Knob Hill Farms

Knob Hill Farms was a supermarket chain in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by Steve Stavro, and operated from 1951 to 2001.
Community grocery stores
Stavro's father operated Louis Meat Market in Toronto from the 1930s to the 1950s. By 1954, Stavro had gone off on his own, managing outdoor markets and grocery stores under the Knob Hill Farms name. By the late 1950s, he was operating at nine sites in Toronto.
Food terminals
In 1963, Stavro changed direction and opened his first "food terminal"—a forerunner of the big-box store with 65,000 square feet (6,000 square-metres) of space just north of Toronto at Woodbine Avenue and Highway 7 in Markham.
In 1971, Knob Hill Farms expanded into Pickering with its second terminal. A third location — the first within Toronto, at Lansdowne Avenue and Dundas Street West — followed in 1975. A second Toronto terminal opened in 1977 at Cherry Street and the Gardiner Expressway...