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.
Tesco Ireland Limited is the Irish subsidiary of supermarket group Tesco. Tesco Ireland was formed by Tesco plc's 1997 purchase of the Irish retailing operations of Associated British Foods, namely Powers' Supermarkets Limited and its subsidiaries, trading as Quinnsworth and Crazy Prices. There are 152 Tesco stores in operation in Ireland as of August 2018. Tesco had approximately 21% of the Irish grocery market in 2021 and its main competitors are Dunnes Stores and SuperValu.
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.
Superquinn was an Irish supermarket chain, founded in 1960 and entirely privately owned by the Quinn family. Select Retail Holdings, a property buying consortium, purchased the company from the Quinn family in 2005. A receiver was appointed to the company on 18 July 2011, and the following day the company was bought by Musgrave Group for an undisclosed sum. On 13 February 2014 all remaining units were rebranded as SuperValu.
Dunnes Stores is an Irish multinational retail chain that primarily sells food, clothes and household wares. It was founded by Ben Dunne in 1944. In addition to its main customer base in Ireland, the chain also has operations in Spain. The format of most of the chain's stores in Ireland involves a grocery supermarket operating alongside a clothing/textiles store, although some stores contain only textiles and some contain only a supermarket. The grocery side of the business does not operate outside of Ireland, save for a limited grocery range in the Spanish stores. The larger stores usually contain a café branded as either Café Sol or Dunnes Stores Café.
A symbol group is a form of franchise of convenience shops, found primarily in the United Kingdom and Ireland. They do not own or operate shops, but act as suppliers to independent shops which then trade under a common banner.
Budgens Stores Limited, trading as Budgens, is a chain of grocery stores in the United Kingdom. The business was founded in 1872 by John Budgen, who opened the first shop in Maidenhead, Berkshire and was incorporated as a private limited company on 28 May 1962. The company is a subsidiary and retail fascia of Booker Group, part of Tesco plc.
Feargal Quinn was an Irish businessman, politician and television personality. He founded the Superquinn supermarket chain and served as a Senator for the National University constituency from 1993 to 2016.
Centra is a convenience shop chain that operates throughout Ireland. The chain operates as a symbol group owned by Musgrave Group, the food wholesaler, meaning the individual shops are all owned by individual franchisees.
Musgrave Group Ltd. is an Irish food wholesaler, founded in Cork by the Musgrave brothers, Thomas and Stuart in 1876. It is currently Ireland's largest grocery distributor, with operations in Ireland and Spain with estimated annual sales of over €4 billion. The current CEO is Noel Keeley. Today, the company is still largely-owned by the Musgrave family.
Debenhams Ireland was a national chain of department stores in Ireland, that was owned ultimately by Debenhams plc. It was largely based on the former Roches Store chain, though after that business divested its grocery units.
In Ireland, the retail sector provides one of the largest sources of employment in the economy, representing over 12% of the workforce. As of 2017, approximately 40,000 wholesale and retail businesses employed almost 280,000 people in Ireland, with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment reporting that 90% of these businesses were Irish-owned.
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.
Wellworths was a supermarket chain, owned by the Fitzwilton trading in Northern Ireland until 1997. Along with Stewarts/Crazy Prices it was one of the two main supermarkets in Northern Ireland until English-based retailers moved into the marketplace.
Presto Foodmarkets was a chain of supermarkets and convenience stores in Great Britain, which first appeared in the early 1960s. While the fate of most of the chain's stores was conversion to Safeway, the final stores still trading as Presto were either closed or sold in 1998.
Joyce's, formerly Joyces 365, was a supermarket chain based in Headford, County Galway, Ireland.
Roches Stores was a national chain of department stores in Ireland, that was owned by the Roche family.
Gala is a convenience shop chain in Ireland. Established in 1998, as of 2021 Gala had approximately 250 shops nationwide, all under franchise. The symbol group is supplied by a number of independent wholesalers which were formerly part of the National Wholesale group. In 2008, the brand recognised its tenth year in business. Gary Desmond is the chief executive officer.
Tesco has expanded its operations from the United Kingdom to 11 other countries. Tesco pulled out of the United States in 2013, but continues to see growth elsewhere. Tesco's international expansion strategy has responded to the need to be sensitive to local expectations in other countries by entering into joint ventures with local partners, such as Samsung Group in South Korea, and Charoen Pokphand in Thailand, appointing a very high proportion of local personnel to management positions. It also makes small acquisitions as part of its strategy: for example, in its 2005/2006 financial year it made acquisitions in South Korea, one in Poland and one in Japan.
