Plaid Pantry

Plaid Pantry is a chain of convenience stores that operates throughout Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding areas, including several stores in Seattle. Founded as Plaid Pantries, Inc. on November 20, 1963 by John Piacentini, there are now nearly 100 Plaid Pantry stores. According to the company, the name refers to the distinctive plaid decoration that was originally used on both the store buildings and the highway poles.

The convenience store concept has been around since the 1920s, but really came of age after WWII. The idea was brought to Portland in earnest by a California investor starting in the late 1950s. An aggressive operation named Handy Pantry built multiple stores in the Portland area, with the financial backing of Alpenrose Dairy. Store locations that were constructed from the ground up were referred to as a Handy Pantry; store locations that were formerly small "neighborhood" groceries that had been renovated into convenience stores were referred to as a Speedy Mart. In 1963 the Handy Pantry/Speedy Mart chain went into bankruptcy and Alpenrose Dairy, as the major creditor, gained control of all the stores.

John Piacentini started his career as a boxboy at Safeway and worked his way up to be a store manager at a young age. In 1960 he decided to go into business for himself and opened the first of his stores in east Portland, which he called "John's One-Stop." He opened a few more stores and eventually was offered the opportunity to purchase the Handy Pantry/Speedy Mart chain, which he did, again with financial backing of Alpenrose Dairy. Piacentini changed the name of all the stores to Plaid Pantry, which to this day sell Alpenrose Dairy products.

As his Plaid Pantry chain grew, he made two ventures into politics. First was in 1969, when the idea of requiring deposits on bottles and cans was first floated in Oregon as a way to clean up roads and beaches. Large retailers opposed the idea and said that no one would return bottles and cans for a measly 2 cent deposit. Piacentini, however, thought that people would indeed pick up cans and bottles for 2 cents; so he offered a half-cent for each can and bottle returned to a Plaid Pantry store. He collected more than a million cans and bottles and brought them to the steps of the State Capitol, a powerful visual demonstration that led to the Oregon Bottle Bill.

Second was in 1972, when he won the Republican nomination for Oregon's Third Congressional District.

When Piacentini sold the company in 1987, he had built it into a chain of 177 stores in the Portland and Seattle areas. Since that time, the company has closed less profitable locations and expanded into gasoline sales. The chain now operates 100 stand alone stores and 12 gas stations/C-stores.

External links

* [http://www.plaidpantry.com/ Official Website]