page_title: WinCo Foods
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: WinCo Foods / History
caption_attribution_description: WinCo Foods supermarket at Crossroads at Orenco Station in en:Hillsboro, Oregon.
context_page_description: WinCo Foods, Inc. is a privately held, majority employee-owned American supermarket chain based in Boise, Idaho with retail stores in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington. It previously operated stores as Waremart Food Centers and Cub Foods until 1999. WinCo foods began reestablishing Waremart Foods in 2017. WinCo has 129 retail stores and six distribution centers with over 20,000 employees. As of June 2020, WinCo Foods was number 59 in Forbes.com's list of the largest privately owned companies in the United States.
context_section_description: The company, originally called Waremart, was founded in Boise, Idaho in 1967 by Ralph Ward and Bud Williams. In 1985, Waremart employees established an employee stock ownership plan and purchased a majority stake of Waremart from the Ward family, making the company employee-owned.
  In January 1991, Waremart opened an 82,000 square-foot store in Boise to replace the two older Boise stores. At the time, Waremart was operating 16 stores in the Northwest and had reported annual sales of more than $300 million.
  In 1999, Waremart changed its name to WinCo Foods.  According to the company, the name WinCo is a portmanteau of Winning Company, however, the company also says the name refers to the five states where the company originally operated stores (Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, and Oregon).  One store in Independence, Oregon retains the Waremart name.  In 2017 and 2018, two smaller stores branded as "Waremart by WinCo" were opened in Ontario and Keizer, Oregon.
  In 2007, WinCo Foods accused a competing chain, Save Mart, of directing a lawsuit filed by a neighborhood group Tracy First of Tracy, California, to oppose city approval of a WinCo store. That same year, WinCo Foods opened in Pittsburg, California.
  In early 2009, WinCo opened its first two stores in the Spokane, Washington, area. In October, 2009, WinCo expanded to Utah, adding two stores in West Valley City and Midvale. An additional Utah store opened in Roy on June 28, 2010. bringing the total number of stores expanded to Utah to five. WinCo previously operated stores in Utah under the Waremart banner prior to the company's name change.
  In January 2011, WinCo began signing leases for an expansion to Southern Nevada and Arizona. The chain opened stores in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nevada, on March 4, 2012. The company's first two stores in Arizona opened on April 1, 2012 in the Phoenix area. The company has opened multiple locations in Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area. 
  WinCo was named as the sponsor for the WinCo Foods Portland Open in June, 2013.
  In late 2014, WinCo announced that it would enter the Oklahoma City metro market, starting with stores in Moore and Midwest City, with plans to open two other locations in the metro. In March 2017, WinCo opened its 114th store in Moses Lake, Washington.
caption: Store in the Orenco area of Hillsboro, Oregon
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