Farewell, Mac's Milk

© 2018, Christian Cassidy

Osborne Street, 2017 (Google Street View) and Sept. 2018 (source)

Couche-Tard's rebranding of its Mac's Convenience Stores to Circle K appears to have finally arrived in Winnipeg as Erin noticed earlier this week in Osborne Village. With the change, another familiar name disappears from the local retail landscape after nearly 50 years.

Top: June 17, 1970, Winnipeg Tribune

Mac’s Milk Stores began with just one shop in Toronto in 1962. By 1970, it was owned by Ontario-based Silverwood Dairies and had grown to 300 Ontario locations. (It changed its corporate name to Mac’s Convenience Stores in the mid-1970s.)

The company was looking to expand outside of Ontario and chose Winnipeg as its first target to head off the arrival of U.S.-based 7-Eleven which began opening stores in Western Canada in late 1969. (For more on 7-Eleven's Winnipeg history.)

Mac’s entered the Winnipeg market in 1970 by taking over the local 13-store Kwik Shop chain created by Jim Penner in the late 1960s. The stores were re-branded and a grand reopening sale celebrating the "marriage" of Mac's mascot MacTavish the Cat to a Kwik Shop cat took place on June 17, 1970.

This gave Mac's a brief upper hand in the Winnipeg market as 7-Eleven for the most part custom-built their stores based on the plans of their successful U.S. locations on land that required several parking spaces.

A Winnipeg Mac's store in June 1970

Mac's strength was in its store hours of 9 am to 11 pm, 365 days a week. It carried a wide variety of products but its best sellers were household staples like milk and bread. It even had its own Mac's line of phosphate-free laundry detergent and dish soap for a while.  

The first thirteen Mac's stores were corporate-owned and overseen by regional manager Ray Pylypiw at Mac's regional headquarters on Berry Street in Winnipeg. The plan was to sell another ten as franchises by the end of the year.

Mac's predicted it would have 80 locations in the city by the end of the decade but appears to have peaked in the early 1980s with nearly 30 stores - about the same number 7-Eleven had at the time. By 2000, there were 26 Mac's stores in the city.

A sad fact about the proliferation of late-night convenience stores in the 1970s and 1980s is that they were a target for armed robbers. (See more about that in my 7-Eleven post.)

In December 1985, Mac's employee Raj Bahri was stabbed to death during a robbery at the Burrows and Keewatin store. The 33-year-old was relieving his brother early from his shift so that he could go to the Mac's corporate Christmas party. He left behind a wife, a two-year-old and a two-week-old child.

Mac's in 1970 (source), ca. 1980s and 90s, after 2003

In 1999, Alimentation Couche-Tard of Quebec purchased the Mac's chain and replaced MacTavish the cat with their own Hibou the night owl.

Four years later, the company acquired the Circle K chain of convenience stores and announced that it would soon re-brand its growing collection of retail chains located outside of Quebec under the Circle K banner.

That change has finally reached Winnipeg.

Also see:
7-Eleven's Winnipeg history West End Dumplings