is an
American Grocery Store chain over 1,220 stores found in 11
Southeast ern and
Mid-Atlantic states, including
Delaware ,
Florida ,
Georgia ,
Kentucky ,
Maryland ,
North Carolina ,
Pennsylvania ,
South Carolina ,
Tennessee ,
Virginia , and
West Virginia . Serving these stores are 485 Food Lion
Semi Trucks driving 52 million miles per year. There are 28,000 different products offered in each store, and more than 2,900 Food Lion brand products. They receive more than 10 million customers every week, and employ approximately 73,000 people. Food Lion is headquartered in
Salisbury, North Carolina . Food Lion is part of the
Belgian Delhaize Group .
Food Lion was founded in
1957 in Salisbury, North Carolina as Food Town. The Food Lion name was adopted when it began expanding into areas where the name Food Town was already being used by other chains.
Food Lion aggressively expanded throughout the Carolinas, and entered Virginia in the 1980's. Later years would take them into Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Food Lion's main concept is provided around building small, convenient supermarkets for its customers, featuring "extra low prices" on name brand and private label merchandise. Food Lion's concept generally lacks all the bells and whistles of its competitors. Only some recent stores and stores of acquisition have pharmacies, and some older and smaller stores lack a deli or bakery. Its small footprint allows it to build many stores in a large metropolitan area, as well as to locate in small, underserved towns where its competitors see no opportunity. Food Lion, in some of these towns, is the only supermarket serving such a community.
Food Lion expanded throughout the East Coast, but negative publicity hurt the chain as it attempted to enter the
Pittsburgh ,
Philadelphia , Dallas/Fort Worth, and Florida marketplaces, and restricted the chain's growth.
The chain remains strong in Virginia and North Carolina especially, and is strong in specific parts of the other states in its trade area.
In 2004, Food Lion closed some of its stores throughout the country, as the "Extra Low Prices" model it created was showing signs of weakness, as
Wal-Mart Supercenters began operating throughout its trade area. Since then, Food Lion has changed the direction of its stores, moving more upscale, providing more ethnic and organic foods, a new Butcher's Brand of premium meats, as well as incorporating better ambiance in its stores, going with a more refined, classy look.
Food Lion offers its customers a yellow
Loyalty Card to take advantage of weekly savings at the checkout.
Bloom is a concept store being test marketed in the
2004 . The concept is based on the idea of using a slightly unconventional layout to maximize shopper convenience.
Reid's is a small chain of stores located in various rural South Carolina communities, specifically
Barnwell ,
Orangeburg ,
Langley ,
New Ellenton ,
Batesburg ,
Walterboro , St. George, and
Saluda . These stores were all formerly branded as Food Lion stores and continue to carry Food Lion branded goods and use the Food Lion infrastructure.
The common theme to these stores appears to be that they are all older stores which Food Lion has apparently determined are located in markets small enough to make enlarging or opening a new store unprofitable, but which with a different brand name to differentiate them from Food Lion so that the prices and selection can be different from a standard Food Lion store can still be profitably run without remodeling. One exception to this standard is the Langley location, which was converted from a new Food Lion store which had been open for only a few months.
Reid's apparently has no
Web presence and advertises mainly via newspaper ads with occasional television ads when a new store "opens". However, you can view the Reid's weekly ad on the website of
The People-Sentinel , a newspaper serving
Barnwell County , SC. Reid's also runs sale advertisements on several radio stations in South Carolina, featuring the chain's namesake Reid Boylston reading the week's specials over the phone and closing with an exuberant recitation of the chain's slogan, "We can save you money!"
In the
1990s , Food Lion gained a degree of notoriety when it was the subject of an
ABC News investigation. ABC had received a tip about unsanitary practices at Food Lion. Two ABC reporters had posed as Food Lion employees, and witnessed the unsanitary practices at Food Lion. Much of what they had seen was videotaped with cameras hidden in wigs that they were wearing.
Food Lion was then featured in a segment on the
News Magazine ''
Primetime Live '', in which their unsanitary practices were exposed.
Food Lion responded by suing ABC for fraud, because the ABC employees misrepresented themselves; for
Trespassing , because the ABC employees came on to Food Lion property without permission; and for breach of loyalty, the ABC employees videotaped non-public areas of the store and revealed internal company information.
Food Lion was awarded
USD $5.5 million by a
Jury in
1997 . The award was later reduced by a judge to $316,000. Then the verdict was overturned by the
U.S. Court Of Appeals in
Richmond, Virginia . According to the court, even though ABC was wrong to do what they had done, they felt that Food Lion was unable to show that they had been directly injured by ABC's actions.
An indirect result was that Food Lion ended up exiting the
Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex market, which it had recently entered. (It should be noted that the DFW market is highly competitive, and the stores were already being criticized for being too small and lacked the amenities desired by the local shoppers—for example, Food Lion did not include
Pharmacies in its stores.)
