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Heritage

Scott's REIT / KEYreit

Closed sold 2013

Real estate investment trust · Toronto · Canada-wide

The property side of the fried-chicken empire: Scott's REIT, later KEYreit, held the land and buildings beneath hundreds of quick-service restaurants with John Bitove Jr. as chairman and major shareholder, and was sold in 2013.

Details

People
John Bitove Jr., chairman and major shareholder

Sources (1)

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bitove

  • Priszm Income Fund (KFC / Pizza Hut / Taco Bell Canada)

    Quick-service restaurant operator · Vaughan (head office); seven provinces

    Closed CCAA 2011; stores sold by 2012

    For most of a decade, more than half of Canada's KFC outlets — 428 restaurants, nine thousand employees, roughly $450 million in yearly revenue — answered to Pr...

    Macedonian connection: At its height the Bitove-chaired fund ran 428 KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants — about 60 per cent of KFC's Canadian outlets.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priszm

  • Slave Petroff and Company

    Steamship agency, banking & labour bureau · Toronto (King St E district)

    Before there were restaurants there was the agency: Slave Petroff and Company sold steamship passages, moved remittances to the villages and ran a labour bureau...

    Macedonian connection: The pre-First-World-War agency that sold the tickets, wired the money and found the jobs for Toronto's first Macedonian colony.

    Sources: https://torontomanyfaces.wixsite.com/ebook/47-the-macedonian-community

  • The Java Shoppe

    Coffee shops · North York (Toronto)

    Closed 1960s (absorbed into later ventures)

    A fourteen-stool coffee counter opened by a teenaged John Bitove Sr. — with Dotsa beside him — became five locations by 1962 and the seed of the largest private...

    Macedonian connection: The fourteen-stool coffee shop where the Bitove empire began; John Sr. was the Toronto-born son of immigrants from Gabresh.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bitove_Sr.

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