Chain store in the context of "A"

A boutique (French: [butik]) is a retail shop that deals in high end fashionable clothing or accessories. The word is French for "shop", which derives ultimately from the Ancient Greek ἀποθήκη (apothēkē) "storehouse".

Some multi-outlet businesses (chain stores) can be referred to as boutiques if they target small, upscale niche markets. Although some boutiques specialize in hand-made items and other unique products, others simply produce T-shirts, stickers, and other fashion accessories in artificially small runs and sell them at high prices.

A big-box store, a hyperstore, a supercenter, a superstore, or a megastore is a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain of stores. The term sometimes also refers, by extension, to the company that operates the store. The term "big-box" references the typical appearance of buildings occupied by such stores.

Commercially, big-box stores can be broken down into two categories: general merchandise (examples include Walmart and Target) and specialty stores (such as Home Depot, Barnes & Noble, IKEA or Best Buy), which specialize in goods within a specific range, such as hardware, books, furniture or consumer electronics, respectively. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many traditional retailers and supermarket chains that typically operate in smaller buildings, such as Tesco and Praktiker (the latter which is defunct since 2014), opened stores in the big-box-store format in an effort to compete with big-box chains, which are expanding internationally as their home markets reach maturity.

Kohl's Corporation (Kohl's is stylized in all caps) is an American department store retail chain. It currently has 1,165 locations, operating stores in every U.S. state except Hawaii. The company was founded by Polish immigrant Maxwell Kohl, who opened a corner grocery store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1927. It went on to become a successful chain in the local area, and in 1962 the company branched out by opening its first department store. British American Tobacco Company took a controlling interest in the company in 1972 while still managed by the Kohl Family, and in 1979, the corporation was sold to BATUS Inc. A group of investors purchased the company in 1986 from British American Tobacco and took it public in 1992.

Kohl's is headquartered in the Milwaukee suburb of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. It became the largest department store chain in the United States in May 2012, surpassing its competitor JCPenney. The company is listed on both the S&P 400 and the Fortune 500. In terms of revenue, the chain was the 23rd-largest retailer in the United States in 2019.

Franchising is a business practice where a company licenses its business model to another company, or more precisely, where the franchisor licenses some or all of its knowhow, procedures, intellectual property and other rights to sell its branded products and services to a franchisee. In return, the franchisee pays certain fees and agrees to comply with certain obligations, typically set out in a franchise agreement.

The word franchise is of "Anglo-French" derivation - from franc, meaning "free" and it is used both as a noun and as a transitive verb.For the franchisor, use of a franchise system is an alternative business growth strategy, compared to expansion through corporate owned outlets or "chain stores". Adopting a franchise system business growth strategy for the sale and distribution of goods and services minimizes the franchisor's capital investment and liability risk.

A fast-food restaurant, also known as a quick-service restaurant (QSR) within the industry, is a specific type of restaurant that serves fast-food cuisine and has minimal table service. The food served in fast-food restaurants is typically part of a "meat-sweet diet", offered from a limited menu, cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot, finished and packaged to order, and usually available for take away, though seating may be provided. Fast-food restaurants are typically part of a restaurant chain or franchise operation that provides standardized ingredients and/or partially prepared foods and supplies to each restaurant through controlled supply channels. The term "fast food" was recognized in a dictionary by Merriam–Webster in 1951.

While the first fast-food restaurant in the United States was a White Castle in 1921, fast-food restaurants had been operating elsewhere much earlier, such as the Japanese fast food company Yoshinoya, started in Tokyo in 1899. Today, American-founded fast-food chains such as McDonald's (est. 1940) and KFC (est. 1952) are multinational corporations with outlets across the globe.

Trago Mills is a chain of four department stores in south Cornwall, south Devon in England, and south Wales. It owns a site with an amusement park and some independent businesses, adjoining the store near Newton Abbot.

Three are in town outskirts: Liskeard in Cornwall; Newton Abbot in Devon, and Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. Another is in Falmouth, Cornwall. The company emphasises cheapness and variety of stock.

Odeon Cinemas Limited, trading as Odeon (stylised in all caps), is a cinema brand name operating in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway and Greece, which along with UCI Cinemas and Nordic Cinema Group is part of the Odeon Cinemas Group subsidiary of AMC Theatres. It uses the famous name of the Odeon cinema circuit first introduced in Great Britain in 1930. As of 2016, Odeon is the largest cinema chain in the UK by market share (although the Irish cinemas were also included within this figure).

The first Odeon cinema was opened by Oscar Deutsch in 1928, in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire (now West Midlands), England, although initially called "Picture House". The first cinema to use the Odeon brand name was Deutsch's cinema at Perry Barr, Birmingham in 1930. The brand's flagship cinema, the Odeon, Leicester Square in London, opened in 1937. Odeon then became part of the Rank Organisation who continued their ownership of the circuit for a further sixty years. Through a number of sales and acquisitions in the early 2000s the company was purchased by Terra Firma, which merged Odeon and UCI Cinemas to form Odeon UCI Cinemas Group. Most UCI cinemas then took the Odeon brand name in 2006. Terra Firma/UCI sold the company to AMC Theatres in November 2016.

Parade is a 0.51 mile (0.82 kilometre) long street in the town of Royal Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, England. Running in a north-south direction, it forms part of the longer B4087 which runs from the A445 in Leamington to the B4086 in Wellesbourne. The road is the central shopping hub of the town, and contains many high street stores, as well as some of the best examples of Regency architecture for which the town is known. It is commonly called "the Parade", and spoken of as such, but all maps and resources such as the Royal Mail's postcode database simply have "Parade".

In North American, Ireland, United Kingdom, Australian and New Zealand retail, an anchor tenant, sometimes called an anchor store, draw tenant, or key tenant, is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are typically located at the ends of malls, sometimes in the middle. With their broad appeal, they are intended to attract a significant cross-section of the shopping public to the center. They often are offered steep discounts on rent in exchange for signing long-term leases in order to provide steady cash flows for the mall owners.

Some examples of anchor stores in the United States are Macy's, Sears, JCPenney, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Dick's Sporting Goods, Dillard's, Kohl's, Walmart, and Target. Canadian examples are Nordstrom, TJX Canada (HomeSense, Winners, Marshalls), Walmart, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Sporting Life. Anchor stores that left Canada include Zellers, Hudson's Bay, Nordstrom Rack, Sears, and Target.

Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney (colloquially Penney's and abbreviated JCP) is an American department store chain with 646 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. It is managed as part of the Catalyst Brands portfolio alongside other apparel retailers such as Brooks Brothers and Eddie Bauer.

Its departments include men's, women's and children's apparel, cosmetics, jewelry, and home furnishings along with leased departments managed by Shearshare, US Vision and Lifetouch. The chain focuses on lifestyle products for middle class households.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, was an American chain of grocery stores that operated from 1859 to 2015. From 1915 through 1975, A&P was the largest grocery retailer in the United States (and, until 1965, the largest U.S. retailer of any kind).

A&P was considered an American icon that, according to The Wall Street Journal, "was as well known as McDonald's or Google is today", and "the Walmart of its time." At its peak in the 1940s, A&P captured 10% of total US grocery spending. Known for innovation, A&P improved consumers' nutritional habits by making available a vast assortment of food products at much lower costs. Until 1982, A&P also was a large food manufacturer.

Hamleys of London Limited, trading as Hamleys, is a British multinational toy retailer, owned by Reliance Retail. Listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest toy store, it was founded by William Hamley as "Noah's Ark" in High Holborn, London, in 1760. It moved to its current site on Regent Street in London's West End in 1881. This flagship store is set over seven floors, with more than 50,000 lines of toys on sale. It receives around five million visitors each year, and is especially busy at Christmas.

The chain has 11 outlets in the United Kingdom and also has more than 90 franchises worldwide. Hamleys became famous in the early Victorian era, with royalty among its customers. The store was granted its first royal warrant from Queen Mary in 1938. It held a royal warrant from Elizabeth II from 1955 to 2022 (her death).

Howard Johnson by Wyndham, still commonly referred to as Howard Johnson's, is an American hotel brand with just under 300 hotels in 15 countries. It was also formerly a restaurant chain, which at one time was the largest in the U.S., with more than 1,000 locations. Since 2006, all hotels and company trademarks, including those of the defunct restaurant chain, have been owned by Wyndham Hotels and Resorts.

Howard Johnson's restaurants originally started as a single location opened by Howard Deering Johnson in 1925 and grew into a substantial restaurant chain in the decades that followed. By the 1950s, the company expanded operations by opening hotels, then known as Howard Johnson's Motor Lodges, which were often located next to restaurants. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, it had become the largest restaurant chain in the U.S., with its combined company-owned and franchised outlets.

Whole Foods Market, Inc. (colloquially referred to as simply Whole Foods) is an American multinational supermarket chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, which generally sells whole food products free from hydrogenated fats and artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. A USDA Certified Organic grocer in the United States, the chain is popularly known for its organic selections.

John Mackey, the last remaining co-founder of Whole Foods Market, sold the company to Amazon for $13.7 billion on August 28, 2017. As of March 4, 2019, Whole Foods has more than 500 stores in North America and six in the United Kingdom.

Burger King Corporation (BK, stylized in all caps) is an American fast food chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. Burger King is headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the company was founded on July 23, 1953, as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida–based restaurant chain. After Insta-Burger King ran into financial difficulties, its two Miami-based franchisees David Edgerton (1927–2018) and James McLamore (1926–1996) purchased the company in 1959. Over the next half-century, the company changed hands four times and its third set of owners, a partnership between TPG Capital, Bain Capital, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, took it public in 2002. In late 2010, 3G Capital of Brazil acquired a majority stake in the company in a deal valued at US$3.26 billion. The new owners promptly initiated a restructuring of the company to reverse its fortunes. 3G, along with its partner Berkshire Hathaway, eventually merged the company with the Canadian-based coffeehouse chain Tim Hortons under the auspices of a new Canadian-based parent company named Restaurant Brands International.

Burger King's menu has expanded from a basic offering of burgers, french fries, sodas, and milkshakes to a larger and more diverse set of products. In 1957, the "Whopper" became the first major addition to the menu, and it has since become Burger King's signature product. Conversely, Burger King has introduced many products that have failed to catch hold in the market. Some of these failures in the United States have seen success in foreign markets, where Burger King has also tailored its menu for regional tastes. From 2002 to 2010, Burger King targeted the 18–34 male demographic with larger products that often carried correspondingly large amounts of unhealthy fats and trans-fats. This tactic would eventually damage the company's financial underpinnings and cast a negative pall on its earnings. Beginning in 2011, the company began to move away from its previous male-oriented menu and introduce new menu items, product reformulations, and packaging, as part of its current owner 3G Capital's restructuring plans of the company.