Loblaws Brand Guidelines: A 1919 Toronto Groceteria, Don Watt’s “L” & No Name Yellow

Two Toronto grocers and a self-serve store.

Loblaws traces its start to June 1919, when two Toronto grocers, Theodore Pringle Loblaw and J. Milton Cork, opened the first Loblaw Groceterias store in the city. English Wikipedia says the pair had worked together as young clerks in the Cork family’s grocery and travelled to Memphis, Tennessee, to see the Piggly Wiggly “self-serving store” before trying the idea in Canada. Customers picked goods from the shelves themselves and paid cash at a counter near the exit, with no credit and no home delivery; the name “groceteria” was borrowed from the cafeteria, and the storefronts carried large “We Sell For Less” signs.

The chain spread quickly. Loblaw’s own history says it expanded through Ontario and into New York State by 1924, and that in 1928, with 69 stores, it unveiled a new head office and warehouse at Fleet and Bathurst streets in Toronto. Chicago stores followed and were later sold. In the early 1930s the company began converting outlets into “market stores” with full-service meat and produce counters. The words on the signs changed too: although advertisements often said “Loblaw’s,” the first “Loblaws” signs replaced the Loblaw Groceterias Co. Limited lettering on store facades in 1939, English Wikipedia says, a date the company’s own timeline repeats.

Ownership shifted in 1947, when the industrialist W. Garfield Weston, president of George Weston Limited, bought 100,000 shares of Loblaw voting stock from J. Milton Cork; the International Directory of Company Histories puts the stake at 26 per cent of the voting shares. By 1953 George Weston Limited held control, and Loblaw Companies Limited was incorporated in 1956 as a holding company for the Ontario chain and its American interests. The Weston group still holds control: English Wikipedia describes Loblaw as controlled by George Weston Limited, a holding company controlled by the Weston family.

A redrawn letter and a yellow pack.

The Loblaws look of the late twentieth century dates from a rescue in the early 1970s. English Wikipedia describes a chain weighed down by debt and ageing stores; in February 1972 W. Galen Weston, Garfield Weston’s youngest son, became chief executive, closed dozens of unprofitable outlets and remodelled the rest. The company’s own timeline says that in 1972 he “re-imagines Loblaw with redesigned stores and a new logo,” with the actor William Shatner fronting a new advertising campaign.

The designer was Don Watt of Toronto. The International Directory of Company Histories says Loblaws hired the Watt Design Group in 1972, while English Wikipedia dates his arrival to 1973. Both describe the same changes: a new logo, redesigned interiors and an enlarged produce department moved from the back of the store to the front; Wikipedia adds new colours and a repeating “L” mark. The Directory mentions large posters of fruit, misted produce, better lighting and a new internal signage programme meant to state the chain’s price position. English Wikipedia records that the curved, red-orange “L” was dropped from some new and renovated stores branded “Loblaw Great Food” from 2008, although the Maple Leaf Gardens store in Toronto, opened in late 2011, kept the familiar mark.

Packaging became part of the identity. In March 1978, the Directory says, Loblaws launched No Name, a generic range in bright-yellow packaging with a plain typeface, inspired by the Produits Libres of the French retailer Carrefour; English Wikipedia counts 16 items at launch, in black and yellow. The Directory says in-store messages taught shoppers to read the yellow as a sign of saving. The upscale counterpart, President’s Choice, followed: the Directory says the first products were being developed by 1983, modelled on the St Michael house brand of Marks & Spencer, with packaging built around striking product photography, while the company’s own timeline gives 1984 for the line’s debut. Its promoter, the Loblaws executive Dave Nichol, also started a flyer, Dave Nichol’s Insider’s Report, in 1983; English Wikipedia says it was modelled on a California flyer from Trader Joe’s and came to promote President’s Choice exclusively.

Banners, own labels and flyers.

Canadian retail identities are often built in layers: a parent group, a set of store banners, and the own-label ranges that sit on their shelves. Loblaw Companies is a clear example. English Wikipedia describes it as running corporate and franchise supermarkets under 22 regional and market-segment banners, from the full-service Loblaws to the discount No Frills and Maxi, each with its own sign, store format and tone of voice.

Own labels carry much of the visual identity. Loblaw’s No Name range arrived in 1978 in plain yellow packaging, and its President’s Choice line followed in the mid-1980s with photography-led packs, according to the International Directory of Company Histories. Loblaw’s apparel label, Joe Fresh, began in 2006, English Wikipedia says. Loyalty schemes and flyers do similar work: Loblaw’s PC Optimum points programme runs across its grocery and pharmacy banners, and when No Frills built a 2020 campaign around shopper types, Canadian Grocer reported, one of them was a deal hunter who searches the weekly digital flyer before she shops.

Quebec adds a language layer. Some national chains trade under French names there: Shoppers Drug Mart has used the Pharmaprix banner in the province since its first Quebec store in 1972, Loblaw’s own history says, and Loblaw entered the Quebec grocery market in 1998 by buying the Quebec-based chain Provigo, whose name it kept.

Corporate pages tell the rest of the story. Groups such as Loblaw publish timelines of founders and acquisitions, investor pages and lists of banners, and these are useful for dates and ownership; this guide presents them as the company’s own account, alongside encyclopaedias, trade press and regulators. The brands that follow range from century-old grocers to fashion chains, and each is described by what the sources show about its names, formats and labels.

One banner among many.

Today Loblaws is one banner among many. English Wikipedia describes Loblaws Inc. as a supermarket chain with stores in Ontario, and in Alberta and British Columbia under the City Market name, headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, as a subsidiary of Loblaw Companies Limited; the parent runs corporate and franchise supermarkets under 22 regional and market-segment banners, it says. Loblaw’s own website, in November 2026, counted more than 2,400 stores across Canada across all its businesses. In 1998 Loblaw bought the Quebec grocer Provigo, and in March 2014 it completed its purchase of the pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart, which trades as Pharmaprix in Quebec. English Wikipedia says the Shoppers Optimum programme and Loblaw’s PC Plus were then merged into PC Optimum, the points scheme now used at Loblaws, alongside the PC Express online-order pickup service.

The City Market format was introduced in British Columbia on 19 July 2013, English Wikipedia says. Daily Hive reported in February 2024 that the flagship Loblaws City Market at The Post in downtown Vancouver, which opened on 2 February that year, covered more than 45,000 square feet on the building’s second level, about 15,000 of them given to produce. In June 2026 Canadian Grocer reported the opening of a 19,000-square-foot Loblaws City Market in South Granville, the chain’s fifth store in the city, with grab-and-go counters, PC Optimum offers and PC Express delivery.

The company has also been part of a competition case. In December 2017, Loblaw Companies and Weston Foods, both subsidiaries of George Weston Limited, announced their participation in what they described as an “industry-wide price-fixing arrangement” coordinating retail and wholesale bread prices; in exchange for full cooperation with the investigation, the companies received immunity from prosecution, the Competition Bureau said in June 2023.

For a design guide, Loblaws shows how a redrawn letter, a moved produce aisle and a yellow generic pack can reset a supermarket’s image, and how a parent company can carry its own labels across very different banners. Compare the discount banner that began in a converted Loblaws store in No Frills Brand Guidelines and the pharmacy chain Loblaw bought in 2014 in Shoppers Drug Mart Brand Guidelines. For this guide we use an orange-red, a deep charcoal, a warm cream and a produce green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Loblaws’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.