Gateway Corporation
1875 Mr J H Mills opened a small shop in Bristol[1]
1950 14 J H Mills stores turned into Gateway supermarkets
1977 Linfood Holdings acquired Gateway
1983 70 Frank Dee stores, belonging to Linfood, converted to Gateway; the company was renamed Dee Corporation
1983-7 Acquired Keymarkets, Lennons, International Stores, Fine Fare and Carrefour hypermarkets
1989 Gateway had about 400 stores when it received an unsolicited bid from Isosceles, a financial group put together for the purpose. If successful Isosceles planned to sell the 62 larger supermarkets to Asda and concentrate on the remainder[2]; eventually Isosceles succeeded in winning control[3], sold the Medicare chain of chemists to Kingfisher and 60 larger stores to Asda; plans were being developed to sell the US Hermans chain; the larger of the remaining stores were being rebranded Somerfield Fine Fresh Foods [4]
1991 Sold 42 smaller stores to Kwik Save
1994 Gateway Foodmarkets was renamed Somerfield Stores
1996 Flotation as a public company[5].
1998 Somerfield acquired Kwik Save Group, with 880 stores