A convenience store, convenience shop, corner store or corner shop is a small retail business that stocks a range of everyday items such as: coffee, groceries, snack foods, confectionery, soft drinks, tobacco products, lottery tickets, over-the-counter drugs, toiletries, newspapers and magazines. In some jurisdictions, convenience stores are licensed to sell alcoholic drinks, although many such jurisdictions limit such beverages to those with relatively low alcohol content such as beer and wine. Such stores may also offer money order and wire transfer services, along with the use of a fax machine or photocopier for a small per-copy cost. Some also offer to sell tickets or recharge a smart card, like the OPUS card in Montreal. They differ from general stores and village shops in that they are not in a rural location and are used as a convenient supplement to larger stores.
Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited is a Canadian retail company which operates in the automotive, hardware, sports, leisure and housewares sectors. Its Canadian operations include: Canadian Tire, Mark's, FGL Sports, PartSource, and the Canadian operations of Party City. Canadian Tire acquired the Norwegian clothing and textile company Helly Hansen from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan in 2018.
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells in smaller quantities to consumers for a profit. Retailers are the final link in the supply chain from producers to consumers. Shopping generally refers to the act of buying products. Sometimes this is done to obtain final goods, including necessities such as food and clothing; sometimes it takes place as a recreational activity. Recreational shopping often involves window shopping and browsing: it does not always result in a purchase.
Zellers was a Canadian discount department retail chain and currently a brand name owned by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Founded in 1931, it was based in Brampton, Ontario. Zellers was acquired by HBC in 1978 before closing in 2013.
Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. is a Canadian retail pharmacy chain based in Toronto, Ontario. It has more than 1,300 stores in nine provinces and two territories.
A variety store is a retail store that sells general merchandise, such as apparel, automotive parts, dry goods, toys, hardware, home furnishings, and a selection of groceries. It usually sells them at discounted prices, sometimes at one or several fixed price points, such as one dollar, or historically, five and ten cents. Variety stores do not include larger formats: general merchandise superstores (hypermarkets) such as Target and Walmart. Warehouse clubs like Costco, grocery stores, and department stores are also not considered variety stores.
Loblaw Companies Limited is a Canadian retailer encompassing corporate and franchise supermarkets operating under 22 regional and market-segment banners, as well as pharmacies, banking and apparel. Loblaw operates a private label program that includes grocery and household items, clothing, baby products, pharmaceuticals, cellular phones, general merchandise and financial services. Loblaw is the largest Canadian food retailer, and its brands include President's Choice, No Name and Joe Fresh.
Sobeys Inc. is the second largest food retailer in Canada, with over 1,500 stores operating across Canada under a variety of banners. Headquartered in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, it operates stores in all ten provinces and accumulated sales of more than C$25.1 billion in the fiscal 2019 operating year. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Empire Company Limited, a Canadian business conglomerate.
Dollarama is a Canadian dollar store retail chain headquartered in Montreal. Since 2009 it is Canada's largest retailer of items for four dollars or less. Dollarama has over 1000 stores and has a presence in every province of Canada; Ontario has the most stores.
Rona, Inc. is an American-owned Canadian retailer of home improvement and construction products and services. Founded in 1939, the company operates a mixture of company-owned and franchised retailers under multiple banners, including Rona, its big box formats Rona Home & Garden and Réno-Dépôt, as well as smaller brands such as Rona Cashway, Marcil Centre de Rénovation, Moffatt & Powell and Dick's Lumber. In May 2016, American retailer Lowe's acquired Rona for $3.2 billion CAD.
Brewers Retail Inc., doing business as The Beer Store, is a privately-owned chain of retail outlets selling beer and other malt beverages in the province of Ontario, Canada.
A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down costs.
Dollar Tree, formerly known as Only $1.00, is an American multi-price-point chain of discount variety stores. Headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia, it is a Fortune 500 company and operates 15,115 stores throughout the 48 contiguous U.S. states and Canada. Its stores are supported by a nationwide logistics network of 24 distribution centers. Additionally, the company operates stores under the name of Dollar Bills, as well as a multi-price-point variety chain under the Family Dollar banner.
British Home Stores, commonly abbreviated to BHS and latterly legally styled BHS Ltd, was a British department store chain, primarily selling clothing and household items. In its later years, the company began to expand into furniture, electronics, entertainment, convenience groceries and fragrance and beauty products.
Rexall was a chain of American drugstores, and the name of their store-branded products. The stores, having roots in the federation of United Drug Stores starting in 1903, licensed the Rexall brand name to as many as 12,000 drug stores across the United States from 1920 to 1977. The "Rex" in the name was derived from the name of Ellen M. Regis, who developed "Rexall remedies" and from whom the company purchased the mark.
Harvey Norman is a large Australian-based, multi-national retailer of furniture, bedding, computers, communications and consumer electrical products. It mainly operates as a franchise, with the main brand and all company-operated stores owned by ASX-listed Harvey Norman Holdings Limited. As of 2016, there are 280 company-owned and franchised stores in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and South-East Asia operating under the Harvey Norman, Domayne and Joyce Mayne brands in Australia, and under the Harvey Norman brand overseas.
Krazy Krazy Audio Video Warehouse was a Canadian retailer of consumer audiovisual electronics. In operation from 1983 to 2009, the chain began to decline in the late 1990s and 2000s due to the changing consumer electronics market. Although no longer operating as a national chain, a few former franchise locations remain in business as independently operated local stores.
Target Canada Co. was the Canadian subsidiary of the Target Corporation, the eighth-largest retailer in the United States. Formerly headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, the subsidiary was formed with the acquisition of Zellers store leases from the Hudson's Bay Company in January 2011. Target Canada opened its first store in March 2013, and was operating 133 locations by January 2015. Its main competition included Walmart Canada and the local Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart chains and Canadian Tire to some extent. Target Canada was ultimately unsuccessful, with an overly-aggressive expansion initiative, in addition to higher prices and a limited selection of products compared to Target stores in the United States and its Canadian rivals, particularly Walmart. The retail chain racked up losses of $2.1 billion in its lifespan, and was widely viewed as a failure, termed a "spectacular failure" by Amanda Lang of CBC News, "an unmitigated disaster" by Maclean's magazine and "a gold standard case study in what retailers should not do when they enter a new market" by the Financial Post. Target Canada commenced Court-supervised restructuring proceedings in January 2015, and finally shut down all of their stores by April 12, 2015. Various other businesses since then occupy the spaces originally occupied by Target Canada.
Off-price is a trading format based on discount pricing. Off-price retailers are independent of manufacturers and buy large volumes of branded goods directly from them. The off-price retail model relies on the purchase of over-produced, or excess, branded goods at a lower price, thus being able to sell to consumers at a discount compared to other stores which purchased an initial run. Among the largest retailers of this type are TJX Companies and Ross Stores. The model is more common in countries that import fashion-oriented or household goods, as the discount role in producer countries is usually filled by factory outlets or small-scale open-air marketplaces.
On October 17, 2018, cannabis was legalized in Canada for recreational and medical purposes. It was already legal for medicinal purposes, under conditions outlined in the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations issued by Health Canada, and for seed, grain, and fibre production under licence by Health Canada.
