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Bruno's Supermarkets, LLC was an American chain of grocery stores with its headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama.〔(Home ). Bruno's Supermarkets. Retrieved on October 5, 2012. "800 Lakeshore Parkway, Birmingham, AL 35211"〕 It founded in 1932 by Joe Bruno in Birmingham. During the company's pinnacle, it operated over 300 stores under the names Bruno’s, Food World, Foodmax, Food Fair, Fresh Value, Vincent's Markets, Piggly Wiggly, Consumer Foods, and American Fare in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina. The chain was acquired by Birmingham-based Belle Foods which discontinued the brand in 2012. ==History== The company began as a market opened by Joseph Bruno in Birmingham, Alabama during the Great Depression. According to the 1983 book ''Joe: The Fiftieth Anniversary of Bruno’s Food Stores'' by Pat Dunbar, “the store would have fit into a modern day meat cooler.” The company grew steadily, with ten stores in place during the 1950s, and 29 stores open under the Bruno's name when it became a publicly traded company in 1971. In 1972, Bruno’s opened its discount grocery chain, Food World, which was followed by warehouse-oriented Consumer Foods. As Food World and Consumer Foods became more profitable, the old Bruno’s stores began to be phased out. Consumer Foods was replaced by Food Fair in 1983, and in 1984 Bruno's opened its first Foodmax stores. On December 11 of 1991, the nearly $3 billion company suffered a catastrophic blow when one of its two corporate jets crashed into Lavender Mountain in Rome, Georgia killing all 9 passengers. The Chairman along with a founder of the company, and several executive officers were aboard at the time of the crash. The crash caused a large outpouring of grief among the Birmingham metropolitan community due to the family and the company's well-known philanthropic contributions. The Bruno's Classic, a PGA Seniors Tour tournament which was announced just prior to the crash, was renamed the Bruno's Memorial Classic. The 1990s also saw the reintroduction of the Bruno’s banner on stores, this time as Bruno’s Supercenters and Bruno’s Food and Pharmacy, both of which were upper-class stores. In 1996, Bruno's began converting its Foodmax stores to the Bruno's banner in the Nashville, Tennessee market, including the construction of several new stores to replace smaller, aging ones. Before the process was complete (some stores carried Foodmax signage on the outside and Bruno's signage inside), the company sold these stores to Albertsons, which finished construction, but spent less than 4 years in the market before shuttering all of its Nashville-area locations (most of which later became Publix). Another concept, the upscale Vincent's Market, was tried in a one-location experiment in Homewood, Alabama. The experimental store featured a wide variety of prepared foods such as seafood, bakery goods and take-out meals as well as regular grocery sales. Around 2000, Vincent's Market was converted to the Bruno's nameplate (though it was largely unchanged otherwise), and the Vincent's Market name was applied to the deli/bakery departments in all existing Bruno's stores. In 1995, the company was acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), a leveraged buyout firm. That acquisition was ill-fated, as the company's debt structure combined with management missteps and increased competition from Wal-Mart Supercenters to drive it into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2000 after closing a number of unprofitable stores, but acquiring three new stores from the Gregerson's chain in and around Gadsden, Alabama. The company was sold in December 2001 to Ahold, a Dutch corporation, who then combined it with BI-LO. The new management struggled as well, and in 2005, Ahold finally sold the combined operation to Lone Star Funds, a private investment company which also owns Captain D's and Shoney's restaurants. Lone Star then sold some stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers, which operated the new stores under its Southern Family Markets affiliate for a time but closed most of the acquired stores in 2007. C&S Wholesale also is the primary supplier for Bruno's which derives from the agreement between Lone Star and C&S. C&S would own and operate the logistics and warehouse while Lone Star would own and operate the stores. On March 20, 2007, Lone Star Funds announced it had spun out Bruno's from BI-LO creating a separate corporate entity. Seven unprofitable stores were closed as a result of this transaction. In October 2008, Bruno's announced plans to close 22 of their 40 in-store pharmacies "because of their consistently low performance over the last several years and the lack of prospect for turning them around." This left Bruno's with 18 in-store pharmacies within the 66 stores they ran at the time. All inventories and records were sold to CVS/pharmacy, and all employees were either offered severance packages or employment with CVS. In December 2008 the corporate offices were moved to International Park office park located in Hoover, Alabama. This move left the former Bruno's headquarters located on Lakeshore Parkway in Birmingham totally in the hands of C&S Wholesale Grocers who acquired the building in 2005 as part of purchasing the former logistics operations and warehouse previously owned by Bruno's. At the beginning of 2009, Bruno's Supermarkets operated 23 Bruno's stores, 41 Food World stores. 2 Foodmax stores remained in Northport and Oxford. The Foodmax stores were operated the same way as Food World stores with their name being the only discernible difference. The two Foodmax stores were tied to labor agreements with the UFCW union, which prevented any name change to the stores. The employees in these stores wore "Food World" uniforms, and the signage in the stores used the Food World banner. Both of these stores were closed following the company's sale to Southern Family Markets. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bruno's」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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