Food Lion

Food Lion[] is an American regional supermarket chain headquartered in Salisbury, North Carolina, that operates over 1,000 supermarkets in 10 states: Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The chain employs over 82,000 people. It was founded in 1957 as Food Town, a single grocery store in Salisbury. It later expanded to many locations across North Carolina. It was independently operated until it was acquired by the Belgian conglomerate Delhaize Group in 1974. In 1983, the company changed its name and branding to Food Lion to allow it to expand into regions where Food Town was already in use by unrelated stores. Food Lion has been owned by Ahold Delhaize since 2016, following several mergers and acquisitions. The mascot has been Leo the Food Lion since January 17, 1997.

History

Food Lion was founded in 1957 in Salisbury, North Carolina, as Food Town by Wilson Smith, Ralph Ketner, and Brown Ketner. The Food Town chain was acquired by the Belgian Delhaize Group grocery company in 1974. Due to Ralph Ketner's savvy business sense and ever-growing grocery store endeavors, initial investors of Ketner's 'Food-Town' virtually all became millionaires. At one point, after a large addition to his quickly growing chain of stores, Rowan County, North Carolina was shown 'per capita' to contain 'the highest number of millionaires' in the United States. His implementation of weekly flyers advertising the noticeably low-prices, in combination with literally 'plastering' nearly every square inch of each storefront with neon colored hand-lettered signage proved extremely effective. In the store, every item in the weekly sales was 'again' broadcast by custom, hand-lettered cardstock signage. The low-prices were very 'real'. while the profit per item was minimal, the number of products, meats, fresh fruits and vegetables more than made-up for the minimal profit-per-item on sales items. Ketner continually took advantage of suppliers’ small price fluctuations and continually made volume deals. Furthermore, the convenience of offering non-grocery & OTC items not usually found in grocery stores, allowed the corporation to make a healthy profit on those offerings.
The Food Lion name was adopted in 1983; as 'Food Town' expanded into Virginia, the chain encountered several stores called Foodtown in the Richmond area. Expansion into Maryland would have been a bigger problem since about 100 independent, but affiliated, stores were called Food Town. Because Delhaize had a lion in its logo, Food Town asked to use it on product labels and new store signs. Ralph Ketner realized "lion" needed only two new letters and the movement of another in the chain's signs. On December 12, 1982, Ketner announced the name change to "Food Lion," and by the end of March 1983, all stores had been rebranded. The name change, while puzzling for American customers, made economic and historic sense, as Delhaize was once known as Delhaize Le Lion.
Throughout the 1980s, Food Lion expanded throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States. The company continued its expansion throughout the late 1980s, opening hundreds of stores in existing markets, such as the Carolinas and the Virginias, and entering new markets, such as Georgia and Maryland.
In the early 1990s, Food Lion stores appeared in new markets, such as Delaware and southern Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma; Shreveport, Louisiana; Dallas/Fort Worth; and Houston, Texas. During this time, the chain was the fastest-growing supermarket company in the U.S., as they opened over 100 new stores each year. In November 1992, a critical PrimeTime Live report that showed unsanitary handling of meat and seafood hurt the chain as they attempted to enter new markets in the Northeast and Southwest.
According to some industry sources, the new stores in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma were already operating below sales projections. The small, lackluster Food Lion stores were beginning to compete with national retail leaders, such as Albertsons, Kroger, Tom Thumb, and Jewel-Osco, all of which were already well-respected in the Southwest and which operated larger stores with more features, but the effects of the devastating ABC report could not be denied, and sales and revenue plummeted. In the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, widespread reports were given of stores sending half of their staff home early due to lack of business and of other stores with "virtually zero meat sales". In the fiscal quarter that included the Thanksgiving holiday of 1992, Delhaize America reported company-wide same-store sales declines of 9.5%. As a result, Food Lion was forced to greatly scale back its expansion plans in Texas and Oklahoma, as well as delay, then cancel its planned entry into new markets in Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois.
In 1993, Food Lion agreed to pay $16.2 million to settle claims that they violated federal laws regulating unpaid overtime, minimum wage, and child labor, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In the agreement, which at the time was the largest settlement ever from a private employer accused of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, the grocery chain agreed to ensure that all employees would be well-informed about their rights. Additionally, the Labor Department said Food Lion top management provided assurances that no retaliatory action would be taken against employees who filed complaints about unpaid overtime or other potential FLSA violations. On January 7, 1994, Delhaize announced the first major round of store closings in what would become a yearly event. The stores to be closed included 47 of its brand-new stores in Texas and Oklahoma, as well as stores in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Throughout the mid-1990s, the company canceled leases for new stores and closed scores of its newly built outlets in recently established markets, such as Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and Oklahoma City. Citing double-digit same-store sales declines for the quarter ending in September 1997, Delhaize announced that it was canceling its Midwest expansion, exiting all markets in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, and closing its 6-year-old distribution center in Roanoke, Texas. Struggling, Food Lion was forced to recede back to the East Coast, where it faced increasing competition from competitors with larger stores, better customer service, and more variety and amenities; these included regional winners, such as Ingles, Harris Teeter, and Publix; newcomers, such as specialty retailer Whole Foods Market; and expanding national chains, such as Kroger, Target, and Wal-Mart.
Beginning in 2003, Food Lion became active in "market renewals" in which every year Food Lion picks certain cities in their operating area where they remodel stores and update the product offerings. That same year, Food Lion remodeled 68 stores in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, market, followed by 65 stores in the Charlotte area in 2004. In 2006, Food Lion advanced their market renewals program by using demographic and geographic data to figure out whether certain stores should be branded as Food Lion, Bloom, or Bottom Dollar. If the data supported that an already existing Food Lion was adequate for a certain community, the location would simply be remodeled. Should the data support otherwise, the Food Lion store would be remodeled and rebranded as either Bloom or Bottom Dollar. In early 2012, Food Lion closed 113 stores. These were in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as well as all the stores in Florida.

New concept, mergers and acquisitions

In late 2013, Food Lion introduced a new concept and decor at a store in Concord, North Carolina. The first official remodel began in late 2014 to 76 of their stores in the greater Wilmington and Greenville, North Carolina, markets. In March 2015, plans were announced for remodeling of its 162 locations in the Raleigh, North Carolina, market. The Raleigh market remodels were expected to be completed in stores on a rolling basis between April and October 2015. In June 2015, it was announced that Food Lion's parent company, the Delhaize Group, and Ahold would merge into Ahold Delhaize. This merger was completed in July 2016. In March 2016, the company announced that they would make a $215 million investment in its greater Charlotte-area stores and western NC stores. This included remodeling 142 stores, additional price investments, and investments in associates and the community through its Food Lion Feeds initiatives. In July 2016, as part of the corporate merger between Delhaize and Ahold, Food Lion was required to divest 61 locations to a variety of competitors, including Supervalu and Weis Markets in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia to satisfy the Federal Trade Commission's review of the two parent companies' merger. Later that year, Food Lion began remodeling 93 of their stores in the Piedmont Triad region. Remodeling in the Piedmont Triad was completed in the summer of 2017. Richmond, Virginia, stores began getting the concepts implemented in 2017. On March 14, 2018, Supervalu announced that Food Lion was purchasing three Farm Fresh locations in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and Hampton and Virginia Beach, Virginia, as part of a larger deal to close down the Farm Fresh brand. On April 27, 2018, Food Lion announced plans to acquire four BI-LO locations in Florence, Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach, and Columbia, South Carolina. Furthermore, on June 3, 2020, Food Lion announced the purchase of 62 Southeastern Grocers stores in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. These stores were rebranded to Food Lion between February and May 2021.
By 2015, Food Lion stores could be found in Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Food Lion's sister chains include Giant-Carlisle, Giant-Landover, Hannaford Brothers, Martin's Food Markets and Stop & Shop.