Knob Hill Farms
Canada's Pioneer of Regional Food Marketing

Knob Hill Farms is a “proud to be Canadian” chain of retail and wholesale food outlets based in and around Metropolitan Toronto. Privately owned and operated by its founder, Steve Stavro, it has grown to be known as Canada’s largest independently owned food retailer.

This is quite remarkable because Knob Hill Farms has achieved this distinction with just ten stores — but they are not your normal, garden variety supermarkets. Stavro has been a leading pioneer of the “think big” school of food marketing. Over 30 years ago, he was trailblazing the way with his regional marketing approach for today’s trend in warehouse style retail outlets.

Back in 1962, he opened his first Knob Hill Farms Food Terminal in the suburban Markham area of Toronto, which he quickly enlarged to 60,000 square feet. This was huge for then because the average supermarket of the major chains was under half that size. Many people in the industry thought Stavro had gone overboard, especially when he added a large tent outside in the summer months. But, Stavro was on to something it took other retailers years to see.

Today, Knob Hill Farms’ locations go as big as 340,000 square feet. That jumbo Food Terminal is in Cambridge, Ontario, about one hour west of Toronto, and is the largest “food only” retail outlet in the world — offering one-stop shopping for meats, fresh produce, and groceries, plus an in-store bakery and fresh fish market.

Another fact which makes this success story even more phenomenal is that Stavro started Knob Hill Farms in the early 1950s as a single open-air fruit and vegetable market in Toronto’s east end, across the road from his father’s grocery store.

As fate would have it this store was near the original Woodbine racetrack, and this triggered one of Stavro’s later involvements in the world of sport. When young Steve delivered groceries on his bicycle from his father’s store to the stable area, he developed a love for thoroughbred horses, and vowed one day he would own horses. Today, his Knob Hill Stable is one of Canada’s finest thoroughbred racing operations, and he occasionally races horses at top U.S. and European tracks.
 

1. Knob Hill Farms Cambridge/Waterloo Food Terminal sits on a 25-acre site. The 340,000 sq.ft. store serves the immediate and surrounding communities. 2. At Knob Hill's Wholesale outlet in Scarborough, restauranteurs and food retailers shop on motorized carts beneath gigantic Canadian and Provincial flags. [Photo, courtesy, A.F. Whibbley/UFX Productions Inc.]

Also in the sporting vein, another Stavro lifelong passion has been soccer. A top player in his youth, Steve spent large sums in the 1960s trying to popularize the professional game in Canada, and says Knob Hill would be much more successful today if soccer hadn’t taken so much of his time then away from the food business.

In the 1960s, Steve also got involved in Major Junior Hockey, sponsoring a team in the Metro Jr. League. This turned out to be the beginning of a long and strong friendship with well-known Toronto sportsman Harold Ballard, who eventually became the major owner and CEO of Maple Leaf Gardens.

In 1981, Stavro went on the Board of Maple Leaf Gardens, and in 1990 when Ballard died, Stavro was named as one of the three executors of the estate. Ballard’s will made provision that any of the executors could purchase the estate’s shares in Maple Leaf Gardens and Stavro exercised that option. Thus, today Knob Hill Farms and Steve Stavro find themselves in control of the fabled Maple Leaf Gardens, and the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey club — two venerable institutions in Canada’s illustrious sporting heritage.

Stavro believes that to be successful in business you should stick to what you know. He knew food because he grew up working in the family store. His father, Atanas Stavro, left the Macedonian highlands in Greece right after Steve, his second son, was born in 1927, and came to Canada to make a better life for his family. Wife, Tsveta, and sons, Chris and Steve, joined him in 1934, after he got established with a small butcher shop in Toronto’s east end. When the family arrived, they lived above the store, and later a daughter, Gloria, was born.

Theirs was a “mom and pop shop” in today’s terms — and when a cousin who worked there quit, Steve left school and went to work with his dad. He had completed grade ten with good marks, but he was needed in the family store.
 

In the 1940s, Steve started promoting his “think big” ideas when he talked his father into buying a nearby store twice the size, which had been gutted by fire. After his father paid for it and the refurbishing, he was not happy with Steve for talking him into this expensive move. However, when it opened and did more than twice the business, Atanas realized that young Steve had a gift for merchandising.

It was across the road from this store where Steve, with older brother Chris, set up an open-air fruit and vegetable stand, and called it Knob Hill Farms — the name of a then popular brand of California produce. Within a few years, they expanded Knob Hill Farms to nine locations — three more open-air markets, and five small supermarkets.

But, once again Steve’s “think big” ideas came into play and brother Chris, not wanting to go along, decided to go into real estate investments. Steve then sold off all the small locations and put all his eggs in one basket — a large Food Terminal, as he described it. There were all sorts of naysayers, telling him it would never work. But the rest is food marketing history. Subsequently, he opened large Food Terminals in Pickering, Mississauga, Oshawa, North York, Cambridge, Scarborough, and three in Toronto.

Even with many large locations and hundreds of employees, Stavro’s Knob Hill Farms is still a family style operation. Steve, often accompanied by his wife Sally, visits several of his Knob Hill locations daily. Three of their four daughters work in the business, and Steve thinks of his long-term employees as extended family. He prides himself on being a hands-on operator, and has no thoughts of retiring.
 

Harold Ballard, the man who got Stavro involved in hockey, poses with Steve and Sally, and operatic tenor Lucian Pavarotti at a charity function in their home.

Today, warehouse outlet style retailing is becoming more and more popular, but the visionary merchant, the pathfinder who started it all with his Knob Hill Farms Food Terminals, was Steve Stavro — food entrepreneur par excellence.

Shunning the spotlight, Stavro avoids interviews, remembering his father’s advice “Let your work speak for itself.” But if you do get him to talk about business, he always points out that Knob Hill’s success was only possible because Canada provided a stable society and a free enterprise economy. That’s why Stavro says Knob Hill Farms will forever be known as a “proud to be Canadian” company.