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Industry | Supermarket, Retail, Wholesale, Real estate |
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Founded | 1957 |
Defunct | 1998 |
Fate | Acquired by Sobeys |
Headquarters | 302 The East Mall, Toronto, Ontario |
Products | bakery, charcuterie, clothing, dairy, deli, frozen foods, gardening centre, general grocery, general merchandise, meat & poultry, pharmacy, photolab, produce, seafood, snacks, consumer goods |
The Oshawa Group was once a leading owner of supermarkets in Ontario, Canada. It was bought by Sobeys (via Empire Company Limited) in 1998. The company was based in Etobicoke and traded on the Toronto and Montreal stock exchanges.
Founded in 1957 as Oshawa Wholesale Limited, the company grew from expansion in the 1960s to 1980s. It was renamed the Oshawa Group Limited in 1971. The company roots date back further to 1914 by founders Max Wolfe (1893–1987) and Maurice Wolfe, who started the Ontario Produce Company and acquired Oshawa Wholesale in 1949 and later gave rise to Oshawa Group. [1] [2]
Through the life of the company it was run by the Wolfe family:
Beginning in the 1960s, Oshawa Group acquired various retail chains and stores:
Outside of retailing, Oshawa Group acquired various companies and real estate:
Oshawa Group also operated food services company SERCA Foodservices Incorporated.
The retail scene changed in the 1990s, even as the Oshawa Group had begun re-focusing on core operations beginning in the 1980s. The entire operation was sold in 1998 to Sobeys and the Oshawa name disappeared from Canadian retailing.
Shoppers Drug Mart Inc., commonly known as Shoppers is a Canadian retail pharmacy chain based in Toronto, Ontario. It has more than 1,300 stores in ten provinces and two territories.
Loblaws is a Canadian supermarket chain with stores located in the province of Ontario, and in Alberta and British Columbia under the Loblaws CityMarket banner. Headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, Loblaws is a subsidiary of Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest food distributor.
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Dominion was a national chain of supermarkets in Canada, which was known as the Dominion of Canada when the chain was founded. The chain was founded in 1919 in Ontario and was later acquired by the Argus Corporation. It was later sold to The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which restricted the chain to the Greater Toronto Area. Stores outside Ontario were converted to the A&P banner or sold to third parties. A&P's Canadian division was later acquired by Metro Inc., which rebranded the remaining Dominion stores to its namesake banner in 2008.
Willard Gordon Galen Weston was a British-Canadian billionaire businessman and Chairman Emeritus of George Weston Limited, a Canadian food processing and distribution company. Weston and his family, with an estimated net worth of US$8.7 billion, are listed as the third wealthiest in Canada and 178th in the world by Forbes magazine.
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Steinberg's was a large family-owned Canadian grocery store chain that mainly operated in the province of Quebec and later Ontario. In addition to its flagship supermarket chain, the company operated several subsidiaries across the country. The company went bankrupt in 1992, three years after being sold to private interests, after 75 years in business.
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George Weston Limited, often referred to as Weston or Weston's, is a Canadian holding company. Founded by George Weston in 1882, the company today consists of the Choice Properties real estate investment trust and Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest supermarket retailer, in which it maintains a controlling interest. Retail brands include President's Choice, No Name and Joe Fresh. The former Weston Bakeries division, which owned the brands Wonder, Country Harvest, D'Italiano, Ready Bake and Gadoua, was sold off to FGF Brands in 2022. The company is controlled by the Weston family, which owns a majority share in George Weston Limited.
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Willard Garfield Weston was a Canadian businessman and philanthropist who was a member of the prominent Weston family. He led George Weston Limited and its various subsidiaries and associated companies, including Associated British Foods, for half a century and established one of the world's largest food processing and distribution concerns. He also served as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the British House of Commons during World War II.
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