Knob Hill Farms - Food Terminals

Food Terminals

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 — 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 company received approval from Durham Regional Council to convert the abandoned Ontario Malleable Iron Company Limited's factory in Oshawa, Ontario into what was described as the world's largest food store. 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, dentist's office, video rental store, and a card shop were among the other businesses initially located within the terminal.

The Ontario Municipal Board and the Ontario government approved a 12-acre (49,000 m2) site in 1982 for the seventh Knob Hill Farms terminal, this one at Weston Road and Highway 401 in the Weston community of Toronto. The 325,000 square foot (7.45 acres, or 30,200 square-metre) store opened in the fall of 1985.

The company proposed to convert an abandoned Canadian General Electric plant in Scarborough, Ontario into a store, but Scarborough City Council voted against the project in 1985 and that decision was upheld by the Ontario Municipal Board in 1987.

In 1988, the Ontario Labor Relations Board found that Knob Hill Farms had acted improperly two years earlier when it fired 14 employees who were trying to organize workers in Oshawa under the United Food and Commercial Workers union. The Oshawa store became the first in the Knob Hill Farms chain to be unionized.

The same year, construction began on a terminal in Cambridge, Ontario, the first outside the Greater Toronto Area. Construction was delayed repeatedly, resulting in penalties of about $2.4 million paid to the City of Cambridge. The 31,500 square-metre store finally opened in August 1991. The store began laying off workers less than two months after it opened. In 1999, the company proposed redeveloping the site into a convention centre.

The 10,000 square-metre, two-storey Riverdale food terminal at Carlaw Avenue and Gerrard Street in Toronto opened in 1992 and was the company's ninth location. A wholesale warehouse opened in Scarborough the following year.

In the 90's Knob Hill Farms was easily recognized in local newspapers with their one or two page ads printed in black and blue. Advertised on the air they used the jingle "You know you get your value when you shop, at Knob Hill Farms... The Food Terminal."