A supermarket is a self-serviceshop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market. In everyday United States usage, however, "grocery store" is often used to mean "supermarket".
The supermarket typically has places for fresh meat, fresh produce, dairy, deli items, baked goods, and similar foodstuffs.
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., Christmaswrapping paper, Easter eggs, school uniforms, Valentine's Day themed gifts, Mother's Day gifts, Father's Day gifts and Halloween).
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 centers/creches, insurance (and other financial services), mobile phone sales, photo processing, video rentals, pharmacies, and gas stations. If the eatery in a supermarket is substantial enough, the facility may be called a "grocerant", a portmanteau of "grocery" and "restaurant".
The traditional supermarket occupies a large amount of floor space, usually on a single level. It is usually situated near a residential area in order to be convenient to consumers. The basic appeal is the availability of a broad selection of goods under a single roof, at relatively low prices. Other advantages include ease of parking and frequently the convenience of shopping hours that extend into the evening or even 24 hours of the day. Supermarkets usually allocate large budgets to advertising, typically through newspapers and television. They also present elaborate in-shop displays of products. (Full article...)
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.
It struggled to make profits during the 2000s, as superstore operators such as Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's introduced their own budget brands, and foreign competitors such as Lidl, Aldi and Netto (who all arrived in the United Kingdom during the first half of the 1990s) expanded. (Full article...)
Lidl is the chief competitor of the similar German discount chain Aldi in several markets. (Full article...)
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Maxima Grupė UAB is a Lithuanian group of retail chain companies operating in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Bulgaria. It is the largest Lithuanian capital company and the largest employer in the Baltic states. , Maxima has 1599 stores in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Bulgaria. Each store offers between 3,000 and 65,000 brands, depending on the size of the store. The group employs around 40,000 people. Its main headquarters are in Vilnius, Lithuania. (Full article...)
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Jaycar, formerly Jaycar Electronics, is an Australia-based retailer dealing in electronic components and related products for electronics enthusiasts. The company owns around 110 stores across Australia and New Zealand, and also sells its products online in the UK and US. It was founded in 1981 by Gary Johnston, who remained managing director until his death in 2021.
The company also has a wholesale arm, Electus Distribution. (Full article...)
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Ed (pronounced E-D, abbreviation of "Europa Discount") was a French brand of discount stores founded in 1978. It franchises its name to small-format hard discounts stores in France. It was part of the Carrefour Group. (Full article...)
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Metro AG is a German multinational company based in Düsseldorf which operates business membership-only cash and carry stores primarily under the Metro brand. , Metro is operating 626 wholesale stores in 21 countries, including Europe, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan.
The company was established in 1964 by Ernst Schmidt and Wilhelm Schmidt-Ruthenbeck. In 2010, it was the fourth-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues, after Walmart, Carrefour and Tesco. Until 2020, it was also active in the general retail business through the Real division, which was sold to an investor consortium. Its current incarnation was launched in 2017 as a spun-off of old Metro AG, which continued to be a consumer electronics retailer and renamed itself Ceconomy. (Full article...)
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PlaceMakers is the trading name of Fletcher Distribution Limited, the retail trading arm of Fletcher Building in New Zealand. PlaceMakers also manufactures wall frames, roof trusses and structural components at various frame and truss operations. PlaceMakers origins began in August 1981 as part of Fletcher Timber Limited's retailing operations within the Manufacturing and Merchandising Sector of Fletcher Challenge Limited.
The chain has 62 stores in 2019, up from 52 in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It has 11 stores in Auckland, with a head office in Panmure, Auckland. (Full article...)
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Cotton On Group is an Australian retail company known for its fashion, clothing and stationery brands. As of 2020, it has over 1,500 stores in 18 countries employing 22,000 people across eight brands: Cotton On, Cotton On Kids, Cotton On Body, Factorie, Typo, Rubi, Supré, Ceres and Cotton On Foundation.
The design team in the company's Australian office, control the steps of production from merchandise planning to establishing specifications, and production is outsourced to approximately 850 suppliers and factories globally. Cotton On Group sources its materials and products from a number of locations worldwide with the majority of its suppliers being located in China, Bangladesh, India and Australia. It also works with suppliers in Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, the United States and other parts of Asia. These facilities are used for horizontal division of labour, rather than being integrated. (Full article...)
Walmart has 10,586 stores and clubs in 24 countries, operating under 46 different names. The company operates under the name Walmart in the United States and Canada, as Walmart de México y Centroamérica in Mexico and Central America, and as Flipkart Wholesale in India. It has wholly owned operations in Chile and a majority stake in Massmart in South Africa. Since August 2018, Walmart held only a minority stake in Walmart Brasil, which was renamed Grupo Big in August 2019, with 20 percent of the company's shares, and private equity firm Advent International holding 80% ownership of the company. They eventually divested their shareholdings in Grupo Big to French retailer Carrefour, in transaction worth R$7 billion and completed on June 7, 2022. (Full article...)
Selgros is a cash and carry chain in Europe, owned by Transgourmet Holding, a wholly owned subsidiary of Coop (Switzerland). It started in 1989 as a joint venture between Rewe Group (50%) and Otto Group (50%). In March 2008, Rewe took over 100% of the company, and in October 2008 formed the Transgourmet Holding company with Coop. In 2011, Coop purchased the remaining interests of Transgourmet, which included Selgros. (Full article...)
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Australian Liquor Marketers is the liquor arm of Metcash. It distributes liquor to businesses around Australia and New Zealand, and runs a franchise of almost 2900 liquor stores operating as The Bottle-O, Cellarbrations, IGA Liquor, Duncans, Thirsty Camel, Big Bargain, Porters and Merchants Liquor.
The company has 13 distribution centres across every state and territory of Australia, and a distribution centre in New Zealand. It is Australia's largest supplier of liquor to independently owned liquor retailers and largest broad-range liquor wholesaler, supplying to 12,000 liquor customers. (Full article...)
Mobil is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil. The brand was formerly owned and operated by an oil and gas corporation of the same name (Mobil Oil Corporation), which itself merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil in 1999.
A direct descendant of Standard Oil, Mobil was originally known as the Standard Oil Company of New York (shortened to Socony) after Standard Oil was split into 43 different entities in a 1911 Supreme Court decision. Socony merged with Vacuum Oil Company, from which the Mobil name first originated, in 1931 and subsequently renamed itself to "Socony-Vacuum Oil Company". Over time, Mobil became the company's primary identity, which prompted a renaming in 1955 to the "Socony Mobil Oil Company", and then in 1966 to the "Mobil Oil Corporation". Mobil credits itself with being the first company to introduce paying at the pump at its gas stations, the first company to produce jet aviation fuel, as well as the first company to introduce a mobile payment device, today known as Speedpass. (Full article...)
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NPD, short for Nelson Petroleum Distributors, is a New Zealand family-owned budget fuel distributor. It distributes Mobil fuels and Castrol lubricants, and started business in the 1960s. It is based in Nelson. , NPD has 96 petrol stations, most being in the South Island. According to a study from the Commerce Commission, NPD "appeared to have the most impact on the oil majors' prices". it has 150 staff.
Briscoe Group is a New Zealandretail chain. It has 92 stores throughout New Zealand trading under the Briscoes Homeware (48) and Rebel Sport (44) nameplates. The company was founded in 1861 in Dunedin, New Zealand, providing wares to gold miners. Profit in 2022 was $88.4 million. It has 2,300 staff in 90 stores. (Full article...)
The overall size of the sector has been increasing since the end of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, with retail sales increasing by 30% between 1999 and 2005. One contributing factor was the growth of larger stores with greater buying power and economies of scale, at the cost of smaller bricks and mortar merchants. Another contributing factor was low price inflation, with the price of imported goods falling 12% during that period. (Full article...)
Accent Group is an Australian and New Zealand footwear and clothing retail, wholesaling and distribution company. It has more than 800 retail stores, along with 19 brands, and more than 20 online platforms.
Kaufland ([ˈkaʊ̯flant]) is a German hypermarket chain, part of the Schwarz Gruppe which also owns Lidl. The hypermarket directly translates to English as "buy-land." It opened its first store in 1984 in Neckarsulm and quickly expanded to become a major chain in what was formerly West Germany. It operates over 1,500 stores in Germany, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova. (Full article...)
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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.
Dunnes Stores' original own brand of groceries was sold under the St Bernard brand introduced in 1956, becoming an Irish household name, but was rebranded as "My Family Favourites" in 2013. (Full article...)
Together via Migros supermarkets, Macrocenter Stores, international Ramstore shopping centers, online and mobile shopping, wholesale stores, and mobile sales units, Migros Turkey serves an estimated 160 million customers. As of Nov 2014, the company operates a total of 1,156 stores: 852 Migros stores, 212 Tansaş stores, 24 5M stores and 27 Macro Centers stores in Turkey, 41 Ramstores in Kazakhstan and North Macedonia, according to its web site. (Full article...)
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Aibė is a supermarket chain in Lithuania. In 2022, it was the sixth largest chain of retail stores in Lithuania.
Aibė has been operating since 1999. Currently there are 1,400 stores in Lithuania and Latvia combined. (Full article...)
... that before Angeli Foods was sold this year, the first self-service grocery store in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan had been owned by three generations of a single family?
... that when Mexia Supermarket was abandoned because of its owners' bankruptcy, all of the food inside was left to rot for more than three months?
Four people are killed and ten others are wounded in a shooting at the Mad Butcher supermarket in Fordyce, Arkansas, United States. The suspect, Travis Eugene Posey, is shot and arrested by Arkansas State Police. (AP)
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