BI-LO

Type	Private
Founded	1961
Headquarters	Mauldin, South Carolina
Key people	Michael Byars, president & CEO
Industry	Retail (Grocery)
Products	Bakery, dairy, deli, frozen foods, general grocery, meat, pharmacy, produce, seafood, snacks
Revenue	$3.6 billion USD (2006)
Employees	17,000
Website	www.bi-lo.com

BI-LO is a supermarket chain headquartered in Mauldin, South Carolina. It operates stores in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Supermarket News ranked BI-LO No. 34 in the 2007 "Top 75 North American Food Retailers" based on 2006 fiscal year estimated sales of $3.6 billion.^[1]

As of December 2007, BI-LO operates 214 supermarkets in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. The company employs approximately 17,000 people. ^[2]

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 24, 2009.

This is not the same BI-LO chain owned by Penn Traffic that operates in Pennsylvania^[3].

[edit] History

BI-LO was founded in 1961 by Frank L. Outlaw. The original name was Wrenn & Outlaw. The company was officially named BI-LO in 1963 after Outlaw conducted an employee store-naming contest to develop the "brand." His secretary, Edna Plumblee, won the contest by submitting the name "BI-LO."

BI-LO was sold to Ahold (a Dutch retail food conglomerate) in 1977. In 1994, Ahold purchased Red Food Stores, Inc. and merged its locations (around 55 of them) in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee into BI-LO the following year.^[4][5] In 2001, Ahold purchased the Birmingham, Alabama based Bruno's Supermarkets chain and combined its operations with BI-LO.

A Super Bi-Lo storefront in Rock Hill, SC

In 2005, Ahold sold BI-LO/Bruno's to Lone Star Funds.^[6] In order to concentrate on renovating older stores, building new ones, and investing in newer information technology, the new owners sold off 104 BI-LO and Bruno's stores in areas where the chain did not have significant market penetration as well as the three BI-LO/Bruno's distribution centers to grocery wholesaler, C&S Wholesale Grocers who converted some of the stores to Southern Family Markets.^[7]

On March 21, 2007, Lone Star Funds announced that they were spinning off the 67 Bruno's Supermarkets and Food World stores from BI-LO LLC into a separate company to be based out of Birmingham.^[8] On April 16, 2007, Lone Star announced that they were putting the 230-store BI-LO chain up for sale. Soon after, C&S announced that it was closing the Chattanooga distribution center that served the BI-LO's in the Chattanooga area and portions of Northern Georgia. ^[9]

In 1998, the company sponsored the construction of the BI-LO Center in Greenville, South Carolina.

On March 23, 2009, the company announced that it had filed chapter 11 bankruptcy and intends to use the court-supervised process to address "an upcoming debt maturity." The move was largely due to the current credit crisis. The company said that expects its stores and regular operations to continue to operate as usual during the process. The company secured a $100 million loan from GE Capital in order to continue paying wages, salaries, benefits, suppliers and vendors. ^[10][11] In October of 2009, Delhaize Group, headquartered in Belgium and owner of competing chain Food Lion, announced that it entered a preliminary, non-binding agreement to purchase $425 million worth of assets from the chain. ^[12] Shortly after, in November 2009, the company filed plans with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to restructure, with parent company Lone Star Funds providing a $350 million cash infusion, and Delhaize Group and Food Lion left out of the plans. Lone Star Funds said that it is possible that BI-LO could emerge from bankruptcy in the first quarter of 2010.^[13]

[edit] Super BI-LO

In 2003, BI-LO invested in redesigning its store layout to attract high end customers. The result was the new Super BI-LO concept featuring a larger store layout with added emphasis on health foods, specialty foods and organic products. Since then the company has opened new Super BI-LO branded stores as well as remodeled older stores in affluent neighborhoods. ^[14]

[edit] Promotions

BI-LO has offered its BI-LO Bonuscard discount program since the 1990s. In 2009, the chain re-vamped the card and started its "FuelPerks" campaign, in which the store partners with local gas station chains and when shoppers spend a certain amount at BI-LO, they receive 5, 10, 15 cents or more off of up to 20 gallons of gas at participating stations.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• BI-LO Official website