Safeway Limited is a British groceries brand, and former chain of supermarkets and convenience shops. The British Safeway was founded in 1962 by the American Safeway Inc., before being sold to Argyll Foods in 1987. It was later listed on the London Stock Exchange. It was purchased by Morrisons in March 2004. Most of its 479 shops were rebranded as Morrisons, with others being sold. Safeway-branded shops disappeared from the United Kingdom on 24 November 2005.
Wm Morrison Supermarkets Limited, trading as Morrisons, is the fifth largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. As of 2021, the company had 497 supermarkets across England, Wales and Scotland, and one in Gibraltar. The company is headquartered in Bradford, England.
J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is a British supermarket and the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a 14.6% share of UK supermarket sales in September 2022.
Waitrose Limited, trading as Waitrose & Partners, is a brand of British supermarkets, founded in 1904 as Waite, Rose & Taylor, later shortened to Waitrose. It was acquired in 1937 by employee-owned retailer John Lewis Partnership, which still sells groceries under the brand. Its head offices are located in Bracknell, Berkshire.
Victor Value was a London-based value supermarket group that operated at the discount end of the grocery trade.
Somerfield was a chain of small to medium-sized supermarkets operating in the United Kingdom. The company also previously owned the Kwik Save chain of discount food stores. The company was taken over by the Co-operative Group on 2 March 2009 in a £1.57 billion deal, creating the UK's fifth-largest food retailer. The Somerfield name was replaced by the Co-operative brand in a rolling programme of store conversions ending in summer 2011.
William Low & Co plc, popularly referred to as Willie Low's and latterly marketed as Wm Low, was a chain of supermarkets headquartered in Dundee, Scotland. Initially founded in 1868, Low's had branches throughout Scotland, North East England, Cumbria and Yorkshire. As a group, it was smaller than most of its competitors and often served small towns, although it still had several large hypermarkets. Low's use to trade on their Scottishness as a unique selling point in Scotland. At one stage, the company also ran a chain of frozen food stores known as Lowfreeze. Lowfreeze was sold in 1987 to Bejam.
Kwik Save is a British convenience store chain. Prior to 2007, it was also a discount supermarket chain that had shops across the United Kingdom. It went into administration in July 2007, but was brought back in April 2012. Its shops were small to medium-sized high street supermarkets, mainly located in areas with below average incomes.
Fine Fare was a chain of supermarkets which operated in the United Kingdom from 1951 until 1988. Their Yellow Pack budget own-label range, introduced in 1980, was the first own brand basic ranges to be introduced in the UK and in 1983 it was the first supermarket to sell organic food. Fine Fare and its subsidiaries were rebranded to Gateway Foodmarkets in the late 1980s.
Albert Gubay, KC*SG was a Welsh businessman and philanthropist, who made his fortune with the Kwik Save retail chain, building it further on investments, mainly in property development. According to Forbes, in 2006 Gubay had an estimated fortune of approximately £500 million, making him the 698th richest person in the world.
FreshXpress was a discount supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. It was originally formed in 2007, from the rump of the defunct Kwik Save chain, by Irish retail entrepreneur Brendan Murtagh.
SavaCentre was a chain of 13 hypermarkets and later a further seven discount supermarkets owned and operated jointly by Sainsbury's and BHS, beginning in 1977. Sainsbury's later took full control of the stores alone in 1989, rebranding them as Sainsbury's SavaCentre, until 2005 when the stores were integrated into the Sainsbury's supermarket brand. The hypermarket stores ranged in size from 66,000 sq ft (6,100 m2) to 117,000 sq ft (10,900 m2) and the discount supermarkets ranged in size from 31,000 sq ft (2,900 m2) to 70,000 sq ft (6,500 m2). At the time of its inception, it was the only dedicated hypermarket chain in the UK.
B&M European Value Retail S.A., trading as B&M, is a British multinational variety store chain founded in 1978 and incorporated in Luxembourg. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
In the United Kingdom, it is common practice for retailers to have their own value brand in an effort to compete on price. These brands have become more popular in the UK with shoppers since the Great Recession caused food prices to rise.
The term dark store, dark shop, dark supermarket or dotcom centre refers to a retail outlet or distribution centre that exists exclusively for online shopping. A dark store is generally a large warehouse that can either be used to facilitate a "click-and-collect" service, where a customer collects an item they have ordered online, or as an order fulfillment platform for online sales. The format was initiated in the United Kingdom, and its popularity has also spread to France followed by the rest of the European Union and Russia, as well as to the United States.
Netto was a discount supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. Netto arrived in the United Kingdom in December 1990, as part of an internationalisation process by its Danish owner, Salling Group. By May 2010, it operated 193 stores, before it was sold to Asda. In June 2014, Salling Group returned Netto to the United Kingdom, as a 50:50 joint venture with Sainsbury's.
