Sobeys introduced the Club Sobeys program in those markets. It was known as Club Thrifty Foods in the British Columbia locations of that chain, after it was acquired. In the Club Sobeys region, Sobeys introduced, in partnership with Citibank Canada, a Club Sobeys MasterCard credit card. These card accounts were later transferred to Bank of Montreal, which also introduced the BMO Sobeys Air Miles MasterCard in Atlantic Canada (and IGA Air Miles MasterCard in Quebec). Following the transition from Club Sobeys to Air Miles in 2014, all Club Sobeys credit cards were converted to BMO Sobeys Air Miles MasterCards, which were then replaced by standard BMO Air Miles Mastercards a few years later. In early 2015, Sobeys announced that the Air Miles loyalty program would be extended into Ontario on March 27, 2015, replacing the Club Sobeys loyalty program. This was a result of a new agreement between Air Miles and Metro, which extended Metro's partnership but gave up its exclusivity in the grocery category in Ontario. Scene+ In June 2022, Empire Company announced that it will end its participation in Air Miles and switch to the Cineplex Entertainment and Scotiabank-owned Scene+ program at its grocery and pharmacy chains. Empire will also hold an ownership stake in the company. The transition began with Atlantic Canada on August 11, 2022, to be followed by a nationwide rollout to Quebec (IGA), Ontario and Western Canada through late 2022 to early 2023. Online grocery sales In January 2018, the company signed a deal with British company Ocado Group PLC to provide e-commerce solution for Sobeys using robots to assemble customer orders. Michael Medline, CEO of Empire and Sobeys, said that the online grocery sales business would not be ready for approximately two years, and that he expected it to take another two years for the business to be profitable. A Bloomberg News reporter who viewed a video of a similar system described the process: "[The] similar Ocado facility in Andover, England, shows the facility spanning nearly 21,000 square metres (5¼ acres) with robots rolling over a grid to pick and pack customer orders in about five minutes." The publication Tech Insider, owned by Business Insider, posted a similar video to YouTube, stating: "Ocado's new warehouse has thousands of robots zooming around a grid system to pack groceries. [These] robots can process 65,000 orders every week. They communicate on a 4G network to avoid