Its January 24, 2004 and the flagship Big Bear at Graceland Shopping Center is being sold to the walls.

Who did in Big Bear? (back)

Big Bear was a longtime supermarket chain in Columbus, Ohio. In 1934 Wayne Brown opened the first modern supermarket in the nation on Lane Avenue across from St. John's Arena and called it "Big Bear". By the early 1980's Big Bear was bringing in a billion dollars a year in revenue and was sponsoring the scoreboard in Ohio State's football stadium. Brown was a builder, and he opened stores regularly throughout his career. Wayne Brown WAS Big Bear, it was his baby.

In 1989, a New York Investment Banker named Gary D. Hirsch took over Big Bear in a leveraged buyout. He borrowed an extravagant amount of money to buy the chain, paid himself an enormous bonus for doing so, and then slapped  the debt service onto the chain. This type of transaction was common in the 1980's, and as certainly as it enriched Hirsch, it also destroyed the company. Quite simply, because Big Bear had to make massive debt payments, it couldn't lower prices to compete when Meijer, and then later Wal-Mart, moved into the grocery business. It was all over by the end of 2003. While Giant Eagle and Kroger cherry-picked some of the better Columbus locations, most former stores locations remain unused or under-utilized. Hirsch split after things went south:

"When I left eight years ago, we had the best team in Columbus, and this guy from New York has absolutely decimated the company," said Michael J. Knilans, president and CEO of Big Bear Stores Co. from 1976 to 1989.

"This guy" is Gary D. Hirsch, chairman of Syracuse-based Penn Traffic Co., which bought Columbus-based Big Bear in 1989 in a hostile takeover.

Knilans and former Vice President of Operations Richard Vogel were interviewed May 13, the day Penn Traffic announced the sacking of folksy Big Bear President Stephen Breech, 141 other Big Bear employees in the company's Grandview offices and four other Penn Traffic division heads as part of a corporate restructuring.

 "He bought a jewel and proceeded to run it into the ground," said Knilans, an Upper Arlington resident who serves on two supermarket boards. "He has micro-managed a company that didn't need to be micro-managed. When I left we had $35 million in the bank. Now the company has $1 1/2 billion in debt."

 The problems at Big Bear, Knilans said, include declining sales and rising prices aimed at helping Penn Traffic pay its debt.

 Hirsch, he said, "did everything contrary to good business practice."

 Knilans' criticism of Penn Traffic and Hirsch were echoed by Richard Vogel, who was vice president of operations for Big Bear under Knilans.

 "The man who took over never understood the business or the market and proceeded to ruin the company," Vogel said of Hirsch. "An awful lot of good people are losing their jobs through no fault of their own. It upsets me to no end.".

 - Business First Magazine May 19, 1997