Decline
Trouble started brewing for the chain after the death of Sam Steinberg in 1978; his laissez-faire dealings with the union and lack of a succession plan for the company began its decline. Things worsened rapidly when a power struggle developed between his daughter Mitzi, her husband Mel Dobrin, daughter Marilyn Steinberg Cobrin and daughter Evelyn Steinberg.
The Miracle Food Mart and Ultra Food & Drug stores in Ontario were sold to A&P Canada, who converted the Miracle Food Mart stores to its "A&P" and "Dominion" banners. The Ottawa locations of Steinberg's were bought by Loblaws and either converted to "Loblaws" or "Your Independent Grocer" banners or closed outright.
By the end of the 1980s, rising costs and increased competition were taking their toll, and Steinberg's was placed on the auction block for an estimated $1.5 billion. The Ontario-based Loblaws chain initially attempted to acquire Steinberg's, a move blocked by the Quebec provincial government on nationalist grounds. They arranged for the firm to be purchased by Socanav, a shipping firm with no experience in retail.
Read more about this topic: Steinberg's (supermarket)
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)
“Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)