When was the kroger company founded

When Kroger installed cash registers in the meat departments, every one of them inexplicably broke. When Kroger hired female cashiers, the butchers opened all the windows to "freeze out" the women and then let loose with such obscene language that the women quit in a matter of days. When Kroger hired young men instead as cashiers, the butchers threatened them with physical force. But Kroger was stubborn, and in the long run his money-saving, efficient procedures won out. From the beginning, Kroger was interested in both manufacturing and retail.

His mother's homemade sauerkraut and pickles sold well to the German immigrants in Cincinnati. And in the back of his store, Kroger himself experimented to invent a "French brand" of coffee, which is still sold in Kroger stores.

In , Kroger made his first long-distance expansion, buying 25 stores in St. Louis, Missouri. At a time when most chains only hired trucks as needed, Kroger bought a fleet of them, enabling him to move the company into Detroit; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Springfield and Toledo, Ohio. Kroger served on the president's national war food board and on the governor of Ohio's food board.

His dynamic plain speech raised substantial amounts of money for the Red Cross and Liberty Bonds. After the war, The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company continued to expand, following Kroger's preference for buying smaller, financially unsteady chains in areas adjacent to established Kroger territories. One of his executives, William Albers, became president. In , Kroger had 5, stores, the most there have ever been in the chain. Since the turn of the century, chain stores had been accused of driving small merchants out of business by using unfair business practices and radically changing the commerce of communities.

In the s, an anti-chain store movement began to gain momentum. Politicians, radio announcers, and newspapers talked about "the chain store menace. Because the grocery industry was so much a part of most people's lives, food chains such as Kroger bore the brunt of public complaints.

Chain store company executives soon realized they would have to organize in order to prevent anti-chain legislation.

When Albers resigned as president of Kroger in , he also resigned as president of the organization. Albert H. Morrill, an attorney who had served as Kroger's general counsel, was elected president of both in his stead.

Morrill faced not only the economic challenges of the Great Depression, but also the political challenges of the growing public distrust of chain stores. With the limited transportation and communication systems of the time, the company had to decentralize in order to grow.

Morrill established 23 branches with a manager for each branch, and hired a real estate manager to close unprofitable stores.

He also implemented policies that guarded against anti-chain accusations, while encouraging customers to shop at Kroger stores. Instead of going through the usual channels for buying produce, The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company began to send its buyers to produce farms so they could inspect crops to ensure the quality of the food their stores sold.

This counteracted the frequent complaint that chain stores sold low-quality foods. This policy eventually resulted in the formation of Wesco Food Company, the Kroger Company's own produce procurement organization.

Morrill also began the Kroger Food Foundation in , making it the first grocery company to test food scientifically in order to monitor the quality of products. The foundation also established the Homemakers Reference Committee, a group of homemakers who tested food samples in their own homes. In , one of the company's southern managers, Michael Cullen, proposed a revolutionary plan to his superiors: a bigger self-service grocery store that would make a profit by selling large quantities of food at low prices that competitors could not beat.

But at this stage, Kroger executives were wary of the idea, and Cullen went on alone to begin the first supermarket, King Kullen, in Queens, New York. Throughout the Depression, Kroger maintained its business; by , Kroger had 50 supermarkets of its own. During the s, frozen foods and shopping carts were introduced, and the Kroger Food Foundation invented a way of processing beef without chemicals so that it remained tender, calling the process "Tenderay" beef.

Morrill and Colonel Sherrill, vice-president of Kroger, became involved with the organization of the American Retail Association in A report of the organization's publicity release on the front page of The New York Times prompted controversy, because the headline stated that the organization would work as a "unified voice" in economic matters, which suggested a kind of "super lobby" to some people.

This led to a congressional investigation and in , a bill was introduced imposing a punitive tax against chain stores that would almost certainly force them out of business. Only after much controversy and public debate was the punitive tax bill defeated that year. In , Morrill died. Charles Robertson, formerly vice-president and treasurer, became president. The company's plans for growth were shelved during World War II, with about 40 percent of its employees serving in the armed forces.

The Army Quartermaster Corps commissioned the Kroger Food Foundation to create rations that would boost the morale of soldiers, and the company produced individual cans of date pudding, plum pudding, and fruit cake. Other rations that came from Kroger included cheese bars, preserves, and "C-ration crackers. After the war, in , Joseph Hall, who had been hired in to close unprofitable stores, became president. He changed the company name from The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company to The Kroger Company, in keeping with indications that the company was moving into a new period of growth.

In , Kroger opened its first egg-processing plant in Wabash, Indiana, in order to further ensure egg quality. Hall also saw that 45 private-label brands were merged into one Kroger brand, and introduced the blue-and-white logo with the name change.

Hall's new policy of consumer research was an important change for the company. This merger made Kroger the largest grocery retailer in the United States. Toggle navigation. Jump to: navigation , search. Cashman, Sean. America in the Gilded Age. Chandler, Alfred D. Laycock, George. Murdock, Eugene. Painter, Nell Irwin. In an era when many larger mergers failed, the success of the Kroger-Fred Meyer merger stands out.

Today Kroger offers a store format for nearly every kind of shopper. Our formats include supermarkets, multi-department stores, Marketplace stores, price-impact stores, convenience and fine jewelry stores. Throughout its rich history, Kroger has served as an innovator and pioneer in the food retail industry.

During the s, it was the first grocery chain to routinely monitor product quality and scientifically test foods. In , Kroger became the first grocery retailer in America to test an electronic scanner. It was installed in a store in suburban Cincinnati, and visitors from around the country attended the event. In just the last few years, Kroger pioneered QueVision, an innovative faster checkout program that has reduced the time customers wait in line to check out, on average, from four minutes in to less than 30 seconds in stores today.

In , the company listened to 1,, customers, who provided invaluable feedback and insights. In the mids, Kroger created a process to rescue safe, edible fresh products and donate them quickly to local food banks. With dozens of manufacturing facilities and distribution centers around the country, Kroger also has one of the largest privately-owned truck fleets in the country.

Trucks moving merchandise and supplies among our stores, warehouses and manufacturing plants log nearly million miles annually. From one tiny grocery store in Cincinnati more than a century ago, Barney Kroger laid the foundation for what today ranks as one of the largest companies in America. Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.

It sta Carrefour SA history, profile and history video Carrefour SA engages in the operation of grocery stores.

Its business activities are divided into the following store formats: Hypermarkets, Supermarkets, Cash and Carr