America's Oldest Grocery Store Chain Dates Back To The 19th Century

Many folks don't appreciate the convenience today's grocery store chains provide with one-stop shopping experiences. Once upon a time, supermarkets didn't exist, and if you wanted to purchase butter, bread, and steak, you likely had to visit three different outlets to acquire your goods. This all began to change after Barney Kroger used his life savings of $372 to open his first grocery store, Kroger, in 1883. This set the wheels in motion for supermarkets to become what they are today.

When Kroger ventured into the grocery business, he did so with customer service at the forefront of his ambition. He baked bread in-house, making it more affordable. When farmers came around selling cabbage, he bought extra so his mother could make sauerkraut and sell it in-store. This was effectively the birth of Kroger's private-label products, which fill the shelves of any Kroger chain you visit today.

Do you like visiting the butcher's station on your way toward the back of the grocery store to get milk? You can thank Barney Kroger, the first to place one inside a grocery store. His store was also the first to have its own bakery, starting in 1901. Barney Kroger's focus on customer satisfaction helped expand his grocery store empire from one establishment to 100 within 25 years. Yet the chain wasn't done trendsetting and changing the way supermarkets operate.

As the Kroger grocery store chain expanded, so did its accessibility. Although it didn't become a staple service for some time, Barney Kroger pioneered grocery home delivery when he would occasionally distribute items to customers by horse in the early days of running his first outlet. Folks shopping in-store used to have to ask an employee to fetch the items they wanted from behind a counter. That changed in 1916 when Kroger introduced the self-service shopping style we experience in supermarkets today, all while listening to music play throughout the store.

During the 1930s, Kroger began scientifically testing food products and regularly checking to ensure quality was up to par for customer safety and satisfaction. As technology continued to progress, electronic scanners emerged as a means of speeding up service and making cashiers' jobs a bit easier. In 1972, Kroger was the first grocery chain to start testing them out in its stores. To make more goods accessible the grocery store strategically changed its layout in the 1980s to include health and beauty departments and pharmacies.

Today, Kroger Co. consists of over 2,800 supermarkets under 19 banners, including City Market, King Soopers, Fred Meyer, and Ralph's. From its humble beginnings as a local market in Cincinnati, Ohio, America's oldest grocery chain became an expanding empire of innovation within a century. It all started with Barney Kroger's vision for what grocery stores could potentially be –– a convenient, affordable, one-stop shopping experience with customer well-being as its primary focus.