Plaid Pantry, stylized as plaid pantry, is a chain of privately owned convenience stores in Oregon and Washington. There are 107 locations, primarily in the Portland metropolitan area with other locations in the Salem and Seattle areas.

History

Plaid Pantries, Inc. traces its founding to 1960 by John Piacentini. The name refers to the plaid decoration originally on both the store buildings and the roadside pole signs.

Founder's sale and death

Nearly 20 years later, when Piacentini tentatively sold the company to Convenient Food Mart (CFM) in March 1987, he had built it into a chain of 161 stores in the Portland and Seattle areas. That sale fell through about two months later, after CFM conducted its due diligence audit. A subsequent leveraged buyout a year later led to chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 13, 1989, and a subsequent reorganization. Piacentini died later in 1988, and several lawsuits followed. and Girard.

Oregon Bottle Bill politics

In 1969, as the Oregon Bottle Bill was contemplated as a way to reduce litter, large retailers opposed the idea and said that no one would return bottles and cans for a two-cent deposit. Furthermore, opponents of the bill claimed that small grocery stores would face an extraordinary financial burden from receiving and processing thousands of bottles and cans, potentially bankrupting several stores. John Piacentini disagreed. He offered a half cent for each soda or beer bottle returned to Plaid Pantry stores. Piacentini even stated that he hoped Oregonians "bury me in litter." Piacentini was a traveling advocate of the bottle bill.

The current CEO Jonathan Polonsky said in 2025 "There’s nothing sexy about taking back other people’s bottles and cans" and he commented that Plaid Pantry only continue to accept bottles because they're obligated to do so by law. Polonsky expressed enthusiasm for a proposed change to the Oregon Bottle Bill which allows stores to stop acceptance at 6PM or 8PM.

Alcohol sales

In the late 1990s, Plaid Pantry failed 30-40% of spot checks conducted by the OLCC to determine if the company was selling alcohol or tobacco to minors; by March 2000, they became the first retailer recognized by the OLCC as a "responsible vendor", a milestone reached due to changes to the company's training and its credit card validation system, which were updated to simplify a clerk's ability to ascertain whether a customer was of legal age.

References

  • Plaid Pantry's homepage
  • Plaid Pantry succeeds by shrinking - Portland Business Journal