CLEVELAND, Ohio — Until the mid-1980s, Kroger operated dozens of grocery stores in Northeast Ohio.
I mistakenly wrote in Thursday’s Wake Up newsletter that Kroger had never operated in Northeast Ohio, and I received more than a dozen notes from readers who remember shopping and working there.
Here’s the correction: Kroger operated dozens of Northeast Ohio grocery stores decades before Giant Eagle ever moved in from Pittsburgh.
And now, it will return, announcing a $1.65 billion deal to buy Giant Eagle. The 95-year-old Pennsylvania-based grocer will be folded into one of the largest supermarket companies in the country, though Kroger says the name will remain.
Northeast Ohioans are passionate about their grocery stores. They also mentioned bygone stores like A&P, Fisher Foods, Finast, Pick-n-Pay, Stop-n-Shop and Tops.
Readers remembered the Cincinnati-based Kroger in their neighborhoods by the 1940s. At its peak, operated stores across Cleveland, Akron and Canton, along with a distribution center in Solon. Many remembered shopping or working at neighborhood Krogers in places like Willowick, Sheffield Village and North Shore Mall.
They also mentioned union disputes, captured in a May 1984 story in the Plain Dealer.
“The union representing Kroger Co. employees said the 28 other stores in Kroger’s Northeast Ohio chain could by closed by July 15 unless it agrees to wage reductions in new contract talks. This came on the heels of an announcement that the Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. was closing 18 stores in northeastern Ohio, mostly in the Akron-Canton area.”
By 1986, Kroger left the Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Akron and St. Louis markets.
Writes the Akron Beacon Journal: “Kroger announced plans in 1983 to spend $40 million to build as many as 12 superstores in the region to challenge the dominance of Akron-based Acme stores…. A year later, it surrendered the Akron market.”
(My family was loyal to Acme when I was growing up in Akron in the ‘80s and ‘90s.)
That’s about when Giant Eagle moved in. An April 1987 PD story said, “a major move by Giant Eagle into the Cleveland area could destabilize the local industry.”
Considering all the grocery chains that no longer exist, the words proved to be prescient.
Although Giant Eagle’s first foray into Northeast Ohio in the late ‘80s was stymied by union issues. The store gained its massive foothold in Northeast Ohio in a 1998 deal to buy the the Rini-Rego Stop-N-Shop chain owned by Riser Foods.
One reader wrote:
“My dad worked 24 years at Kroger as a store clerk, a store manager and then as a buyer at the Solon offices. He became Stop-n-Shop’s Grocery Merchandiser just before Kroger closed its supermarkets here, and worked for the association until Riser decided to sell its stores to…Giant Eagle with most of the other Association owners following suit.”
Today, the family-owned Giant Eagle has nearly 200 stores, with about 100 in Ohio. Kroger has 1,228 grocery stores in 16 states, including nearly 200 in Ohio.
All that from a single grocery store started by Barney Kroger in downtown Cincinnati.
Reporter Rich Exner contributed to this article.
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