Surprise, surprise. The David Jones owned Foodchain supermarkets have folded.
Now, I don't know who's idea it was to open a yuppie supermarket where everything cost twice as much as Safeway in the first place. Nor do I know which genius decided they wouldn't even give it a catchy name ("What should we call our new food chain?" "Ummmm... Foodchain?" "GENIUS! You're promoted.") but I knew, from the time that one opened in Hawthorn that it was going to be a failure. You don't open a restaurant that serves food three times more expensive than the place over the road and call it "Food Eating Place. And you're giving your corporate branding a lot of credit to expect that people will pay outrageous prices just because it's somehow got the David Jones name attached to it.
They lost $98 million during this fiasco. According to the article,
The four remaining Foodchain stores will now be sold to the Freedom Group and rebranded Bayswiss.
It's not exactly an exciting name (and god help them if they ever open a store in Bayswater) but at least it's a name which is more than you could ever say for poor old Foodchain.
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