When You Wish Upon a Sears

You know, it just wouldn’t be Christmastime around here without stopping in at Sears. So, in keeping with our age-old (ok, three year-old) tradition, here we go! And a welcome sight this is – the brand-new Sears at the Tri-County Shopping Center in Springdale (Cincinnati), Ohio, as it appeared during its first Christmas season in 1967. The store still exists in what is now called Tri-County Mall, just off of Interstate 275.

It doesn’t take much to get people who grew up with the Sears Christmas Wish Book to talk on and on about it. In my family’s case, we would kill several hours over Thanksgiving weekend going through it (or the JCPenney Christmas Catalog, which was also excellent), making a list of things we hoped to find under the tree - in the interest of making it easy on the folks, of course. The list making was almost as much fun as the actual opening of the presents! (Note I said “almost”.)

For those who want to reminisce or were a bit too young to experience the “wish books”, I want to once again point you towards a fantastic website, appropriately enough called the “Wish Book Web”, where you’ll find an amazing collection of Christmas catalogs from the likes of Sears, Penneys, Wards and others, scanned in full. You may want to wait until after Christmas to check it out, though, or you might not get your shopping finished!

The Kroger Superstores!

In the early 1970’s, Kroger was at the proverbial crossroads. The closing years of the sixties and early years of the seventies had brought about many changes in American life - the most obvious, of course, being political and social in nature. Far less obvious, but sweeping nonetheless, were the changes in the retail business environment. The supermarket industry, in particular, was reeling. There were many factors behind this – inflation, wage and price controls, consumer advocacy (for the first time, a real public focus on nutrition and health), food shortages, strikes and a number of other concerns. On top of this, the age-old battle for marketing and competitive supremacy was becoming more heated than ever.

Throughout 1970 and 1971, Kroger conducted an arduous, in-depth review of every aspect of its operation – company structure, management, manufacturing, merchandising, store locations and design, personnel training, you name it. At the same time, they conducted the most in-depth review to date of their competition in every market – an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses and how Kroger was stacking up against them. Since this was the seventies, you might call it an “I’m OK, You’re OK”-type analysis, referring to a famous pop-psychology book that half of the country seemed to be into at the time. (My mom had the book. Of course, I never read it, but I vaguely remember a parody - in Mad Magazine or somewhere else - called “I’m OK, You’re Nuts!”).

Some results of the study were reassuring – Kroger’s balance sheet was strong, and their distribution centers and manufacturing/private label operations were going great guns, as it were. Most importantly, though, the study revealed Kroger’s problem areas –the things that had to be addressed to ensure Kroger’s survival in what would prove to be a very challenging decade for the industry. They could see clearly now –the rain was gone. They could see all obstacles in their way…

And there were two main obstacles to be dealt with. First, it became clear that Kroger would be better off withdrawing from unprofitable markets that showed little potential for a turnaround, those areas in which Kroger was a clear also-ran. These markets were Chicago (most remaining stores sold to Fisher Foods’ Dominick’s division in 1971), Wisconsin (55 stores statewide - including the remaining 19 Milwaukee units, some of which went to Jewel, in 1971), Minneapolis (most stores sold to Quality Foods, also in ‘71) and Birmingham, which Kroger left in 1972. Also, the number of retail divisions, known as “Kroger Marketing Areas”, was consolidated to 13 from the previous 23.

The other major problem was the state of the stores themselves. Averaging only 16,000 square feet in store size, Kroger found itself falling behind industry standards. The number of food items had proliferated wildly in the 15 years or so that Kroger ‘s stores had been that size, and just as significantly, the smaller stores placed severe limitations on the amount of (very profitable) general merchandise items that could be stocked. As a couple of folks have noted in their comments on this site, Kroger’s produce and service departments (deli, bakery, etc.) left something to be desired. Another issue was the relative blandness of the stores. What may have been “state of the art” or at least above par in the late 50’s was by this time sorely dated. Above all, Kroger's stores were in dire need of a distinctive new image.

They really went for it. Out of this painful process came the “Superstore”, a new concept in every way for Kroger, one which made an immediate and fairly long-lasting impact on the chain’s fortunes. Fondly remembered by many today, the superstores easily ranked among the most attractive stores of the era.

Bursting at the seams with pride in their new stores, Kroger described a typical exterior in 1972 as follows – “The new look starts when you’re several blocks away. A graceful white column topped by a room-sized cube bearing Kroger’s name towers 30 feet high to identify the store.” (If you’ve ever stood at the base of one these signs, as I do when I buy gas at a Kroger near us, you’ll notice it definitely is “room-sized”. Surprisingly so. Many of these signs still exist, long after the age of the superstores has passed.)“As you enter the parking lot, the store comes into view. Bigger. Longer. Often with a SupeRx store as an integrated neighbor. A sharply clean, crisp look. Soaring white arches with almost a Moorish look, silhouetted against smoke brick and blue sky.” (I’m assuming the “sky” part varied, but I was pretty young in 1972!)

Inside were the real delights – “Look around. The first impression is spaciousness and cleanliness. Then a warmer, more friendly look. Then it hits you. The colors. Pulsing and alive, accented with wooden beams. Even the cases have lost their pale pastel tones. Now they’re richly-hued green and gold and bittersweet (I always thought that was a kind of memory, not a color), sparked with walnut-vinyl trim. Bold colors transmit a sense of shopping excitement.”

Then there were the service departments – “The Village Bakery is like a transplant from an English Tudor village with its beams and cross-hatched windows. And if the Viennese tortes, gesundheit kuchens (I’d probably love ‘em if I knew what they were!) and buttery dinner rolls look particularly good, there’s a reason. They’re made especially for the Village Bakery in local custom bakeries … and in a growing number of areas, in Kroger’s own handcraft bakeries.” “Next door in the delicatessen, a pleasant-faced clerk proffers a sample of salami and calls attention to the delicatessen’s freshly-barbecued ribs, basted with a tangy sauce and broiled to a tantalizing brownness. She stands under a wood-shingle roof, accented with the golden glow of lighted panels. Her stock in trade is prepared foods ready to carry home…”

There’s not a lot I can add to these great descriptions or to what you can see for yourself in the photos, but I would like to point out the great, classic 70’s lighting fixtures – globe lights with red, yellow or smoke-colored plastic domes, and the wood and textured amber glass-framed globes above the checkstands. The textured amber “glass”’ is probably fiberglass-reinforced plastic, a very popular decorative material of the time.

The size range of the superstores, with some exceptions (see the comments on the previous post), was 25,000 to 42,000 square feet. By the end of 1974, with three years of intense superstore construction under its belt, Kroger had opened 300 new stores and converted 250 existing ones into superstores, with an average square footage per unit of 29,000 as opposed to the 1970 average of 16,000. The “converted” stores, as mentioned, were completely redeveloped existing Kroger stores, expanded and refitted with the superstore interior package. The company tended to go with larger stores in booming new suburban shopping areas, such as the 35,616 square foot superstore opened in late 1971 in Goodlettsville (Nashville), Tennessee, located on Two Mile Pike (later renamed Rivergate Parkway after the adjacent mall of the same name), or in upscale areas, such as the Hyde Park section of Cincinnati, where a 42,000 square foot unit opened in 1974.

Kroger’s aggressive approach for the superstore program was fortuitous. Had Kroger delayed the superstore rollout by even a year, the cost would have been far higher, given the unprecedented inflation of the 1973-75 period.

Just as a side note, as if all of this weren’t exciting enough, Kroger decided to enter the amusement business. As trading stamps fell victim to the price wars of the early 70’s, Kroger needed a means to bolster its Top Value Enterprises subsidiary. In May 1972, Top Value entered into a joint venture with Taft Broadcasting, a Cincinnati-based media empire, to form Family Leisure Centers, Inc. Taft was just about to open Kings Island, a theme park located northwest of Cincinnati off of I-71. The first project of the new joint venture was Kings Dominion, a new theme park to be built in Richmond, Virginia. The first phase of the project, Lion Country Safari, “where the people are caged and the animals roam free”, opened in 1973 with the rest of the park following a bit later. In early 1975, Family Leisure Centers purchased a second theme park, Carowinds, located in Charlotte, North Carolina, from an investor group headed by Duke Power. When Kroger sold Top Value in 1978, it retained its interest in Family Leisure for another couple of years, eventually dissolving the partnership with Taft. Kroger did retain majority ownership in Kings Dominion for a period of time after that.

One other area the company dabbled in at this time was that of convenience stores. “Happy Food Stores” was what they were dubbed, complete with a clown mascot, and an experienced executive from Lil’ General stores to head up the venture. Let’s just say that they didn’t exactly live up to their name.

But the real story for Kroger in the seventies was of course, the superstores, and they certainly did live up to their name. Customers responded positively to Kroger’s new stores, as evidenced by record sales increases from 1972 through 1976. Kroger’s competitive position in their midwest and central markets was strengthened, and huge inroads were made in the newer, booming southern markets.

So, for Kroger and their customers, it was a bright, bright, sunshiny day!

The photos, all Kroger annual report publicity shots, from the top: (1) A photo montage from the Cincinnati Hyde Park location, opened in January 1974 (2) an exterior from 1975, location unknown, (3) the checkout from the Mooresville (south suburban Indianapolis), Indiana store, a 1961 store expanded from 16,000 to 29,000 square feet in 1973 (4) and (5) interiors from 1975, unknown location (6) the produce section, big on celery, Mooresville (7) poultry case, Mooresville (8) a family in front of another poultry case, 1976 (Remember those huge gallon milk cartons? I was sure glad when they started putting handles on those things!) (9) meats, unknown, 1976 (10) the “Village Cheese Shop”, Hyde Park (11) Delicatessen, 1976, unknown (12) a more elaborate cheese/wine section, 1976 (13) a pleasant-faced clerk in the bakery area, 1976 (14) bread section, unknown, 1974 (15) greeting card and gift section, including a line of “famous brands” cards that I actually remember, 1976.

The SupeRx Files

In the latter years of the 1950’s, Kroger entertained the possibility of operating its own chain of drugstores. Having successfully expanded the company in the postwar era, America’s third largest grocery chain began to consider other avenues to employ their successful merchandising practices, preferably in a way that would complement their existing supermarkets while providing a means to enter new regions. A slow, deliberate process ensued as Kroger sought the ideal entry into the drugstore field.

In late 1960 the right opportunity came, and on November 16, The New York Times announced Kroger’s purchase of Plainfield, New Jersey-based Sav-On Drugs, Inc. (No relation to the west coast Sav-On drug chain.) At the time Sav-On had five stores in New Jersey – Plainfield, Carteret, North Plainfield, Watchung and Springfield and two on Staten Island, New York. All of these stores were well outside of Kroger’s existing market area.

Arguably the major factor in Kroger’s decision was the reputation of Sav-On’s president and founder, James P. Herring. Herring, a 25-year veteran of the drugstore industry at the time, had spent most of his career with the Walgreen Co., where he was a key leader in Walgreen’s successful conversion to self-service in the early 1950’s. In 1954, Herring left Walgreen to start his own company. As head of Kroger’s newly formed “SupeRx” division, Herring’s merchandising and management savvy would more than justify their confidence.

Although only one SupeRx, a Milford, Ohio unit, had been opened by August 1961, plans were unveiled to open 19 more in the following six months. Most of these were slated to be located next door to Kroger stores. In 1962, Kroger entered the drugstore business in Michigan, with the purchase of a single Owl Drug Co. store in Battle Creek. There was a strategic reason for their purchase of the Owl unit, even though four brand new SupeRx’s (Ypsilanti, Mt. Clemens, Saginaw and Plymouth) were stocked up and ready to go. Michigan law at the time mandated that drugstores operating in the state have at least 25% ownership by registered pharmacists, a move designed to protect independent operators against the onslaught of chains. Since Owl had been granted a prior exception to this law, Kroger assumed it would be accorded to them as well. Not so. In September of 1962, the Michigan Board of Pharmacy formally rejected Kroger’s application to operate the SupeRx stores. Not until December 1963, more than a year later, did the impasse end, when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in Kroger’s favor and the license was granted.

Despite the Michigan debacle, Kroger continued to open SupeRx stores in other markets, and in November 1962, the company acquired the 18-store Gasen’s Drug Stores, Inc., a St. Louis chain. Both Gasen’s and Sav-On would continue to operate under their original names for a few years, while new stores went under the SupeRx banner. At the close of 1962, Kroger had 66 drug stores, and a year later there were nearly double that amount, 119. In addition to the (now 10) Sav-On units in the northeast, there were the 18 Gasen’s units in greater St. Louis and 91 SupeRx stores in the midwest, west and south. Kroger was becoming a national player in the chain drug business.

Throughout the balance of the 1960’s and into the early 1970’s, Kroger’s SupeRx division, as it was formally named in 1969, was an unqualified success. There were 180 stores at the end of 1965, 307 by the end of 1967, 381 in 1969 and 476 at the end of 1972. In 1970, the state-of-the-art SupeRx photo-finishing plant was opened in Cincinnati, bringing this profitable activity in-house in Kroger’s home market. One of the most prominent signs of SupeRx’s success was the ascendancy of division president (and Sav-On founder) James P. Herring to the post of Kroger’s president and chief executive officer in 1970.

When Kroger’s much-heralded Superstore program was launched in the 1970’s, SupeRx stores were a standard part of the package, opening alongside most of the gleaming new superstores, an activity that continued throughout the decade. To coincide with the Superstore openings, heavy emphasis was placed on SupeRx’s decidedly non-pharmaceutical offerings – touting SupeRx as “the place where people go to buy a TV set, a guitar, a grass skirt, a hair dryer or a hank of yarn”, as the company put it in 1972. I hope SupeRx’s buyers didn’t go too heavy into the grass skirts – at least not for the Ohio stores, that is.

With the stress on general merchandise, however, the SupeRx image had begun to blur by the mid 70’s, to the point where the stores “began looking like mini discount stores”, as later stated in Kroger’s 1983 “100th anniversary” pictorial history book. SupeRx’s identity as a pharmacy had receded in the public’s mind, and sales and profits began to slide. A strong effort to re-establish SupeRx’s “drug store” bona fides and sharpen up the marketing focus was undertaken, achieving moderate success.

By the end of the 1970’s SupeRx was back in a buying mode. In 1979, 14 central Florida stores were picked up from Cleveland-based Gray Drug Stores, Inc., bringing SupeRx’s Florida tally to 86 stores out of a companywide total of nearly 500 units. In early 1985, the company made what would be its largest acquisition, winning an intense bidding war with Rite Aid for the prize of Hook Drugs Inc., an Indianapolis concern with 320 drug stores. (SupeRx had 620 units at the time.) Hook had strongly expressed a preference for Kroger’s less intrusive management style over the potentially sweeping changes they anticipated under Rite Aid’s wing. The fact was, by this time, the SupeRx operation was badly in need of an infusion of fresh talent – a stock analyst quoted in the Wall Street Journal sharply put it that the company had “never really put together a focus that the customer has responded to”, and that the key would be to “assimilate the well-run, very profitable Hook operation into a not so well run, marginally profitable SupeRx operation”. Yow.

Indeed, a year and a half later, Kroger made the decision to spin off its SupeRx group. A new company, Hook-SupeRx, was formed to assume 700 of its nearly 900 drugstores, with the balance – mostly stores in Florida (which eventually went to Rite Aid), Alabama and Arizona, put up for sale separately.

Hook-SupeRx would become a public company in 1992, operating stores under the Hook, SupeRx and Brooks banners. (Note: Thanks to Dan for pointing out some additional banners I omitted - SuperXtra Drug World - later just called "Drug World" and Warehouse Drug, formats developed to compete with Phar-Mor and Drug Emporium, two fellow Ohio-based "discount drug warehouse store" chains that experienced rapid growth in the 80's and early 90's and are now both gone. In 1994, Hook-SupeRx operated 19 of these stores, according to an annual report quote provided by an anonymous commenter on this post.) The company struggled, due in large part to the lack of a computerized prescription-trackingsystem that would allow customers to have their orders filled at any of the chain’s stores. Two years later the company was acquired by Twinsburg, Ohio based Revco D.S. Inc., pushing Revco into the number two spot in the nation’s drug store hierarchy, squeaking past Rite Aid but well short of number one Walgreen. The Brooks stores (mostly located in New England) were sold to Jean Coutu, a Canadian firm, which would later merge with Eckerd. Coutu sold the Brooks and Eckerd stores to Rite Aid in 2007.

In 1996, Revco attempted to sell out to Rite Aid, under pressure from its co-chairman and largest investor Sam Zell (of recent Chicago Tribune fame). Because of the heavy degree of overlap between the companies’ market areas, the Federal Trade Commission sued to halt the deal. A year later, Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based CVS Corporation was successful in their attempt to buy Revco, and all stores were converted to the CVS banner.

As far as Kroger is concerned, although the free-standing drug store format has long since gone the way of the dinosaur there, in-store pharmacies (which in many of Kroger's markets would, ironically, use the name "Sav-On") would become, and still are a major part of their business.

The photo above is from 1967, the three below from the following year.

The Postwar Kroger

In the decade following World War II, a number of key developments took hold in America’s chain grocery business. One was a marked increase in the amount of non-food items carried, particularly in the area of health and beauty products. Once limited to a few brands of soap and sometimes a handful of other basic personal care items, the forties and early fifties saw this area evolve into a full-fledged “department”. Kroger was in the forefront of this trend, with most stores featuring a full health and beauty lineup by the end of the 1940’s.

Another trend, more visible, was an acceleration of the replacement of the small storefront grocery store with the supermarket. In the decades immediately following WWII, the average size of the chain grocers’ stores steadily grew from around 5,000 to 8,000 square feet at the war’s end to 20,000 to 30,000 square feet (or more) by the early 1960’s. During that period, the store counts of nearly all the major chains actually decreased, as two, three or more stores within a given trade area were replaced by one large supermarket. Kroger went from 2,611 stores in 1946 to 1,587 in 1955, for example, although sales more than doubled during the same period. The declining store count trend came to an end in the 1960’s when the conversion to supermarkets was largely complete, and the large chains grew rapidly by the continued addition of stores in new suburban areas and through acquisition.

On this front, Kroger was forced to move slower than many of its fellow large chains, due to the fact that it owned a large number of its properties, and were bound to others via long-term leases. Beyond this, the simple fact remained that a great number of Kroger’s smaller stores were very successful. Things gradually picked up steam as the 50’s progressed, and attractive new Kroger supermarkets opened in many shopping centers on main drags throughout their territories.

The year 1946 saw some key milestones in Kroger history. First, the company’s name was shortened from “The Kroger Grocery and Baking Co.” to simply “The Kroger Co.”, the name it continues to go by today. Also, the famous Raymond Loewy-designed logo, the “Kroger Blue” rectangle with distinctive white lettering made its first appearances on store signage, product packaging and in advertising. Prior to this time, no distinct logo was used (unless you count the “B.H. Kroger” script logo on the store windows in the chain’s earliest years) and the Kroger name appeared in a multitude of different lettering styles. The Loewy logo was modernized in 1961 to the version we’re familiar with today.

Another very significant event was the 1946 appointment of Joseph B. Hall as Kroger’s president. Hall, a Chicago native and graduate of the University of Chicago, joined Kroger in 1931 as head of real estate, working his way to the top of the company from there. Hall did much to hone Kroger’s successful management development program and was also a driving force behind Kroger’s aggressive growth through acquisition, particularly in the late 1950’s and early 60’s with the notable expansions into California and Texas among other areas. Under Hall’s leadership, Kroger revamped its line of private brands, dropping various long-used brand names in favor of a unified Kroger brand with the new logo. Hall would become company chairman in 1961, leaving the post in 1964 to become chairman of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank.

Pictured above are two artists’ renderings from 1950 and 1951, featuring the Kroger blue blade pylon. Below are pictured several of Kroger’s well-selling private label products, resplendent with the famous logo. The “Spotlight” coffee brand was used for years, even in Kroger-owned stores that didn’t bear the Kroger name. In Atlanta, for example, where Kroger got its start in 1935 with the purchase of 25 Piggly Wiggly stores, Kroger’s Spotlight coffee was sold for many years before the stores were finally converted to the Kroger name.

Kroger in Cleveland, 1935

Despite a 28% drop in sales from 1929 to 1933 and a number of other challenges, Kroger withstood the onslaught of the depression better than many of its grocery chain counterparts. With nearly 5,000 stores, Kroger was in a dominant position in many of its markets.

One of the “other challenges” came in April 1930, when Kroger chairman William H. Albers resigned to start his own supermarket chain. The Albers Super Markets would become a good-sized player in the Cincinnati and northern Kentucky areas, strongly pushing national brands in their advertising against Kroger’s hot-selling, well regarded private label brands. In 1955, Albers sold out to Atlanta-based Colonial Stores. Beginning in the thirties, Kroger also took on a leadership role in fighting the anti-chain store movement, whose primary target was The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P), but which constituted a threat to the entire chain store industry. The battle, which played out over nearly two decades, was costly in terms of legal expenses, but also in the form of price reductions necessary to sway public sentiment over to the chains’ side of the argument.

An exciting development for Kroger was the opening of its first departmentalized “superstores” (not to be confused with the much better known Kroger Superstores of the 1970’s). The first of these early superstores opened in 1930 on Government Square in Cincinnati, and similar stores would soon open in Kroger’s other major territories, including Cleveland, Columbus, Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Madison, Wisconsin. Thirty-four of these deluxe units would be open by 1935.

There were major acquisitions for Kroger from 1928 through 1940, including 85 Cox Grocery stores in the Little Rock area, 58 Oakley Economy Stores in eastern Illinois and western Indiana, and 15 stores purchased from the Model Grocery and Baking Co. of Springfield, Missouri, among others. There was also a divestiture – in late 1934, Kroger sold 53 of its 56 Oklahoma stores to Safeway Stores, Incorporated, citing the difficulty in managing the stores from distant Cincinnati.

Also, a famous Kroger product was born during this period. In 1939, Kroger introduced its special patented process for meat tenderization under the trade name “Tenderay”. Kroger would market their Tenderay beef exclusively until 1942, when it opened the process up to be licensed to other firms. Tenderay, along with older Kroger tradenames Country Club and Big K (which, unlike Tenderay, are still in use) would become a fixture in heartland kitchens for decades.

The photos above are circa 1935 and depict the Kroger store at 2227 Noble Road in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and appear courtesy of the Cleveland State University Library. Note in the second photo the competing Fisher Foods store right next door. The signage is typical for Kroger in the 30’s. Interestingly, their sign colors during that era were often green, black and white, rather than more familiar Kroger Blue (and “Coral Red”) which came later. Here is a link to a neat film clip from 1947, showing a Kroger store that was probably around ten years old at the time.

Barney Kroger - The Cincinnati Kid

The history of Kroger, like that of so many companies born in the same era, is a great American story. The roots of today’s Kroger Company reach back to 1876, when 16-year old Bernard Henry Kroger took a job selling coffee and tea door-to-door for The Great Northern and Pacific Tea Company in his hometown of Cincinnati. Kroger, one of ten children born to German immigrants, worked hard to help support his family, who lived in a flat above a dry goods store the family owned. After two years, Kroger left Great Northern to join the William White Company, another coffee and tea firm, leaving that firm shortly thereafter for the Imperial Tea Company.

When Imperial began to run into trouble, the owners asked young Kroger (who had been working a wagon route up to that point) to manage the company’s store for a 10% cut of the profits, which at the time were virtually nonexistent. Convinced he could turn things around, he took up the challenge. A stickler for quality with more than a bit of starch in his personality, Kroger built a following for the store. Interestingly, as Progressive Grocer noted, “It wasn’t a wealthy clientele. They were wage-earners’ wives who came back to shop, and told their friends…” Having saved up $372 from a year of toil, a considerable sum in 1883, Kroger approached the Imperial Tea owners with an offer to buy a one-third interest in the company. They refused, offering an increased share of the profits instead. Adamant about owning a stake in the game, Barney decided to strike out on his own.

With an additional $350 borrowed from a friend, Kroger opened “The Great Western Tea Company”, a tiny store on Cincinnati’s Pearl Street, replete with fire-engine red paint and gilt lettering, with a horse-drawn wagon sporting the same colors. Through some initial setbacks, including the loss of the horse and wagon in an unfortunate train crossing accident, a flood which destroyed the store’s initial stock, and an attempt by his landlord to increase his store’s rent (forcing Kroger to move to a less attractive location on a side street), Kroger persevered.

Within months, Kroger opened a second store, and by mid-1885 had added two more for a total of four units. By 1893, after ten years on his own, Kroger had 17 stores and was considered one of the most successful businessmen in Cincinnati. In 1902, The Great Western Tea Co. was reincorporated as The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company, which would remain the company’s legal name for the next 40 years. The word “baking” in the company’s name reflected an important aspect of Kroger’s business. At the turn of the century, Kroger made a splash by announcing his plans to set up the company’s own bakery, selling loaves to Kroger customers at half the average going price, then 5 cents each. Not only would this help build business for his stores, but it also would enable Kroger to capture a bigger chunk of his customers’ bread budget, beyond just bulk flour, butter and egg sales. As he acknowledged to a New York Times interviewer in 1901 - “In Cincinnati, with its large percentage of thrifty Germans, bread is usually baked in the home”. At two for a nickel, Kroger projected sales of 25,000 loaves per day to those thrifty folks.

Another innovative step Kroger took was born out of the company’s 1904 acquisition of the Nagel butcher shop chain in Cincinnati. After initially operating the meat markets separately, Kroger made a decision to integrate them into his grocery stores. Over the initial objections of his butchers, who resented the loss of their independence and the new bookkeeping requirements Kroger imposed, these early forerunners of the “complete food market” proved to be a huge success and had a great influence on the chain food store business as a whole.

With a solid base in Cincinnati, Kroger began to expand to other areas, first to nearby Hamilton, Ohio, then to Dayton and Columbus, where the company had 15 and 8 stores respectively by 1910. These initial forays were followed by an expansion drive (which reached a fever pitch by the late 1920’s) to other cities and the smaller towns in between- Detroit, St. Louis, Peoria, Indianapolis, Toledo, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Youngstown and Charleston (WV), to name some examples. Much of this growth was accomplished through acquisition – 109 Piggly Wiggly and 43 Kohn Stores in the St. Louis and Central Illinois areas, 108 Piggly Wiggly stores in Louisville, 114 Bowers grocery stores in Memphis and the surrounding area, (along with yet more Piggly Wigglys) and Universal Stores of Madison, Wisconsin. In the coming decades, acquisitions would continue to provide a major vehicle for Kroger’s growth.

In late 1926, rumors began to fly that Kroger would merge with Philadelphia-based American Stores Company, possibly in combination with First National Stores or the H.C. Bohack chain. While some talks were held, these plans never came to fruition, and in my opinion would likely have not gone over well in light of the beginnings of a movement against chain store “monopolists” (or more accurately, oligarchs) that would gain sentiment as the 30’s rolled on.

In December 1927, B.H. Kroger sold his stock in the company, staying on as chairman but stepping down as president, turning that responsibility over to William H. Albers. Later on, he would repurchase a huge block of Kroger stock to help bolster confidence in the company through the depression years that followed. In November 1931, with nearly 4,900 stores in operation, he retired altogether. Barney Kroger passed away in July 1938, leaving behind a company that 70 years later is the largest company in America whose mainline business is supermarkets – an admirable legacy.

These photos are undated – the top photo showing a “B.H. Kroger” store circa the dawn of the 20th century. Below is a typical Kroger from the early 30’s, near the end of Mr. Kroger’s tenure with the company.