Dead Malls of Canada

[ssiguy]

BC was also the last place in Canada to get Canadian Tire and Great Canadian Superstore.
BC has no headquarters of any major national retailers at all and tends to be the last place to get expansions.

[MolsonExport]

BC was the very first place I ever encountered Great Canadian Superstore (1994). Are you sure?

wikipedia disagrees with you

Originating in Western Canada in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the banner expanded into Ontario in the early 2000s as Loblaw attempts to fend off competition from department stores including U.S.-based Walmart.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Kind of almost like how Metro Vancouver got Tim Hortons relatively late compared to the rest of Canada and is one of the few places in Canada where Tim Hortons doesn't dominate relative to Starbucks.

https://www.bcbusiness.ca/why-vancouver-is-the-only-market-tim-hortons-hasnt-cracked

Ya exactly one of my primary examples. Starbucks formed just a few hours south in Seattle. Different country but same culture.

[Denscity]

Also very few Kelsey's and Swiss Chalet and last to get East Side Marios afaik.

[Denscity]

And no pizza pizza don't think.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Denscity

Ya exactly one of my primary examples. Starbucks formed just a few hours south in Seattle. Different country but same culture.

And conversely, Tim Hortons spread to US locations nearby (like Buffalo, NY) and in the eastern US earlier than they did to Vancouver.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/discount-retail-boom-1.3997734

Article from earlier in the year talks about how Giant Tiger was expanding.

Giant Tiger seems to be associated with "small town Canada" a lot.

Its presence in the GTA as it approaches the city itself seems barely felt by Torontonians. It maintains a little foothold within the city limits -- a couple of locations in Scarborough, and one in Etobicoke. All are within striking distance of a Walmart though.

Giant Tiger west of the Ontario and Manitoba boarder is under a franchise agreement with the North West Company. It given them a banner to use in larger centres where they don't want to put a Northern Store. That said it still feels like a deep discounter and has the product mix I would have expected from seeing Giant Tiger stores in Ontario.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Denscity

Also very few Kelsey's and Swiss Chalet and last to get East Side Marios afaik.

These brands are owned by Cara. Cara had there start being the food services company that supplied food on the trains (don't remember if it was a CN or CP subsidiary) and the restaurants in the stations. They did the airline food for Air Canada. I think now they are only restraints.

They also own Millstons and New York Fries that are more common in the west.

[YYCguys]

This thread seems to have gotten off track from dead malls to retail/restaurants.

To bring it back on topic...thank you to GernB for adding that info re: Centre Village Mall. I had forgotten about that one. I have to wonder when/if the rest of the interior mall will become swallowed up and transformed into an entirely outdoor mall. As I recall, the inside mall area was not very busy.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

BC was the very first place I ever encountered Great Canadian Superstore (1994). Are you sure?

wikipedia disagrees with you

Are you actually giving something ssiguy said about BC some weight? Ask Leftcoaster or any such BC forum member and his sole purpose on this forum seems to be to spread distorted images of BC.

[Nashe]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

BC was the very first place I ever encountered Great Canadian Superstore (1994). Are you sure?
wikipedia disagrees with you

I think variations of it sprung up all over:

Originally Posted by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Superstore

Loblaw entered Atlantic Canada through the acquisition of Atlantic Wholesalers, owner of the SaveEasy chain, in 1976.

In 1986, the company opened its first large-scale grocery store in Moncton, New Brunswick, using the name The Real Atlantic Superstore. In 1995 the name was shortened to the present one and the store designs were reformatted to the "market style" with the slogan "Low Prices and More!" Most SaveEasy stores, excluding those in rural areas, were eventually converted to the SuperValu or Superstore format, either though renovation or relocation.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

I remember talking to someone from Australia once and he told me he was surprised that in North America many retail jobs in malls such as cashiers in food courts etc. were held by older people rather than teens or college aged folks.

He told me that in Australia, these kinds of jobs are still traditionally seen as a young person's job or a student's first job.

My experience is completely opposite. In Australia, many if not a majority of retail and restaurant workers are mid twenties and older. Most of my Canadian experience was in Calgary where almost all such workers were in their teens and early 20s as few older people would work those jobs. That may have changed with the recession. Australian teens are disadvantaged as they can rarely compete against older workers for these types of jobs. This could be an unintended consequence of Australia's extreme high minimum wage.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

BC was the very first place I ever encountered Great Canadian Superstore (1994). Are you sure?

wikipedia disagrees with you

Yes. I remember the first Superstore in BC (Kelowna) pening in the early 90s. Tim Hortons didn't hit BC until the early 90s either. Neither were in Alberta until the late 80s, but Loblaw's SuperValu brand was used on small format stores. Safeway and to a lesser extent Woodward's World of Foods more or less owned the grocery markets in both provinces until that time (Safeway acquired the Woodward's grocery stores in the mid 80s). Canadian Tire money didn't hit BC or Alberta until the mid 90s.

[WhipperSnapper]

Tim Hortons was virtually non existent in Toronto well into the early 2000s despite it being everywhere else domestically. There absolutely crushed the local competition when they did expand into Toronto.

[GernB]

Originally Posted by YYCguys

This thread seems to have gotten off track from dead malls to retail/restaurants.

To bring it back on topic...thank you to GernB for adding that info re: Centre Village Mall. I had forgotten about that one. I have to wonder when/if the rest of the interior mall will become swallowed up and transformed into an entirely outdoor mall. As I recall, the inside mall area was not very busy.

Yes it was/is on life support, only about a dozen stores left, and no outlet into Save-On or London Drugs. However the old Save-On building across the parking lot is supposedly going to be converted into a medical-dental-office complex, though I haven't heard when this is to happen and there are still no signs of it.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

Tim Hortons was virtually non existent in Toronto well into the early 2000s despite it being everywhere else domestically. There absolutely crushed the local competition when they did expand into Toronto.

How much of the crushing of the local competition was Torontonians' eagerness to buy into Tim Horton's branding of Canadian identity, I wonder?

It's interesting how relatively recent the rise of Tim Hortons as a symbol of nationalism and national identity has been (probably well within a generation, or even less for many people depending on the part of Canada) yet it feels like it's been that way for such a long time.

[WhipperSnapper]

I think it's more a case of an excellent strategy and a superior product. Save the largest competition for last when you're five times its size and hit them hard and quick.

[MTLskyline]

The same was somewhat true of Quebec at the time. Dunkin Donuts was the dominant coffee/donut chain in Quebec until the late 1990s. Dunkin Donuts had over 200 stores in Quebec in its heyday, and Tim Hortons was barely present at all. By the early 2000s, Dunkin started getting overtaken by Tim Hortons which rapidly expanded in the province and made Dunkin Donuts seem tired/out of date in comparison.

Today, there are only 3 Dunkin Donuts left in Quebec, and all three look like they're stuck in the 1980s. Having said that, their donuts are fresher than Tims (they're made daily in the Verdun location and delivered to the other two stores), and the coffee is better.

[vid]

Apparently the 100th Tim Hortons opened in Thunder Bay in the 1980s, but I had never heard of the place until about 1999 when they started aggressively expanding. We went to Sault Ste Marie that year and ordered Robin's Eggs at a Tim Hortons and they got mad at us. These days they don't know what you're talking about.

Some of them are losing the knowledge that Bismarck = Boston Creme but I educate them.

Robin's has gone downhill in the past few years, they now have the same supplier for all their food as Tim Hortons so everything is shit, just like Tim Hortons. Same donuts, same coffee, same muffins. The real reason Robin's lags behind Tim's is staff training. The Robin's still act like they're the only player in town, they have the old school patronizing diner staff they've always had when today's detached consumers expect robotic wage slaves.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by MTLskyline

The same was somewhat true of Quebec at the time. Dunkin Donuts was the dominant coffee/donut chain in Quebec until the late 1990s. Dunkin Donuts had over 200 stores in Quebec in its heyday, and Tim Hortons was barely present at all. By the early 2000s, Dunkin started getting overtaken by Tim Hortons which rapidly expanded in the province and made Dunkin Donuts seem tired/out of date in comparison.

Today, there are only 3 Dunkin Donuts left in Quebec, and all three look like they're stuck in the 1980s. Having said that, their donuts are fresher than Tims (they're made daily in the Verdun location and delivered to the other two stores), and the coffee is better.

Now I understand why one of my French teachers, from Quebec, sometime about around the year 2000 or so, still inadvertently called timbits "munchkins".