Supermarket&Retailer history

11, 1916 in Memphis, Tenn.—after a few construction delays, which is why the company celebrates the anniversary on the 6th—and thus pioneered a self-service model that was drastically different from the way things had long been done.

At the end of 1917, a group of independent grocers discussed forming a cooperative to create buying power for group members.

In Canada, Loblaw Groceterias, established in Toronto in 1919, also became a major player in the self-service field.

In 1928, the new chain bought most of the west coast’s Piggly Wiggly stores, and later acquired Sanitary Stores in the Washington DC area as well as MacMarr Stores, another chain that Charles Merrill had assembled.

Other supermarkets popped up as well, with King Kullen opening in 1930 in Queens, New York, and Safeway and Kroeger grocers adapting to the new normal.

Similar transformations occurred among all the “majors”; in fact, most national chains of the time saw their store counts peak around 1935 and then decline sharply through consolidation.

One staple missing from Saunders’ forward-thinking Piggly Wiggly markets, however, was the iconic shopping cart. It wouldn’t be seen in stores until 1937, when it was introduced to Humpty Dumpty locations by Sylvan Goodman.

By 1940, A&P’s store count had been reduced by half, but its sales were up.

In 1958, the first American Express credit cards debuted, which allowed holders to add funds to an account accessible via their plastic card.

For years, Viking used Delivery Line to carry its groceries, while it had its own drivers (about 20 in 1965) to haul perishables.

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

Viking started its own transportation department in 1967, the same year that many Delivery drivers lost their jobs during a labor dispute.

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.

Kroger slimmed down somewhat in 1988 for the same reasons, while Lucky was acquired by American Stores the same year.

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.

Purchases of store or lower-priced brands, instead of national brands, decreased with slightly more than one in ten consumers (15 percent) doing so "pretty much every time" they shop— down three percentage points from 1991.

As a result of five acquisitions since 1999, Viking Stores, Inc., now owns and operates 113 supermarkets and 21 drugstores throughout Missouri and Illinois.

For the fiscal year ending March 25, 2000, Viking Stores and Morgan Food Town had combined revenues of $3.8 billion, $1.2 billion of which was retail grocery sales.

Notably, Booking was able to grow its top line at a near 24% CAGR since 2006—a span of twelve years.

Why run a break-even business? That’s a pain in the butt.” Grubhub was all-in on this plan in 2015 with the acquisition of three regional delivery services (RDS), commencing its own investment plan and the hire of Stan Chia from Amazon to run operations and logistics for delivery.

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.

Just Walk Out won’t be retrofitted into existing Whole Foods stores, which were acquired by Amazon in 2017.

Enthusiasm gave way to doubt in the fourth quarter of 2018 when the rollout of the new delivery markets was slower than hoped and with a series of large funding transactions for Doordash on the heels of its reemergence from near demise.