Food Lion began in 1957, when Ralph Ketner, Brown Ketner, and Wilson Smith founded a grocery store called Food Town in what is now the Ketner Center in Salisbury, North Carolina. At a time when grocery stores were mostly family-owned and operated and ten-pound bags of potatoes sold for thirty-five cents, Food Town introduced the concept of everyday low prices in 1968. Rather than relying on weekly specials or coupons, the chain priced items at their lowest levels and kept them there every day, becoming an industry leader and creating the slogan "LFPINC," or "Lowest Food Prices North Carolina." In 1983, the company became Food Lion and expanded beyond its traditional southern base to Kentucky, West Virginia, and Maryland. By the early 1990s, stores had opened in Delaware, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, and during the 1990s Belgium's Delhaize Group purchased the company. In 2001, Food Lion opened its one-thousandth store and continued as a strong competitor in the supermarket business in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states, while other stores controlled by Delhaize Group included Bloom, Bottom Dollar, Harveys, and Reid's.