Bruno's

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Bruno's Supermarkets, Inc.

Type	Private
Founded	1932
Headquarters	Birmingham, Alabama
Industry	Retail Grocery Store
Products	Dairy, deli, frozen foods, grocery, meat, produce, snacks
Slogan	Imagine the Possibilities
Website	www.brunos.com

Bruno's Supermarkets is an American chain of grocery stores, founded in Birmingham, Alabama. It currently operates stores under the banners Bruno’s, Food World, and Food Max. The company operates stores in Alabama and Florida.

1 History
2 Golf tournament
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

The company began as a market opened by Joseph Bruno in Birmingham during the Great Depression. According to the 1983 book "Joe: The Fiftieth Anniversary of Bruno’s Food Stores" by Pat Dunbar, “the store would have fit into a modern day meat cooler.” The company grew steadily, with ten stores in place during the 1950s, and 29 stores open under the Bruno's name when it became a publicly traded company in 1971 In 1972, Bruno’s opened its discount grocery chain, Food World, which was followed by warehouse-oriented Consumer Foods. As Food World and Consumer Foods became more profitable, the old Bruno’s stores began to be phased out. Consumer Foods was replaced in the early 1980s by Food Fair in 1983. Bruno's began a chain of larger discount stores called FoodMax in 1984. Bruno’s even made an entry into the pharmacy market with its introduction of Big B Discount Drugs in 1968. Big B lasted well into the 1990s when it was purchased first by Revco and later by CVS.

The 1990s also saw the reintroduction of the Bruno’s banner on stores, this time as Bruno’s Supercenters and Bruno’s Food and Pharmacy, both of which were upper-class stores. Another concept, the upscale Vincent's Market, was tried in a one-location experiment in Homewood, Alabama. The experimental store featured a wide variety of prepared foods such as seafood, bakery goods and take-out meals as well as regular grocery sales. Around 2000, Vincent's Market was converted to the Bruno's nameplate (though it was largely unchanged otherwise), and the Vincent's Market name was applied to the deli/bakery departments in all existing Bruno's stores.

In 1995, the company was acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), a leveraged buyout firm. That acquisition was ill-fated, as the company's debt structure combined with management missteps and increased competition from Wal-Mart Supercenters to drive it into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2000 after closing a number of unprofitable stores but acquiring new stores from other operators, notably the Gregerson's chain in and around Gadsden, Alabama; the result was that the chain actually had three more outlets than it did when it entered Chapter 11. The company was sold in December 2001 to Ahold, a Dutch corporation, who then combined it with Bi-Lo. The new management struggled as well, and in 2005, Ahold finally sold the combined operation to Lone Star Funds, a private investment company which also owns Captain D's and Shoney's restaurants.^[1] Lone Star then sold some stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers, which operated the new stores under its Southern Family Markets affiliate for a time but closed most of the acquired stores in 2007.

On March 20, 2007, Lone Star Funds announced it had spun out Bruno's from BI-LO creating a seperate corporate entity. [1]

As of April 7, 2007, Bruno's will operate 67 stores in two states.

[edit] Golf tournament

Bruno's was the chief corporate sponsor for many years of the Bruno's Memorial Classic golf tournament, a regular stop on the PGA Champions Tour. The "memorial" in the tournament name honors Lee and Angelo Bruno, brothers of founder Joe Bruno and founders of the tournament; they were killed in an airplane crash shortly after the tournament was announced in 1991. The first tournament was played the following year at Greystone Golf & Country Club in Hoover, Alabama.

With the Bruno's downsizing in 2005, the company was no longer willing to shoulder the entire cost of sponsorship for the tournament. Regions Financial Corporation took over as the title sponsor with Bruno's as a "presenting sponsor" for 2006 and the event moved to the new Ross Bridge Golf Resort and Spa, a Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail course in Hoover.

Ronnie Bruno, son of Angelo Bruno, continues to serve as chairman of the tournament. Additionally, the group that managed the tournament, run by Ronnie Bruno and Gene Hallman, later became a full-time event-management company known as the Bruno Event Team. The team runs a wide variety of events, mostly sports-related, including many championships for the Southeastern Conference. (Bruno himself is no longer associated with Bruno's Supermarkets, nor are any other Bruno family members.)