Mastodawn

Fun random fact of the day: Spar (the supermarket chain) is Dutch. Its name means "spruce", a coniferous tree. This also i spired the logo.
However, its name comes from much earlier, when it was called "de spar" ("de" being Dutch for "the"). Besides meqning "the spruce", it also was an acronym for "Door Eendrachtig Samenwerken Profiteren Allen Regelmatig" : "through united collaboration everybody profits regularly". Yes, it is as clunky in Dutch as it is in English, but what do you expect from a name from 1932.

@Stephanie That's amazing! 😃

Luck Goddess 🌒🌕🌘 (They/She)21h ago

@Stephanie and at least here, they still sometimes use the „despar“ brand, mostly on imported foods I think :)

JesseBot 20h ago

@Stephanie oh is it actually a co-op? If that's the case, I'll shop there more regularly

blue_heart_sparkle

Marcos Dione 20h ago

@jessebot @Stephanie and is it a coop on every country the operate?

@Stephanie I love to profit regularly!

@Stephanie Thanks that explains the tree in their logo. In Germany there was also Spar when I grew up, but we interpreted it from the German meaning of the word which means to economise.

Jennifer Moore 😷20h ago

I always thought it was an allusion to "sparen" as in "saving"! Maybe contriving that is why the spelt-out words are a bit clunky?

@unchartedworlds @Stephanie
That was my expectation as well.

Maarten Koning 5h ago

@unchartedworlds @Stephanie In the early days the SPAR marketing rhyme was in Dutch: “kopen bij de spar, is sparen bij de koop” meaning: shopping at the spar is saving money while shopping.

Dr. Victoria Grinberg 17h ago

@Stephanie oh wow, I had no idea! Love such random info!

Knud Jahnke 17h ago

Oh, I didn't know. The word "spar" in German means "save", so I always assumed that was that. And only now I noticed that the Spar brand has disappeared in Germany, since they were bought up by another chain in 2005.

Jason Stangroome 17h ago

@Stephanie thanks, today I learned. There is a Spar store near me, apparently one of only six in Australia.

blobfoxfingerguns

@Stephanie wow, thanks. I though maybe it was from German (and Dutch it turns out) "sparen" (to save)

In return: German grocery chain REWE is an initialism of Revisionsverband der Westkauf-Genossenschaften", meaning "western buying co-operatives auditing association".

Nicolai von Neudeck 16h ago

@Stephanie i always thought it was Austrian and came from „save“. TIL

@Stephanie
In the 1970s and 1980s there were Spar suprmarkets all over Ireland (now gone). As a youngster I thought Spar was Swedish ( the pine tree, maybe?) and that Spar meant 'save' in Swedish (related to 'spare' in English). 🤭 Thank you for clearing this up!

Surprising. I always thought the root meant 'save'.