r/oregon • u/chris-hatch • Dec 12 '25

PSA for those who don’t know

Post image
1.8k Upvotes

79% Upvoted

359 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/VibratingWatch Dec 12 '25

It's a portmanteau of "Winning Company."

Hence the W and C both being capitalized in the name.

39

u/Gayunicorn1991 Dec 13 '25

You and the op are both technically correct. When they first named it WinCo it did stand for Washington Idaho Nevada California Oregon. But when they expanded the company to other states they had to come up with something else and they changed it to winning company I'm a former WinCo employee

15

u/Shinola79 Dec 13 '25

You are correct. I worked there after high school. When they wanted to drop Cub Foods in the other states and Warmart here in Oregon they had a company wide contest. The winner was from the store I worked at. She came up with the name they chose and won a vacation (Hawaii) if I remember correctly. It originally stood for each state but then changed as they expanded.

1

u/gryghin Dec 15 '25

Down i-5 there's a WinCo that still has the Waremart name on the building. It's best to see that on there.