Sentry Foods is a

grocery store A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, a ...

chain with a total of 11 stores, all in

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

. Sentry Foods stores got their start in the Milwaukee area in the 1960s, being operated and supplied by the Godfrey family. In the mid-1980s,

Fleming Companies Fleming Companies was founded as Lux Mercantile in Topeka, Kansas, in 1915 by O. A. Fleming, Gene Wilson and Samuel Lux. In 1921 the company's name was changed to Fleming-Wilson, and in 1941, the company name was changed to The Fleming Company, ...

, Inc., at the time a major wholesaler, bought the majority of the stores and took over supplying them. Being predominantly a wholesaler, Fleming was never a major force in the retail market, and as a result of missteps and poor financial choices, Fleming went bankrupt in 2000 and was forced to sell off the stores. Each store is now independently owned and operated. As recently as 2007, 34 stores were operated under the Sentry name, but the chain was decimated by the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

Notes

External links

Official website
Supermarkets of the United States Companies based in Milwaukee Retail companies based in Wisconsin {{US-retail-company-stub