In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, and is not used to refer to other types of stores that sell groceries.
The supermarket typically has aisles for meat, fresh produce, dairy, and baked goods.
Shelf space is also reserved for canned and packaged goods and for various non-food items such as kitchenware, household cleaners, pharmacy products and pet supplies. Some supermarkets also sell other household products that are consumed regularly, such as alcohol (where permitted), medicine, and clothing, and some sell a much wider range of non-food products: DVDs, sporting equipment, board games, and seasonal items (e.g., Christmas wrapping paper in December).
A larger full-service supermarket combined with a department store is sometimes known as a hypermarket. Other services may include those of banks, cafés, childcare centres/creches, insurance (and other financial services), mobile-phone services, photo processing, video rentals, pharmacies, and petrol stations. If the eatery in a supermarket is substantial enough, the facility may be called a "grocerant", a blend of "grocery" and "restaurant". (Full article...)
Maxi is a discount groceryretailer based in Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1984 by Provigo, it is a division of Loblaw Companies and the largest of Loblaws' Quebec supermarket chains. Maxi is the Quebec equivalent of No Frills, a chain of franchised discount grocery stores outside Quebec, except that Maxi stores are owned by the company. Over 7,000 people are employed at the Maxi and Maxi & Cie stores across Quebec. (Full article...)
Friendly Grocer (formerly known as Four Square) is a small supermarket chain operating in Australia. The chain was founded in New Zealand in 1923 and expanded to Australia in 1956. Since the success of Four Square the 'Friendly Grocer' brand was introduced in 2006.
There are over 450 stores in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. Its current slogan is "Just around the corner". Its main competitors are IGA, Foodworks, Food For Less and many other small supermarket chains. (Full article...)
Netto Marken-Discount is a German discount supermarket chain. It is owned by the German supermarket cooperative Edeka Group, and operates mostly in the south and west of Germany. The first store was opened in 1984 and the chain is expanding aggressively, with its 1000th store opening in 2004 and its 4000th in 2009.
In 2009 the Edeka Group completed acquisition of the Plus supermarket chain, converting the Plus supermarket locations into Netto supermarkets. (Full article...)
Rimi Baltic is a major retail operator in the Baltic states based in Riga, Latvia. It is a subsidiary of Swedish group ICA. Rimi Baltic operates 270 retail stores in Estonia (86 stores), Latvia (126 stores) and Lithuania (58 stores) and has distribution centres in each country. The stores have different profiles, depending on range of products and size:
The interior design of the smaller Rimi hypermarkets (known as compact hypermarkets) can also be seen in ICA's smaller hypermarkets in Sweden such as ICA Maxi Västra Hamnen in Malmö and ICA Maxi Enköping. (Full article...)
SuperValu is a supermarket chain that operates on the island of Ireland. Like Spar and Londis, SuperValu is operated as a symbol group; each store is independently owned, with store owners using the SuperValu format and selling the chain’s own brand products. However, SuperValu outlets tend to be larger than the convenience shop formats used by Spar and Londis, and the larger SuperValu stores are on a par with full-service supermarkets. Their main competitors are Dunnes Stores and Tesco Ireland. (Full article...)
It owns the trademarks Hyper U, Super U, Marché U and Utile, which are used by its members. It had a pre-tax turnover of 12.7 billion euros in 2002 and 13.8 billion in 2003, rising to 15.6 billion euros in 2007; this makes the company the sixth largest retail group in France. (Full article...)
Fantastico (Фантастико) is a Bulgariansupermarket chain founded in 1991. Fantastico is part of the retail sector and primarily sells foodstuffs.
, the company operates 41 stores in Sofia and 3 outside Sofia, including a do-it-yourself store and eight cash and carry hypermarkets. Although most Fantastico stores are in the capital, the chain is the main competitor of international chains like Billa in the country. In 2007, Fantastico opened its first supermarket outside the capital, in the town of Kyustendil, in south-western Bulgaria. (Full article...)
Poslovni sistem Mercator d.d. is one of the largest business entities in Slovenia and the parent company of the Mercator Group. As the Mercator Group's controlling company, it has a double role: it manages its retail operations, and carries out corporate tasks for other Mercator Group companies. In addition to its domestic market of Slovenia, Mercator Group is also present in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and North Macedonia. Mercator Group's core activity is fast-moving consumer goods retail in an extensive retail network spanning Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Full article...)
Auchan (French pronunciation: [oʃɑ̃]) is a Frenchmultinationalretail group headquartered in Croix, France. It was founded in 1961 by Gérard Mulliez and is owned by Mulliez Family, which has 95% stake in the company. With 354,851 employees, of which 261,000 have 5% stake in the company, it is the 35th largest employer in the world.
The name comes from the first Auchan shop in Roubaix in the district of Hauts-Champs, the pronunciation of which is identical to that of "Auchan". (Full article...)
The Edeka Group is the largest Germansupermarketcorporation , holding a market share of 20.3%. Founded in 1898, it consists today of several cooperatives of independent supermarkets all operating under the umbrella organisation Edeka Zentrale AG & Co KG, with headquarters in Hamburg. There are approximately 4,100 stores with the Edeka nameplate that range from small corner stores to hypermarkets. On November 16, 2007, Edeka reached an agreement with Tengelmann to purchase a 70% majority stake in Tengelmann's Plus discounter store division, which was then merged into Edeka's Netto brand, with some 4,200 stores by 2018. Under all brands the company operated a total of 13,646 stores at the end of 2017. (Full article...)
Aldi (stylized as ALDI) is the common brand of two German family-owned discount supermarketchains with over 10,000 stores in 20 countries and an estimated combined turnover of more than €50 billion. The chain was founded by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht in 1946 when they took over their mother's store in Essen. The business was split into two separate groups in 1960, that later became Aldi Nord, headquartered in Essen, and Aldi Süd, headquartered in Mülheim. In 1962, they introduced the name Aldi (a syllabic abbreviation for Albrecht Diskont), which is pronounced [ˈaldiː](listen). In Germany, Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd have been financially and legally separate since 1966, although both divisions' names may appear as if they were a single enterprise with certain store brands or when negotiating with contractor companies. The formal business name is Aldi Einkauf GmbH & Compagnie, oHG.
Aldi's German operations consist of Aldi Nord's 35 individual regional companies with about 2,500 stores in western, northern, and eastern Germany, and Aldi Süd's 32 regional companies with 1,600 stores in western and southern Germany. Internationally, Aldi Nord operates in Denmark, France, the Benelux countries, Portugal, Spain and Poland, while Aldi Süd operates in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Switzerland, Australia, China, Italy, Austria and Slovenia. Both Aldi Nord (as Trader Joe's) and Aldi Süd (as Aldi) also operate in the United States with 1,600 stores between them as of 2017. Further, the U.S. is the only country to have both Aldi companies operating outside of Germany. (Full article...)
Metro AG is a German multinational company based in Düsseldorf which operates business membership only cash and carry stores primarily under Metro brand. Until 2020 it was also active in general retail business through Real division, which was sold to an investor consortium.
Unlike American warehouse clubs such as Costco or Sam's Club, it is not possible for private customers to acquire a membership for most Metro locations. As of 2020 it operates around 680 stores in 24 countries in Europe and Asia. (Full article...)
Lufthansa ships 80 tonnes of fresh food to the United Kingdom to prevent shortages amid fears that the lifting of the Frenchblockade of the France–UK border will not prevent shortages in some supermarkets. The airline says "additional special cargo flights" are planned to meet demand. Thousands of trucks remain outside of Dover. (The Guardian)
South Australia reports four new cases through community transmissions linked to a supermarket and a hospital in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, leading to fears of a second wave in the state. In response, Western Australia reimposes hard border controls with South Australia. (News.com.au)
Prime MinisterJean Castex announces in a televised interview on TF1 that the government would introduce a ban on the sale of all 'non-essential' items in supermarkets from November 3 as part of a lockdown measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19. (France 24)
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