| Type | Subsidiary of Delhaize Group |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1947 (as Big Barn) |
| Headquarters | Tampa, Florida, U.S. |
| Number of locations | 105 (2010)[1] |
| Key people | Mike Vail, President and CEO |
| Products | Grocery |
| Employees | 9,000 |
| Website | sweetbaysupermarket.com |
Sweetbay Supermarket is a chain of American supermarkets located entirely in Florida. The first Sweetbay Supermarket to open was in Seminole, Florida, in November 2004. The company is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, and is a part of the Belgian Delhaize Group.
Supermarket News ranked Delhaize America No. 10 in the 2007 "Top 75 North American Food Retailers" based on 2006 fiscal year estimated sales of $17.3 billion.[2]
Supermarket News ranked Delhaize America No. 9 in the 2009 "Top 75 North American Food Retailers" based on 2008 fiscal year estimated sales of $19.2 billion.[3]
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Salvatore Greco, an Italian immigrant, sold fruits and vegetables in the streets of Tampa beginning in 1914. In 1922, he and his wife Giuseppina opened a storefront at their home. The Greco family built a proper store in 1947 under the name Big Barn in Tampa. The business expanded and they had opened nine stores by 1960 with the name of Tampa Wholesale. In 1962, the name changed again to Kash n' Karry, based on the cash and carry program of World War II. People would bring in their "cash" and "carry" out their own groceries. They left out nonessential parts of supermarkets like contests, customer service representatives, and samples.[4]
In December 1996, Kash n' Karry became a wholly owned subsidiary of Food Lion. In July 2000, after Food Lion's acquisition of Hannaford, the holding company Delhaize America, Inc., was created. As a result, Kash n' Karry became a wholly owned subsidiary of Delhaize America.
In 2002, Kash n' Karry pulled out of the competitive Orlando market with only one store remaining in Clermont, Florida. Two of three stores were closed in Gainesville, Florida.
On Wednesday, August 29, 2007, news reports said that the last Kash n' Karry store in Crystal River, Florida, closed, marking the end of the Kash n' Karry brand and the full conversion to Sweetbay Supermarket.[5]
In January 2004, after years of slumping sales growth, Kash n' Karry announced the creation and roll out of a new supermarket concept called Sweetbay Supermarket in its core markets on the West Coast of Florida. By September 2007, all Kash n' Karry stores were redesigned as Sweetbay Supermarkets. The first of the new Sweetbay Supermarkets opened in Seminole, Florida, on November 6, 2004, and in Fort Myers in December 2004.
In 2002, management and supply chain at Kash n' Karry was transferred to sister chain Hannaford in hopes of repairing Kash n' Karry's performance, which ultimately led to the creation of Sweetbay.[6] When Sweetbay was created, it was modeled after Hannaford, incorporating store design, logo/branding elements, and pricing strategy from its northeastern sister company.[7] Additionally, Sweetbay stocked Hannaford-branded products as its generic store brand until 2011, when all Delhaize America stores began offering the Healthy Accents brand (for health & beauty items), the Home 360 brand (for home products) and the My Essentials brand (for food products).[8]
On March 17, 2008, Hannaford Supermarkets announced a data intrusion that resulted in the theft of customer credit and debit card numbers. No personal information, such as names or addresses, was accessed. The intrusion affected Hannaford stores, Sweetbay stores in Florida and certain independently owned retail locations in the Northeast that carry Hannaford products. They say they are aware of about 1,800 cases of fraud related to the data intrusion and about 4.2 million unique account numbers were exposed.[9]
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