Coles launched “A new world of shopping”  with the opening of the first Coles New World Supermarket in Frankston, Victoria. This was followed by further New World Supermarkets around Victoria, with the brand expanding into New South Wales from 1965. It was a new concept in food retailing in Australia, with groceries, fresh meat, fruit and vegetables, dairy goods, produce and frozen foods all within one store. >Coles Myer Facts

When Coles opened its first New World Supermarket in 1962, above the verandah of the Frankston store was a giant red, white and black rocket. It was more than 10 metres long and weighed over a tonne. The rocket was a replica of one that had started the ‘space race’, launching the first man-made satellite into orbit five years earlier. It was a fitting symbol for a decade that would see mankind take the first steps on the moon.

According to Coles, the space theme was the brainchild of Edgar Coles, the Managing Director and Chairman. After Edgar returned from a trip to the USA in 1957, the company began its move into the grocery business, taking over the SE Dickins chain in Victoria and acquiring grocery chains in New South Wales and South Australia. In 1960, Coles’ first freestanding suburban supermarket, complete with a car park, opened in the Melbourne suburb of North Balwyn.

But there were even bigger things to come. The futuristic New World Supermarket was food retailing on a giant scale. With almost 2000 square metres of floor space, it had the largest range of groceries in Victoria. In New South Wales, Woolworths also moved into food, opening its first supermarket in Warrawong (a suburb of Wollongong) in 1960, and the American-owned Safeway chain arrived on Coles’ doorstep, launching its brand in Frankston in 1963.

Cole’s “New World” branding was eventually abandoned in 1991, when the stores were re-branded simply as Coles Supermarkets. Woolworths eventually bought the Safeway business, leading to the establishment of the Coles/Woolies duopoly which, in the 2020s, became the focus of consumer distrust and various government investigations.