Supermarket history

The company made an important decision in 1961 to diversify outside the food business with its purchase of Bradlees, a small chain of discount department stores operating largely in shopping centers that already featured a Stop & Shop supermarket.

1962 saw the founding of Kmart, Target, and Walmart.

The bank expanded it nationally in 1966 and it was later renamed Visa.

Coulombe opened the first (and still-operating) Trader Joe’s in 1967 in Pasadena, California, which quickly became known for its low prices and its ever-changing roster of private-label goods.

Kroger’s new “superstore” prototype, introduced in 1972, was perhaps the peak of this trend, with its specialty departments and its orange, gold, and green color palette.

In 1974 the price scanner, a technology that would significantly cut down the wait times in checkout lines to this day, was first installed.

The Dutch company had first gained a foothold in the United States in 1977 when it bought the Bi-Lo chain in North and South Carolina and Georgia.

In 1978 Stop & Shop bought Off the Rax, a discount women's clothing store chain, but sold it after six less than spectacular years.

Four years later the company celebrated its first $1 billion year; it had doubled that figure by 1980.

Ahold then purchased the Pennsylvania-based Giant Food Stores, which operated under the Giant, Edwards, and Martin's brands, in 1981.

1982: The first Super Stop & Shop is opened.

Sam’s Club followed with a similar membership model shortly after, opening its doors in 1983.

In 1985 Sidney R. Rabb died and was succeeded as chairman by his son-in-law, Avram J. Goldberg.

Bradlees reached a high of 169 units in 1987, combining with the 113 supermarkets to bring in $4.34 billion in sales.

By 1988, the largest chain supermarket had amassed enough real estate to build out even bigger “supercenters.” These supercenters offered a wide array of services, including banking, photo development, pharmacy needs, and floral arrangement.

The first online grocery delivery service, Peapod, was founded in 1989 by brothers Andrew and Thomas Parkinson.

Only a few survived, Fred Meyer in Oregon being a noteworthy example, and “one stop shopping” seemed a relatively new and fresh idea when Kmart and Walmart tried it again, with considerably more success, starting around 1990.

Stop & Shop became a public company once again in late 1991 through a public offering that sold 41 percent of the company for $212.5 million, the bulk of which was used to reduce debt at the still highly leveraged company.

The company also owned the 130-unit Bradlees chain, but it was spun off to the public in the summer of 1992 in order to further focus on the core supermarkets and to further reduce Stop & Shop's $1.1 billion debt load.

In December 1995 Stop & Shop spent $87 million for Melmarkets, which ran a Foodtown chain with 17 units on Long Island, thereby gaining its first foothold in the New York region.

1996: Stop & Shop is acquired by Ahold USA, a subsidiary of Royal Ahold N.V.

In May 1998 Ahold agreed to acquire Landover, Maryland-based Giant Food Inc. for about $2.7 billion.

Later, in August 2001, Royal Ahold bought the remaining shares of Peapod, making the online (Internet) grocer a wholly owned subsidiary of the company.

However, once the classification of “organic” became federally regulated in 2002, stores adopted organic foods quickly and to great success.

Financially troubled Royal Ahold N.V. announced in November 2003, that it would develop a three-year plan to rebuild the value of its global operations.

41(1) "Ahold USA on Track with Plans," MMR, May 3, 2004, v.

In 2007, Amazon expanded its Prime membership service offerings by adding an online grocery delivery service in select cities, under the name Amazon Fresh.

By 2009, the top four supermarket chains—Walmart, Kroger, Costco, and SuperValu—were responsible for over half of all grocery sales.

Of course, as technology changed the game inside the store, it changed the game outside, too, with online grocery shopping escalating in popularity so much that more than a third of online shoppers are expected to buy their groceries online in 2016.

Organic products earned $8.6 billion that year and sales climbed to more than $49 billion in 2017.

In 2018, Kroger announced that its Microsoft Azure-backed Kroger Edge technology would be rolled out across 200 of its stores.

The concept of short-term retail pop-ups was applied to grocery shopping in 2019 by Emily Schildt, founder of Pop Up Grocer.