A Sobey Family History

Sobeys traces its beginnings as a retailer to 1907, when John William “J.W.” Sobey traveled rural Nova Scotia by horse-drawn carriage, buying and selling livestock and their meat from local farmers.

J.W. was the son of William Sobey, a member of Britain's Royal Engineers who was stationed in the busy shipping port of Halifax in the mid-19th century. William met and married a local girl, Janet MacIntosh, in 1862 and after a brief return to England, raised the family on a northern Nova Scotia farm.

J.W., his wife Eliza, and their son Frank moved to Stellarton, Nova Scotia, in 1905 where he launched his meat-delivery business. Often helping him out was his precocious son Frank, who from a young age had a preternatural nose for business. Frank made $100 buying and selling stock of Canada Cement as an 8th grader. At age 16, he enrolled in business college and by 1924, Frank had persuaded his father to expand his business from meat and vegetables to a full line of grocery products.

While several members of the Sobey clan helped out in the early days of the company, Frank Sobey's dedication and innovation were most influential in making Sobeys a company that would last 100 years. He was quick to pick up on promising technology advances: for example, the cash register in 1925 and the electric door 20 years after that. By 1939 the company had five stores.

Frank Sobey in the meantime was getting ideas from visits to the United States with his wife Irene. They returned to Nova Scotia determined to emulate the early modern supermarkets they had seen, such as King Kullen, Piggly Wiggly and Publix.

Sobeys opened its own version of the self-serve, all-cash, low-price supermarket in 1949 in Truro, Nova Scotia. A newspaper ad of the times reminded readers in part, “Our low prices are the workingman's friend and shopping here for all your food needs is like getting a raise in pay because our low prices increase the buying power of your food dollar.”

Frank's three sons — Bill, David and Donald — continued their father's work, expanding Sobeys throughout Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, and into Quebec in the mid-1960s. Frank Sobey passed away in 1987 — the same year the chain surpassed $1 billion in sales for the first time.

The Sobey sons took over management of the company in 1971 with Bill and David taking executive roles at Sobeys and Donald heading the affiliated investment firm, Empire Inc., which among other things made a shrewd investment in Maine-based retailer Hannaford Bros. Empire would also become influential in real estate through a controlling interest in Crombie REIT, a shopping-center owner and developer, and as the owner of Empire Theatres, Canada's second-largest movie theater chain. Empire went public in 1983.

Sobeys moved into Ontario for the first time in the early 1990s, and in 1998 captured great swaths of Quebec and Western Canada when it purchased the Oshawa Group, quadrupling the size of the company overnight.

Sobeys since then has worked on aligning its banners behind its brand of food-focused supermarkets and discount stores, and expanding through new store growth and acquisitions, such as Ontario-based Commisso's in 2004.

Sobeys went public in order to raise money for the Oshawa acquisition, with Empire, still controlled by the Sobey family, holding a significant stake. Earlier this year, Empire offered to buy all the remaining shares it didn't own so as to take the company private again. This, they said, will let the company grow back under the watchful eye of its founding family.
— J.S.

Source: Sobeys.com