BILL Pratt is a Frankston boy whose three small stores became the seeds from which grew Australia's huge Safeway supermarket empire.
Last week he received a courtesy phone call from Michael Luscombe, one of the chain's big bosses, to let him know the Safeway brand would soon be scrapped by Woolworths.
"He was a bit embarrassed, but I thought it might happen a lot earlier," Mr Pratt said. "The supermarkets are all called Woolworths elsewhere in Australia and have been since the two companies merged in 1986."
Mr Pratt is a legend at Woolies for his role in establishing the Safeway chain, as its managing director for many years and as a pioneer of bar coding in Australia.
But back to the beginning: Bill Pratt was born in Frankston in 1925 and educated at the state school in Davey Street and Frankston High School. He studied engineering at RMIT before the war intervened and he joined the Royal Australian Air Force
where he trained as a rigger, gunner and fitter and served in what is now Indonesia.
At war's end, he returned to his course at RMIT, and in late 1946 was looking for a holiday job. His father had owned Pratt's General Store at 82 Young Street, since 1922. When Mr Pratt heard the leasee wanted to move on, he asked his father if he could take over the store. He was hoping to renovate it over the holidays and sell the business at a handsome profit.
The renovations took much longer than expected and Mr Pratt also discovered he had retailing in his blood. He never returned to RMIT.
In 1950 he hit on the idea of converting the old-fashioned store into a new-fangled "cash and carry" shop.
"My father told me I was daft," he said. "Grocers bought everything in bulk and ran around cutting, scooping, weighing and wrapping items for customers. About 60per cent of the business was on credit ... and you had to deliver groceries to customers."
For the reopening as a self-service store, he offered a special on Rosella tomato sauce of half a penny discount.
Three days later, Rosella refused to supply him after receiving a complaint from one of his competitors.
"Gee, you wouldn't get away with this price fixing nowadays," Mr Pratt said with a laugh.
Soon afterwards, a salesman arrived at his store and offered him a discount if he bought 48 dozen of a particular product. That's when he decided to open a second store, leasing a former plumber's premises in Mornington's Main Street.
Some residents told Mr Pratt his business would last just three months.
"No one from Beleura Hill [the swish part of town] will want to pick up their own groceries," he was told.
"I was standing in the doorway of the shop one cold winter morning and saw this fellow outside in a big, expensive coat.
"He told me that earlier in the week he'd waited outside George's in the city while his wife bought bags of expensive items. 'Now she's inside your store trying to save a ha'penny'.
"I knew then that the self-service model would work."
Mr Pratt opened his third store, at Chelsea, in 1953.
In 1962 two Americans walked into his Frankston store. They were senior executives from Safeway and were looking for a way to start a chain of supermarkets in Australia.
The following year Mr Pratt merged his three stores into the new company, Safeway Australia, and by 1985 there were 130 stores in the eastern states, with Bill Pratt at the helm.
When Mr Pratt opened a new store in Station Street, Frankston, Nicki Whitta, a leading personality from radio station 3UZ, was to cut the ribbon.
Whitta had to cancel at the last minute and sent his turntable assistant, a relatively unknown bloke called Graham Kennedy, to fill in.
So started an enduring friendship between Kennedy and Bill Pratt, with Kennedy opening many new stores across Melbourne.
Kennedy moved to Frankston years later and Mr Pratt delivered groceries to the reclusive star's clifftop home.
Nowadays Mr Pratt and his wife Laurel live a quiet life in sylvan Wonga Park, where Bill Pratt can indulge his love of golf at the adjacent golf course.
"I'm still on a handicap of 32 but I love the game."
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