How does a Supermarket Chain Fail? Knob Hill Farms Documentary
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- Опубліковано 26 бер 2019
- 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.
In August 2000, Stavro announced that all stores would close. At the time, the company had about 800 employees at 10 locations. Knob Hill Farms had lost market share to new competitors, including Costco and large Loblaws stores, and had racked up significant debts. - Фільми й анімація
I still have a Knob Hill Farms basket that I use as a laundry basket.
I have 2 Knob Hill Farms coffee mugs.
ME TOO....SAME USE
Same
I loved that place. Sometimes wish it was still around.
For $50 an entire shopping cart was full of groceries in the 90's and on top of that, they had virtually indestructible baskets! I'm sure I have some lying around with books in it somewhere.
Use those baskets for my tools and work boots, still have tons hanging around!
Nice work in lots of ways, but is there a reason why the font for flashing commentary has to b so tiny , scrunched up into very hard to read lettering, if u enlarged this threefold it would b a lot more helpful!@@OutsideLiving
We used to treat the shopping carts like rollercoasters when going down the big ramp at Knob Hill Farms on Lansdowne Ave.
I used to see birds flying all over and have a couple cat sightings.
Knob Hill Farms was before its time. There was another massive Knob Hill outlet at Weston and 401 back-in-the-day. If you didn't live in the immediate Toronto area Knob Hill Farms was only something you heard about in the rest of Ontario.
God, brings back memories of shopping there in the early 90's with my parents. I remember most of all the extremely unsanitary conditions of the terminal, sorry I meant to say grocery store...
Even as a child I vividly remember birds flying through the meat dept pooping on all sorts of fresh product... and plentiful mice, which are normally nocturnal and afraid of human activity, scurrying across the corners of the grocery aisle mid day. Those were the days!
I remember Knob Hill Farms as a place for newly arrived immigrants to purchase affordable food as they transitioned in Canada. My parents would shop there in the early 90's then as my parents became more established we started shopping at other grocery stores. When I read Knob Hill Farms was closing It teared me, there's a lot of less fortunate people or people starting off trying to get established now unable to find affordable food. 2yrs later Price Chopper, No Frills and Freshco have pretty much replaced Knob Hill Farms.
My grandparents shopped there and they were immigrants from Ukraine. Thanks for sharing.
I was shopping with my grandmother at the store that day. We went from there to Kmart & had something to eat. The robbery happened as we were at Kmart. The robbers went from Knob Hill to the small parking lot off Albert just beside Kmart. We did not see or hear anything till the police were around.
It was a great store
It was very sad. I heard of the Cherry St. land contract agreement falling thru, a lot of frustration with City Hall and Stavros decided to change his business. I very much enjoyed Knob Hill Farms, Lansdowne. You could find mountains of top brands for the best prices, staff were friendly, customer oriented and the carts were huge.
as a kid i remember shopping with my parents at the lansdowne and dundas location, currently now a nofrills. it felt like walking into a massive airport with rank smelling food.
In the 80s, especially after the new Terminal in Weston opened up, it was THE place to get groceries when Dominion was too expensive. My parents shopped there all the time: it was always an adventure going there. By the 90's, it was dirty, the food was mostly spoiled, and everyone started getting debit cards which you couldn't use at Knob Hill Farms. The trip alone was no longer worth getting bad food in a run-down warehouse. By this time, Loeb, No Frills, Food City, Dominion, Shoppers and now Wal-Mart were all selling groceries, and were all much closer to home.
It's a shame: an idea like that - strictly food, none of this other gimmicky stuff - would do us well today, when food prices are unaffordable, even for middle-class earners.
I can't go past the spot on Yonge without seeing it there, like a phantom. Back in the day when rubber wasn't passed off as "beef".
Ahhhh...memories! Fun time on Friday evenings hitting up the cow head place. Literally a free for all. It was good times.
I remember the clothes basket the store used 2 dollars a basket when I first moved to Toronto 1988 with my brothers we always shopped there we would collect the basket save them up for Christmas you got the 2 dollars back for each basket I loved shopping there
Nice work documenting this. Stavro was a go getter for sure. He grew up in the same Macedonian village as my father and took a liking to my father's sister but things never went that way. They have all passed now but it could have been "uncle Steve" there for a while :) I think near the end he didn't need the money and his kids didn't want to take it over. They were into horses.
Hi Martial. Thanks for the share. Very interesting. Thank you for the watch.
Was Macedonian village located in Greece?
@@tomvas81 *Bulgarian
@Boris Krastev a true brother of the Greeks
Times have definitely changed. I liked the fact that Starvo was an immigrant to Canada and then worked hard to become established in Canada. I have no doubt that Knob Hill Farms also helped other immigrants transition in Canada by selling affordable food. My parents use to shop there all the time as they worked there way up in Canada. Not so sure if that's the case anymore.
You forgot to mention the Dixie mall knob hill farms ❤️ my whole family worked there.. I loved that place❤️
Oh True! thanks @misterlindo
Also Hwy. 401 & Hespeler Rd. in Cambridge Ont.
Really cool facts but I wish it was narrated
I like Knob Hills, the only thing I never bought there was the milk after it went bad one too many times...
Woodbine and 7 in the early 90s when I lived in Thornhill, Cherry Beach one when I moved to the Danforth, C.B was pretty bleak and warehouse like but had great deals and lots of variety.
Lived right in front of it from 1997-2005 (the 3 houses beside the tracks). My dad had a candle shop in it when it was a flea market, made friends with the little girl from the clothing store and the little boy from the sandwich kiosk. The store was yellow, and my dad had a long ponytail
miss the one on Weston Rd Toronto
I always kind of felt badly for the small family stores that were lost when Knob Hill moved in. But I suppose it is inevitable.
I remember going to the one in Oshawa as a small child. After that they used the building for filming movies and tv shows.
Not even a mention of the last store to open at Weston Rd and 401.
My girlfriend's father called the chain Hillbilly Farms.😂
I remember the birds flitting about the rafters inside the store at the Cherry St. location. They were cute.
When i was a kid, I never bought candies I always stole it from that grocery store. The store itself was very dirty and badly maintained.
They surely couldn't compete with No Frills and Sobeys at the time. so of course they didn't make it and went defunct.
Everybody stole from Knob Hill.
Mr Stavros had a great idea. We had fun shopping at Knob Hill. We miss Knob Hill...
Cambridge terminal is now a home depot
Knob hill certainly would have continued to be popular if Stavro had a competent successor. Knob hill could have turned itself into something like Costco. Could have made itself cleaner and better organized rather than a giant village market. Maybe could have opened “warehouses” all over Canada and beyond. Knob Hill could have been more than it was if his children were not spoiled. I know that Stavro died rich, but it’s a shame that a life’s work has to end in his lifetime. As bright as Stavro was, he was no Sam Walton. Just like Ed Mervish. Stavro was a big fish in a small pond.
I agree.
Can somebody explain to me why knob hill went bankrupt? I remember my grandpa telling me stories that he heard rumors that Steve Starvio would gamble on horses idk if that is true if someone would explain on why it went bankrupt?
Refused to get with the times...they refused to take debit, didn't even have a bank machine until 1999...that was the Cambridge store....poor service, bad management. A store that was too large and not enough staff. Then they put thar catastrophic failure of a mall in the middle of the store. Sold bad food because they didn't want to lose money....I know all of this because I worked in their meat department. By the time I got promoted to supervisor it was mostly a graveyard. I refused to sell bad food.
store was pretty dirty, once cockroaches infested many parts of south oshawa mainly from this store, many people stopped going there...
Really interesting video. A couple critiques if it helps: double check your spelling and grammar at a few parts before you upload, also the part talking about the security guard being shot and killed doesn't really need the gunshot sound effects, the story is shocking enough and it kind of feels a little disrespectful to a person that died, at least to me. Again though, really well researched, music choices blended together well; it's a good video.
Hi MyOldTapes, I agree with you that the gunshots were a bit too much, I didn't realize until after the video was published that it seemed over the top. As UA-cam wont let me edit the audio after the video is published, I have removed that entire scene from the video, it should update within the next 24 hours. I did some research about Richard Bridgman during the making of this video, if I remember correctly there was an article saying he was wearing a shirt that said "#1 dad" under his uniform, also he was working as a guard part time to make some extra money for his family for Christmas, very sad, may he rest in peace.
Outside Living aw man, that is heartbreaking.
I can smell this video.
A giant building sits vacant while the issue of homelessness is prevailing in our community!
Someone owns the building. Lets say the door was opened to homeless and someone got raped or injured or something. Guess who gets sued? The person who owns the building.
The building could go up in flames and then the owner has no asset to try to later sell.
I do not see how homeless problem would be the problem or rest on people who own buildings like this to fix and take great personal risk.
Yeah but Canadian capitalist are just g hey! The sites been empty for 24 years, sounds like dude has too much money and can afford getting sued… he didn’t even try insurance fraud!
Drug abuse is the problem.
It was turned into a shitty flea market for like a year (2005/2006?)🙈
I lived around the corner for 10 years aha 👌🏼 this is cool
Oh right. I remembering hearing that somewhere. Thank you!
@@OutsideLiving Great Video. I knew Steve quite well. Great guy. Would visit every store, up early and travel in his Caddi. Also knew many of the managers of each store.
@@moeanthony9308 aha that would have been cool to meet steve! Heard he was down to earth. Thanks for sharing moe.
@@OutsideLiving great guy I must say and his wife Sally.
@@moeanthony9308 did you meet him at the oshawa terminal?
Dare we say he was just a little ahead of his time with how all the big players in the industry have all opened huge Superstores selling just about everything under 1 roof? I think Knob Hill might of survived in today’s day and age?
I remember the one at Dixie Value Mall, it is now replaced by No Frills. In the 90s, one of the assistant supervisor/manager was charged with sexual harassment of the cashier girls that work there. The guy was doing his Italian/Portuguese macho goomba stereotype proud.
Cool video. I usedto have a guy that would steal Knob Hill Farms baskets and return them just so he could buy a gram of weed from me each day lol
Very dystopian looking.
I worked there from 95 until 2000 when they shut it down. A darn shame it was. Products they sold were actually good quality and the prices were second to none...unfortunately Stavros trusted people too much and it failed
That and no frills under cut him.
@@moeanthony9308 No Frills never under cut him....nobody did. What happened was lack of cleanliness, leading to the sale of rotten food, lack of management, poor service and the inability to get with the times. We were a cash store when everybody else was excepting debit and credit...what a joke. There were not even scanners!!! I speak for my store anyways. It was a monstrosity of a store with no service. No Frills just happened to be the next place that shoppers filtered into because of all of those issues. Prices were close but they could not undercut him. If anything he forced those guys to stay cheap.
He sold at losses consistently with a number of his products. But when you deliver horrible service, rotten product, are very inconvenient and 0 change when everybody else is doing those things people get sick of it. He 100% neglected his grocery business...and didn't keep with the times. He used to personally come in once a week. Near the end it became once every 6 months.
@@KyprosEc no just bought out his stores.. What's the diff. They didn't even have scanners that alone beat him out. What are you talking about bro?
@@KyprosEc I knew them all. Frenchie.. All of them
@@moeanthony9308 they had to because they could not compete on price. I never knew of the other stores as I never visited them. I only speak for mine. Read my edited comment above I had to take a trip down memory lane
Better if it was a speaker explanating it! I enjoyed shopping there, the prices were excellent, better than price gouging of today!
The bigger fish of the e$tablishment destroyed k h f
Stuff is decided behind the scenes.
I miss their cantinas!!!