David Sands is a convenience store

Convenience store

A convenience store, corner store, corner shop, commonly called a bodega in Spanish-speaking areas of the United States, is a small store or shop in a built up area that stocks a range of everyday items such as groceries, toiletries, alcoholic and soft drinks, and may also offer money order and...

 chain

Chain store

Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses. In retail, dining and many service categories, chain businesses...

 located in Fife

Fife

Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...

, Kinross

Kinross

Kinross is a burgh in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. It was formerly the county town of Kinross-shire.Kinross is a fairly small town, with some attractive buildings...

 and Perthshire

Perthshire

Perthshire, officially the County of Perth , is a registration county in central Scotland. It extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, Rannoch Moor and Ben Lui in the west, and Aberfoyle in the south...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. Almost 200 years old, the family-owned enterprise had 26 outlets as of August, 2008. According to a 2009 article on Business7, a publication of the Scottish Daily Record and Sunday Mail

Sunday Mail (Scotland)

The Sunday Mail is a Scottish tabloid newspaper published every Sunday. It is the sister paper of the Daily Record and is owned by Trinity Mirror and as such has a left-wing outlook which in turn tends to guide Scottish political debate in that direction.The Sunday Mail is read by over one million...

, the company is "a major employer across Fife and Perthshire." Its head office is located in Kinross.

History

The business was founded as a grocery store

Grocery store

A grocery store is a store that retails food. A grocer, the owner of a grocery store, stocks different kinds of foods from assorted places and cultures, and sells these "groceries" to customers. Large grocery stores that stock products other than food, such as clothing or household items, are...

 in 1812 by Joseph Hardie. In 1846, the business was inherited by Hardie's nephew, David Sands. Sands had some difficulty finding among his sons a successor, but in 1920 the business passed to David Sands' son, Davee Sands. In 1966, Davee Sands' son David Lindsey took over the business, being joined in 1989 by his son David Sands. At that time, the business consisted of a single convenience store in Kinross, but it soon expanded with additional outlets and services. By May of 2006, it was a chain store employing more than 450 people. In August of 2008, at which point the enterprise had 26 outlets through Fife, Kinross and Perthshire, the chain brought in Ewen Chisholm as chief operating officer

Chief operating officer

A Chief Operating Officer or Director of Operations can be one of the highest-ranking executives in an organization and comprises part of the "C-Suite"...

, expanding the management of the company beyond family for the first time.