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Michael Medline, who runs one of the biggest grocery chains in Canada, was looking for a place last summer to meet with the head of a rival chain. It was a sensitive meeting about a potential acquisition, so it had to happen someplace where they wouldn’t know anyone.
“We couldn’t, obviously, go to each other’s offices,” said Medline, chief executive of Sobeys’ parent company Empire Co. Ltd., partly because of the pandemic, but mostly because he worried his staff would recognize Anthony Longo, chief executive of the popular southern Ontario chain Longo Brothers Fruit Markets Inc.