Type Franchise Predecessor VG Revenue €2.58 billion (2014) Number of locations 223 (2015) Number of employees 14,500 (2015) | Industry Retail, Supermarket Key people Chris Martin (CEO) Headquarters Cork, Republic of Ireland Motto Real Food, Real People | |
 | ||
Areas served Northern Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Spain Founded 1979, Cork, Republic of Ireland CEO Martin Kelleher (Nov 2011–) Parent organizations Musgrave Group, Joyces Supermarket Ltd Profiles | ||
SuperValu is a supermarket chain that operates on the island of Ireland.
Contents
Similar in organisation to Spar and Londis, in that most individual stores are owned on a franchise basis, with the store owners using a standardised store format and selling the same own brand SuperValu products. However it differs from these chains in that SuperValu outlets tend to be significantly larger than the convenience store formats used by Spar and Londis, and the larger SuperValu stores are on a par with full-service supermarkets. Their competitors are Tesco Ireland, Dunnes Stores and Eurospar.
History
The supermarket was founded in 1979 out of the larger outlets in Musgrave's VG chain (originally formed in 1960). The smaller VG stores became Centra. From a base of sixteen stores (mainly in Munster), SuperValu had 182 stores in the Republic of Ireland and 36 stores in Northern Ireland as of 2004. Along the way, Musgrave has pursued a policy of buying stores itself and then re-leasing them to franchisees, acquiring some of the insolvent H Williams stores in 1987, L&N in 1995, and Wellworths (in Northern Ireland) in 1996.
Wellworths-SuperValu was a trading name used briefly by Musgrave following its acquisition of small-to-medium Wellworths outlets in 1996. This was to distinguish from larger Wellworths stores which were acquired by Safeway Stores (Ireland), a joint venture between Fitzwilton and Safeway (UK). In due course, the Wellworths name was entirely dropped.
SuperValu previously operated supermarkets in larger Roches Stores locations under the name "SuperValu at Roches Stores" for many years.
Superquinn was bought by the Musgrave Group, parent of SuperValu in 2011. In August 2013 it was announced that all Superquinn stores would be rebranded to SuperValu with all the existing stores eventually changed to SuperValu by February 2014. As a result, SuperValu became the largest supermarket chain in the Republic of Ireland.