| Type | Private unlimited company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail (various) |
| Founded | Cork |
| Headquarters | Cork City, County Cork, Ireland |
| Area served | Ireland |
| Products | Groceries, Fresh food, etc. |
| Website | www.supervalu.ie |
SuperValu is a supermarket chain in Ireland and Spain, owned by the Musgraves wholesaler firm. Its headquarters is located in Cork and has stores across the entirety of Ireland.
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It is very similar in organisation to the SPAR and Londis chains of stores, in that the individual stores are owned on a franchise basis, with the store owners using standardised store layouts and brandings, and selling the same own brand products. However it differs from these chains in that SuperValu outlets tend to be significantly larger than the convenience store formats used by the other symbol groups, and the larger stores are on a par with the other full service supermarkets. In this regard, SuperValu regards its major competition as being Tesco Ireland, Dunnes Stores, Eurospar and Superquinn (Superquinn was bought by Musgrave Group which is the parent company of SuperValu, Speculation has begun on what will happen to the Superquinn brand) , rather than the other symbol groups. Owing to the success of SuperValu, Londis have branched out into supermarkets with their Londis Plus brand and SPAR have introduced their multinational brand EUROSPAR. Many Irish towns have a SuperValu store, and for many parts of the Republic, it is the only retail chain in the community.
SuperValu have three own brands: SuperValu brand, SuperValu Nice Price, a discount brand and SuperValu Supreme, a more high-end brand. These are the equivalent of Tesco Value and Tesco Finest.
SuperValu focus heavily on trying to prove that their products aren't more expensive than rivals Tesco and Dunnes Stores, with the "SuperValu Price Promise".
The company was founded in 1979 out of the larger outlets in Musgrave's VG chain (originally formed in 1960). The smaller VG stores became Centra. From a base of sixteen stores (mainly in Munster), SuperValu had 182 stores in the Republic of Ireland and 36 stores in Northern Ireland as of 2004. Along the way, Musgrave has pursued a policy of buying stores itself and then re-leasing them to franchisees, acquiring some of the insolvent H Williams stores in 1987, L&N in 1995, and Wellworths (in Northern Ireland) in 1996.
Wellworths-SuperValu was a trading name used briefly by Musgrave following its acquisition of small-to-medium Wellworths outlets in 1996. This was to distinguish from larger Wellworths stores which were acquired by Safeway Stores (Ireland), a joint venture between Fitzwilton and Safeway (UK). In due course, the Wellworths name was entirely dropped.
SuperValu also operated supermarkets in larger Roches Stores locations under the name "SuperValu at Roches Stores" for a few years.
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