The Very First “Depanneur” Is A “Market” Today

The world’s first c-store to start using the term “depanneur” almost 50 years ago is a “market” today, having been rebranded Marché 7 Jours (nothing to do with Couche-Tard’s 7 Jours Quebec chain).

However, even though it no longer bears the name “depanneur” on its sign, it is still considered a depanneur and proudly continues to offer convenience products and services at extended opening hours.

According to Judith Lussier, author of the book Sacré dépanneur! published by Héliotrope, the first depanneur was born a little by chance, in 1970, from the imagination of a small grocery store owner and following a new legislation adopted in Quebec a little earlier.

Jean-Paul Beaudry, the son of Arthur Beaudry, the founder of what is known as Beaudry & Cadrin today, was a Minister among the Union Nationale Quebec government in the late 1960s. Coming from the retail industry, he passed Bill 24 which granted “small merchants”, or grocery store owners with two employees, the exclusive privilege of opening weeknights and weekends.

At that time, Paul-Émile Maheu then owned a small grocery store in Montreal, on the corner of Saint-Zotique Street and 1st Avenue. He decided to take advantage of the new legislation by modifying his store to operate on longer hours with fewer employees. For instance, to compensate for the lack of employees, he cut the shelves of the store so that he could have a clear view of all his store at any time. And finally, he found a new word to describe his concept: Le dépanneur Saint-Zotique.

The first few months, he is regularly arrested for selling beer after 5 pm … and every time, he is released when the police realize that he has the right to do so since the law has been revised.

The first year was a great success. Customers came from afar because the Saint-Zotique depanneur was the only one selling beer after business hours. After a while, Mr. Maheu even launched a small chain of convenience stores called Dépanneur Pop Convenience.

Then, more and more grocery stores followed his steps and the term convenience store became widely used to designate convenience stores.

In the 1980s, having no succession, he sold his store to Korean buyers.

A few years later, on March 19, 1983, the word “depanneur” was officially introduced in the Quebec Official Gazette and in 2015, it made its official entry in the English language, courtesy of the prestigious Oxford Dictionnary.