By Ian Holmes

Quality Foods sold to Jim Pattison

Mar 24, 2017 | 9:18 PM

QUALICUM BEACH — Longstanding Vancouver Island grocery store chain Quality Foods (QF) has been sold to billionaire Jim Pattison.

Quality Foods founders John Briuolo and Ken Schley made the announcement Friday, in a transaction involving 13 stores and a little more than 1,000 employees.

Schley said current upgrades and future QF expansion requires more capital backing, which isn’t possible without new ownership.

“There’s no better person than somebody who’s got the wherewithal to do it,” Schley said. “We quite frankly are going to get tapped out in order to do the best job that we want to do.”

Pattison, who attended a Friday evening meeting at the Qualicum Beach Civic Centre to reveal his plans for QF, said there won’t be any immediate changes. He said the Quality Foods brand will remain.

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“I would see no reason with the good reputation why anybody would want to change it,” Pattison told NanaimoNewsNOW.

Pattison owns several supermarket brands, including Save-On-Foods, which has a strong Vancouver Island presence. Pattison is no stranger to Quality Foods — he’s had a partnership with the company for several years, allowing QF to renovate existing stores and expand into the Victoria market.

“Quality Foods is a very special company on Vancouver Island, they’ve developed some wonderful people, they’ve got a very loyal customer base,” he said.

He told about 200 QF employees and family members he has no intention to bring anybody from the outside to help run the company.

Schley said the fact Pattison is Vancouver-based, has strong financial backing, knowledge of the grocery business and supports leaving QF management in place, were critical to the sale happening.

He said financial returns in the ultra-competitive grocery market are narrowing.

“To have a partnership like that and ability to the money that’s required to grow our company, I just thought that was the very best thing we could have possibly done.”

An emotional Schley said building the grocery store business from the ground-up has been a challenging and rewarding ride.

It all started in 1982 in downtown Qualicum Beach.

“All of our roots were because of these small towns like Parksville, Nanoose, even Nanaimo wasn’t a big town back then…our customers and the people we work with every day, I don’t think I can thank them enough.”

ian.holmes@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @reporterholmes