Plaid Pantry is a chain of privately owned convenience stores based in Beaverton, Oregon, United States. Of 108 locations, one is in the

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

area, eight are near Salem, and the remainder are in the

Portland metropolitan area The Portland metropolitan area is a metro area in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington centered on the principal city of Portland, Oregon. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) identifies it as the Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, ...

Ownership

Plaid Pantries, Inc. traces its founding to 1960 by John Piacentini. The name refers to the plaid decoration originally on both the store buildings and the roadside pole signs. Plaid Pantry can date its origins to the late 1950s when a California investor built multiple stores in the Portland area with the financial backing of Alpenrose Dairy. Stores built from scratch by Handy Pantry/Alpenrose were under the Handy Pantry name; stores made by converting an existing structure were referred to as Speedy Mart. In 1963, the Handy Pantry/Speedy Mart chain filed for bankruptcy. Alpenrose Dairy, the major creditor, gained control of all the stores. In 1960, John Piacentini decided to go into business for himself and opened his first store in east Portland under the name John's One-Stop. He opened a few more stores and eventually was offered the opportunity to purchase the Handy Pantry/Speedy Mart chain with financial backing by Alpenrose Dairy. Piacentini changed the name of all the stores to Plaid Pantry; the stores continued to stock Alpenrose Dairy products.

Founder's sale and death

Nearly 20 years later, when Piacentini tentatively sold the company to

Convenient Food Mart Convenient Food Mart (CFM) is a chain of convenience stores in the United States. The private company's headquarters are located in Mentor, Ohio, and there are currently approximately 325 stores located in the US. Convenient Food Mart operates on ...

(CFM) in March 1987, he had built it into a chain of 161 stores in the Portland and Seattle areas. That sale fell through about two months later, after CFM conducted its due diligence audit. A subsequent

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money ( leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loa ...

a year later led to chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 13, 1989, and a subsequent reorganization.Revived Plaid Pantry refills cupboards
an August 1998 article from the ''

Portland Business Journal Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

'' Piacentini died later in 1988, and several lawsuits followed.

Since 1991

Plaid Pantry in Glencoe, Hillsboro, Oregon

A series of transactions made public in 1998 put half of the chain under the ownership of a

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...

majority-owned by Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (HLHZ), with minority ownership stakes held by senior Plaid Pantry management including CEO Chris Girard. The details of the 1998 deal and several subsequent transactions became the subject of a lawsuit in 2007 before the

United States District Court for the District of Oregon The United States District Court for the District of Oregon (in case citations, D. Ore. or D. Or.) is the federal district court whose jurisdiction comprises the state of Oregon. It was created in 1859 when the state was admitted to the Union ...

between HLHZHLHZ Investments, LLC v. Plaid Pantries Inc. et al. and Girard. The lawsuit was settled in 2008. In May 2019, the company terminated an employee who produced a gun during an attempted robbery involving a suspect with a hatchet at one of its Clackamas County stores. The reason given for termination is for violating the company's no weapon policy.

Founder's role in the Oregon Bottle Bill

In 1969, as the Oregon Bottle Bill was contemplated as a way to reduce litter, large retailers opposed the idea and said that no one would return bottles and cans for a two-cent deposit. Furthermore, opponents of the bill claimed that small grocery stores would face an extraordinary financial burden from receiving and processing thousands of bottles and cans, potentially bankrupting several stores. John Piacentini disagreed. He offered a half cent for each soda or beer bottle returned to Plaid Pantry stores. Piacentini even stated that he hoped Oregonians "bury me in litter."

Alcohol sales

In the late 1990s, Plaid Pantry failed 30-40% of spot checks conducted by the OLCC to determine if the company was selling alcohol or tobacco to minors; by March 2000, they became the first retailer recognized by the OLCC as a "responsible vendor", a milestone reached due to changes to the company's training and its credit card validation system, which were updated to simplify a clerk's ability to ascertain whether a customer was of legal age.Plaid Pantry's reforming ways encouraging to OLCC
a March 2000 article from the ''

References

External links

Plaid Pantry succeeds by shrinking
- ''

'' {{ORCompanies Companies based in Beaverton, Oregon Privately held companies based in Oregon Economy of the Northwestern United States Convenience stores of the United States Retail companies established in 1960 1960 establishments in Oregon