When I bought my last car from a local dealership, I found out that they’d been bought by Asbury Automotive Group. The dealership has kept its old name, though, so it looks like it’s part of a “hidden chain” strategy, similar to what someone described above for funeral homes.
What do you mean by “a sizeable portion of the country”?
Most INDUSTRY is local. You’re primarily describing retail businesses, not industry per se. If you need steel machined, or a conveyor system assembled, or plastic molded, or aluminum frames welded, most of the time it’s a local industry, and even those multi-site companies that do exist are usually regional.
http://www.americangolf.com/about.cfm Golf courses. American Golf runs over 110 courses around the US.
Bit of both. Lots of the dealers are corporate owned but there are small franchisees also. You can buy stock in AutoNation on the NYSE (currently trading at just over half of the 52-week high value).
There are no chain comic book stores, but I think the guy who owns 4 of the shops here would like to change that.
By the way elmwood, The Palm actually has a location in Dallas and several smaller, less world-class cities.
Nitpick:
Kroger’s is bigger than you think.
They’re not a 50-state proposition, but they’re present on both coasts.
They own some brands out west including Fred Meyers [sp?] and Fry’s.
At least a couple states, maybe a larger region such as “the southeast” or “the eastern seaboard”. Shoney’s, for example, operates mainly in the southeast and midwest even though it could be called a national chain; it has limited overlap with more northern-centric restaunts like Perkins which otherwise serve much the same food in the same fashion.
The Cochran Firm (Johnnie Cochran) has offices in many cities. 26 offices in 15 states, according to its website.
Geppi’s was a chain in the 80s and 90s, owned by America’s biggest comics distributor. Big Planet has three stores in the Washington area, but might not qualify as a chain.
Wegmans has a complete stranglehold on grocery stores in the NE. It’s only a matter of time before the company goes completely national, but it’ll probably take decades.
Like I said . . . there is a “chain” here of 4 stores, but I don’t think that counts as a chain.
How widespread was Geppi’s? I’m familiar with Diamond of course but never heard of Geppi’s.
Hard to say. I can’t find any information online, and the Comics Journal’s website doesn’t currently have a search function.
Geppi’s seemed pretty ubiquitous in the Washington/Baltimore area in the 80s and 90s. There were antitrust actions leveled at Diamond circa 1997, and many local dealers were outspoken about having to compete head-to-head with their sole distributor. Suddenly, a lot of the Geppi’s stores were independent or otherwise vacated (I think one remains in Baltimore).
Before today, I had no idea they weren’t a nationwide chain at some point. They sure got mentioned a lot in old TCJ news stories.
Replies are trickling in, but so far, Geppis had 6 stores in Maryland, 2 in Virginia and one in Florida that I know about. I’d call that a chain.
Not here in Australia they aren’t- there’s only 3 “Major” Supermarkets (Coles, Woolworths/Safeway, and Aldi), and they’re everywhere.
Well, there are not many Chinese Restaurant chains.
I know there have been threads about this on the Dope before, but basically they are family owned and individual restaurants.
Panda Express is the (US) national equivalent of the “Happy Lucky Shanghai China Jade Gardens #2” Chinese carry-out joints. There’s also mid-end Chinese restaurant chains, such as P.F. Chang’s.