In Poland the most well known is Tesco. Others have fallen out of the mainstream but are still *kinda* around, like Edeka

22 comments

  1. Hypernova(although it was hypermarket). They used to have great prices and I was shopping there all the time during my University days.

  2. Safeway in the UK. Also C&A pulled out of the country. Recently the home supplies store Wilkinson closed all its stores.

  4. In my childhood in the 80s, my parents often did their groceries at Kijkgrijp or VIVO.

    Later, when I was in college, there was a supermarket on campus called IFA (International Food Association). In spite of its international name it seemed pretty local, although a friend of mine reported to have seen one other IFA store in the South of Spain.

    All three seem to have ceased to exist, but I still remember the names.

  5. Standa which was one of the earliest chains in Italy, however it closed down definetly in 2010. Others which closed down this year were Tuodì and Alco

  6. Edeka in Poland? Where?

    One of the first chains to enter the PL market after 1990 was Billa and they are also gone now, pulled back in mid 2000s.

    There was also Alma but I’m not sure if it qualifies as ‘old’ as it was around for about ten years.

  7. Irma, a luxury chain that was founded in 1886, started closing down this year, with the last store planned to close in 2024. The brand and its mascot are very iconic in Denmark, so this was met with bewilderment and protests.

    For some reason, it also become popular in Japan of all places, so I imagine they’re quite upset over there as well.

  8. Plus, it was a rather small supermarket chain that by now got absorbed into Netto (an Edeka brand) or sold to Rewe and are branded as Penny as Edeka wasn’t allowed to buy all supermarkets.

    For the US Redditors: Wal Mart tried it’s luck in Germany in the 90s, but they failed miserably and exited after burning millions. Among the reasons were that they didn’t have a price advantage as given how competitive the market is there just wasn’t room to be cheaper and still have a profit, and some parts of the corporate culture were unacceptable for Germans – no customer allows the cashier to bag their stuff, and no employee would dream to allow an employer to tell them not to date coworkers.

  9. Allkauf was taken over by Real,- in 1999 and Real is now bancrupt once again.

    Allkauf was only a small chain, but I worked there after school and they fired me 1 month before I intended to quit and join the army.

  10. Aldi. They closed their last supermarket last month. They’ve been here since the 80’s.

  12. Cora was bought by Carrefour in Romania.

    And Profi was bought by Mega image.

    This are just for 2023.

  13. Do you want a list?

    – Coop (soon)
    – Jan Linders (soon)
    – Boni (soon)
    – Deen
    – Emté
    – Golff
    – C1000
    – Super de Boer
    – Edah

    And that’s just relatively big ones that disappeared in the last 15 years or so.

  14. Several. Zielpunkt went bankrupt in 2016. Konsum went bankrupt in 1995, and the shops were bought by Meinl who went under in 1999, also killing the Pampam brand of supermarkets.

  15. We used to have Netto stores, but Netto left the country a few years ago. But the more interesting example might be EPA (*Enhetsprisaktiebolaget*). EPA was known for low prices and questionable quality. Today it survives in the term *EPA-traktor*, which is a kind of down-geared car that you only have to be 15(16?) to drive on roads.

  16. 7th Continent. Used to be one of the largest ones, even went public, but it was deeply screwed by the 2008 crisis and never recovered. Went from loan restructuring to loan restructuring for nine more years and was finally sold in 2017.

  17. In the UK there was Gateway, which got taken over by Somerfield many many years ago. The village where I grew up had two Gateway shops known locally as “top Gatway” and “bottom Gateway”. Years after these had been taken over/bought/sold/etc, the shops there were still known by these names.

    In Finland, we lost Stockmann Herkku to the big S-Market chain a few years ago and I think that has even gone now. Mind you, Stockmann’s management are doing an excellent job of getting rid of Finland’s premier department store….

  18. Feira Nova is one I remember as a kid. There was a very distinctive one not far from where I grew up, and you still get people calling that area “where the Feira Nova used to be”.

    In my region there was also a chain called Alisuper. They were often quite small, like corner shops, and more common in the more touristy areas. I think technically they still exist, but a lot of them were bought by Intermarché.

    A less common corner shop supermarket I also used to see around was Loja Fresca. There were very few of them, at least in my area, but I liked them because they for some reason had a better collection of sweets/candy. I believe some became Amanhecer shops, which is a very similar chain.

  19. In 2000 GB was bought by Carrefour and since then every GB has been slowly turned into a Carrefour.

  21. None of them closed down and vanished but they were absorbed into other chains for various reasons.

    Superquinn – a high end supermarket chain was taken over by SuperValu, a fairly high end chain / symbol group.

    ‘Quinnsworth’ & ‘Crazy Prices’ which was owned by the Weston Family, became Tesco Ireland in the 1997, when they were acquired.

    A VERY tacky ‘price an item’ 1982 Christmas ad featuring 1982 toys [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsyKnVd3RcQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsyKnVd3RcQ)

    They were a mid-market store, but were famous for a cheap own brand called ‘Yellow Pack’ which became an insult for generic and low quality. It’s still used even though most people probably don’t remember where the term originated from anymore.

    (Before that Tesco had entered the market in the 1980s and failed, with most of its stores being taken over by other chains.)

    There were some very old chains like H. Williams which was merged into Quinnsworth, which is now Tesco.

    Quite a few small chains and independent stores that vanished into SuperValu too.

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