Cala Foods was a supermarket chain operating in San Francisco, California. Cala Foods was the sister chain to Bell Markets, but Cala operated stores exclusively within the San Francisco city limits. The last Cala Foods store closed its doors on December 1, 2011. Cala Foods was established in 1947 by the seven brothers of the Cala family. Cala Foods acquired the QFI supermarket chain in 1973. The company merged with Bell Markets in the mid-1970s. Bell Markets was founded in the 1940s when Dominick Bell and his two brothers opened a supermarket in San Francisco. The Cala Foods chain was... purchased by the Yucaipa Companies in 1988. In 1994, Cala became a division of the Ralphs Grocery Company when Ralphs merged with Yucaipa. In August 2006, Ralphs reached an agreement to sell 11 of 13 Cala and Bell stores back to Harley DeLano, previous manager of the chain. While DeLano retains the right to use the Cala and Bell store names, Kroger retains ownership of the names themselves. In January 2007, DeLano Retail Partners took control of all but one Cala Foods Store and immediately rebranded the stores to DeLano's IGA.
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