What They're Looking For
Program: Business
Study Year: 1st - 4th Year
Grades: 70 - 100%
Province: New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, or Nova Scotia
About Company
Frank H. Sobey (1902-1985) grew up in Stellarton, NS where his father, John William (JW) Sobey, operated a meat business. In his teens, Frank started working in the business, which now included a meat delivery route and a walk-in store selling local farm products, feed, and related provisions. Frank used to travel the back roads of rural Pictou County buying lambs and claimed he “learned more about sound business practices dealing with farmers than I could have learned any other place. There’s no other way to survive the risks of farming. The successful farmer was a cost accountant as well as a hard-working agriculturist.”
Frank indulged his early interest in business, reading such publications as The Financial Post , making modest investments, and upon leaving school, enrolling in a local business college.
By 1924 he had formally joined his father in the store, where he persuaded him to expand to a full line of groceries. Two years later they opened a 2nd Sobey’s store in New Glasgow. By 1939 Frank had grown the grocery business into six regional stores while his love of the movies was reflected in his ownership of local theatres.
In 1946, Frank sold the cinemas and bought Barkers, a regional chain of eight grocery stores, a bakery, and a warehouse, and incorporated Sobeys Stores Ltd., the first step in the chain’s expansion. The next year he opened two groceterias: self-serve, cash-and-carry stores, novel for these times when stores were full service and mostly credit.