If we were interested in the opening of the first supermarket in Touraine? It was 55 years ago, in Chambray-les-Tours, at the very end of the 1960s.
A first for Touraine
At the end of the 1960s, Touraine still had no supermarkets. The first store of its kind (a large area backed by a car park) opened in 1958 in the Paris region. While some think it will never work, barely 10 years later, there will be more than 2000 across the country! In Tours, people still do their shopping in traditional shops in the city centre.
A new business format
The Touraine supermarket is set up in Chambray-les-Tours, at the junction between the national 10 and the road to Loches. And it’s a totally innovative concept for the time. There is a 5,000 m² self-service sales area and a large car park with 1,200 spaces, essential in this period of growth in the car fleet.
They are backed by a commercial gallery bringing together around twenty traditional shops and services such as a post office, a restaurant, a bank, a travel agency or a tobacconist.
Beautiful people for the inauguration
For the Suma-Lefroid company, the inauguration is obviously an important moment: it is absolutely necessary to mark the spirits and encourage the people of Touraine to come and discover this new commercial model which they do not know. For the occasion, we are going to put the small dishes in the big ones by inviting stars of the time: the singers Nicoletta and Annie Cordy, the journalist Roger Couderc, or the actor Jean-Marc Thiébaut are present.
Several changes of signs before a move.
Born under the Super Suma brand, our supermarket in Chambray first went under the Mammouth brand, then under the “Rallye” brand in the 1980s after it was taken over by the Casino group. It will work until 2002.
On the decline following a big fire in 1991 and faced with competition from the “Chambray 2” space, the store will then be transferred to the town of La Riche under the name La Riche Soleil. The former commercial premises of Chambray-les-Tours remained dormant for almost 10 years, before finally being destroyed in 2011 and replaced by housing.
A supermarket linked to a Touraine free radio station
We end with a little anecdote that I owe to Christophe Braud, our beloved antenna director: it is on the roof of the discotheque located in the “Rallye” commercial complex that the transmitter of the Touraine free radio ” RMS” had been positioned in the early 80s!
