Knob Hill Farms
| Industry | Supermarket retail |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1951 |
| Founder | Steve Stavro |
| Defunct | 2001 |
|
Area served
|
Greater Toronto Area |
| Owner | Steve Stavro |
Knob Hill Farms was a supermarket chain in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by Steve Stavro, and operated from 1951 to 2001.
Stavro's father operated Louis Meat Market in Toronto from the 1930s to the 1950s. By 1954, Stavro had gone off on his own, managing outdoor markets and grocery stores under the Knob Hill Farms name. By the late 1950s, he was operating at nine sites in Toronto.
In 1963, Stavro changed direction and opened his first "food terminal"—a forerunner of the big-box store with 65,000 square feet (6,000 square-metres) of space just north of Toronto at Woodbine Avenue and Highway 7 in Markham.
In 1971, Knob Hill Farms expanded into Pickering with its second terminal. A third location — the first within Toronto, at Lansdowne Avenue and Dundas Street West on the site previously occupied by a National Cash Register (NCR) plant — followed in 1975. A second Toronto terminal opened in 1977 at Cherry Street and the Gardiner Expressway. The fifth store, billed as the largest food store in North America, opened in 1978 at Dixie Road and the Queen Elizabeth Way in Mississauga. This was the first store in the chain to sell some non-food products and was initially two storeys tall. The second storey was later closed to customers and used for storage. A restaurant, drug store, and wine shop all rented space within the building.
In 1981, the opened a location in Oshawa, Ontario in the structure of the Ontario Malleable Iron Company Limited's factory. The building had been used as an iron foundry since 1898, although the company had operated at that site since 1872. The 226,000 square foot (21,000 square-metre) store opened in June 1983. It had spurs for both Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railway lines running right to the store. A pharmacy, bakery (RH Bakery—the RH stood for Richmond Hill), dentist's office, video rental store, as well as a wine store (Wine Rack), and a card shop were among the other businesses initially located within the terminal.
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