to a group of private investors led by Julius Kravitz, who continued the use of the brand for the newly independent company. Principal competitors in the Greater Cleveland market were the Fisher-Fazio-Costa, Stop-N-Shop, and Heinen's grocery chains.
Stop & Shop/Giant-Landover was a combined supermarket chain owned by the American subsidiary of the Dutch retailer Ahold. The company took its form in 2004, after Ahold decided to combine the operations of its New England–based Stop & Shop chain with its Landover, Maryland-based Giant Food chain to create the largest supermarket company in the Mid-Atlantic States. Giant's headquarters relocated in Landover, Maryland, and Stop & Shop kept their headquarters in Quincy, Massachusetts. This combination failed, as Mid-Atlantic market area shoppers grocery needs did not align with those of Stop & Shop's offerings. In 2011 the two companies were separated and now operate independently. The separation of Stop & Shop/Giant-Landover, also brought the separation of the Stop & Shop Supermarket into two separate operating divisions, Stop & Shop-New England and Stop & Shop-New York. Both Giant Food and Stop & Shop's two divisions continued to share the same fruit basket logo until 2018 when Stop & Shop reintroduced their stoplight logo.
Hannaford is an American supermarket chain based in Scarborough, Maine. Founded in Portland, Maine, in 1883, Hannaford operates stores in New England and New York. The chain is part of the Ahold Delhaize group based in the Netherlands, and is a sister company to formerly competing New England supermarket chain Stop & Shop.
Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V., commonly known as Ahold Delhaize, is a Dutch-Belgian multinational retail and wholesale holding company. Its name comes from the 2016 merger of two companies: Ahold (Dutch) and Delhaize Group (Belgian), which both have origins in the 1800s. Its business format includes supermarkets, convenience stores, hypermarkets, online grocery, online non-food, drugstores, and liquor stores. Its 16 local brands employ 402,000 people at 7,716 stores across nine countries. The United States is where two-thirds of the holding company's revenue is generated.