If you want to purchase tomato paste with premium quality, then you need to look for reliable stores and we know that Zehrs market is considered one of them and it is so popular among the people of different nations, particularly Canadians.
Southern Ontario is the primary location for the majority of Zehrs Markets, which is a grocery store chain. This grocery store chain is owned and operated by a division of the multinational retail conglomerate Loblaw Companies, Ltd.
History
In July of 1950, Emory Zehr and his sons Clifford and Lester founded the first Zehrs store. They were joined in this endeavor by their father. This particular Zehrs store was found in the city of Kitchener, which is in the Canadian province of Ontario.
Emory and his sons had the belief that if they put themselves in the position of their customers, it would motivate them to produce the highest level of customer service that they were capable of delivering.
When the Zehrs first opened their doors for business, it was a family-run operation, and every member of the family pitched in to help out at the shop. While their mother, Elva, worked as the store’s cashier, the Zehr brothers assisted customers and filled the shelves.
The store did not have any elaborate decorations, and the product displays were all regarded as being quite straightforward. The supermarket didn’t have very appealing aesthetics, but it made up for it in terms of value by selling high-quality, freshly prepared meat and produce. Because of the store’s warm and inviting demeanor, customers who shopped there reported feeling like they belonged.
Customers in the neighborhood found the store to be appealing for a number of reasons, including its affordable and high-quality goods, the store’s proprietors’ approach to providing customer service, and the synergistic effect of these factors.
During the same decade, the Zehrs made the decision to broaden their retail footprint by opening more stores in addition to the one they already operated. There were already six Zehrs establishments in the Kitchener-Waterloo area by the time the 1960s rolled around.
During that time period, the stores had also expanded, meaning that they functioned more like large supermarkets than traditional neighborhood grocery stores. After a brief while, Zehrs expanded its operations into the Guelph City neighborhood.
Loblaw Companies, Ltd. completed the acquisition of Zehrs Markets in the year 1963. The new proprietor of the retail outlets proceeded with the expansion of the chain into new areas of the province.
Inflation was a major problem for Canadian consumers throughout the decade of the 1970s, which was also a difficult time for the country’s economy. The staff at Zehrs did everything they could to assist customers by providing reasonably priced goods of a high standard.
In spite of the difficult financial climate, the stores continued to grow, and they even bought out Gordon’s Markets, which was a grocery store chain with 11 locations. In the 1980s, Zehrs established an entire department that catered to the growing need for bulk food products.
This was the retailers’ response to the economic downturn that had gripped the nation. While this was going on, the businesses expanded their offerings to include things like photo labs and pharmacies on the premises.
With over 40 locations across South Ontario, Zehrs is one of the most prosperous grocery chains in operation today. The company’s stores are conveniently located throughout the area.
Emory Zehr, then 44 years old, was abandoned in the late 1940s by the Flash from the Past episode two weeks ago. He was standing at the intersection of Highland Road and West Avenue.
After opening and later selling three grocery stores over the course of the past two decades, he was now in the real estate business in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Do not make the mistake of assuming that Emory’s desire to reorganize the landscape of grocery selling in Kitchener has waned!
His obligations to his family had momentarily diverted his attention away from the burgeoning postwar real estate market. During that afternoon in 1949, those two areas of interest — groceries and real estate — collided right at the intersection of two streets that had been named previously the Petersburg Road and the Factory Road. These streets appeared to symbolically link Kitchener’s thriving industrial downtown with the nearby rural fields.
Kitchener had been annexing township acres to the southwest of Victoria Park beginning in the year 1920. Significant amounts of infill had already been completed, including the construction of a large contemporary hospital, a massive public swimming pool, and a public school with two storeys.
In the process of getting there, new streets including Patricia, North, Pleasant, Garden, Ruby, Brock, Spadina, Rex, and Van Camp were added to the map. And of particular importance to Emory was the fact that those streets were lined with hundreds of newly constructed homes occupied by thousands of individuals. There was one item that was lacking from this situation, and that was a store of some kind.
That, together with the vacant lot at Highland and West, set in action circumstances that led to the establishment of Zehrs Markets, which is still in operation to this day.
Emory reentered the retail industry with an intriguing business model that took advantage of the fact that he had two sons who shared his passion for groceries. Emory acquired and owned the property, but Cliff and Lester owned the business and the building. While Lester managed the storefront, Cliff was responsible for the office’s day-to-day operations.
Ed Witmer’s construction crews worked quickly to develop a building with a floor space of 2,000 square feet. Lester remarked in the future that the structure was “a little grocery store, little better than any corner store.” Whether it was a small business or not, it opened its doors on July 18, 1950, and regardless of how high the family had set their hopes for the first year, the business was a huge success.
A little less than two years later, an expansion was constructed that tripled the floor capacity of the structure. A barbershop known as Rudy Gille and a gift shop known as Zehrs moved into some of the additional areas in the basement.
The street-level stores that were occupied by Miller Drugs and Newtex Cleaners were adjacent to one another.
Emory had, whether on purpose or by mistake, established the beginnings of a shopping plaza as a result of the expanding number of companies and the provision of free parking in the area surrounding the expanded structure.
It wasn’t until 1955 that Kitchener got its first legitimate shopping plaza when the Frederick Street Plaza opened its doors. Before the decade of the 1950s came to a conclusion, Emory would likewise establish a campus in Waterloo.
However, before that happened, a new kind of plaza appeared in the Zehrs’ foreseeable future. In May of 1954, Emory established his second store on land he had purchased on Belmont Avenue, which was located in a shopping center that was soon dubbed Belmont Plaza.
Shoppers from the neighboring upscale Westmount neighborhood, which was another K-W residential area that lacked a grocery store, were drawn to the Belmont commercial district because of its expansive roadway, free angle parking, and shops that lined both sides.
In order for Emory to keep an eye on the expanding chain, Zehrs Market Limited was established with Emory owning sixty percent of the company’s shares and each of his sons having twenty percent.
Cliff relocated the corporate offices to the new location in Belmont, but Lester continued to manage the stores from their previous location in Highland.
Because Belmont, like Highland, was immensely profitable, Zehrs started disobeying city rules that enforced a closing time of six o’clock in the evening. Surprisingly, there was not much resistance to this.
Because of Zehrs, Kitchener’s finally got its evening shopping scene back after decades of neglect.
Emory heard that the Schneider stockyards on Bridgeport Road in Weber were for sale due of its tight ties with Schneiders Meats. Lincoln Heights, a luxury neighborhood that was rapidly expanding, was located nearby, yet, guess what, there were no grocery stores in the vicinity.
At least not until February 1959, when the third Zehrs store opened. It was much more than a grocery store, as Emory had already envisioned a 40-store shopping center.
In only a decade, the Zehrs rewrote the Twin Cities’ buying habits.
And with that, Flash from the Past concludes the story of Zehrs Market. The book “The Magic of Zehrs Markets” by Cassandra Moore, Michael Richardson, and Jim Oliver contains additional information. The Grace Schmidt Room of the Kitchener Public Library contains noncirculating copies, while the internet offers used copies.
