Bernard Kroger

Bernard Heinrich "Henry" Kroger (January 24, 1860 – July 21, 1938) founded the Kroger supermarket chain. He was a grocery innovator who introduced self-service shopping in 1895, letting customers pick items with clearly marked prices and take them home instead of waiting for delivery. He also pioneered in-store bakeries and fresh meat butchery, making his stores the first in the U.S. to sell baked goods, meat, and groceries all in one place. Kroger was known for his philanthropy, donating to parks, hospitals, and medical research.

Kroger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the fifth of ten children to German immigrants Johan Heinrich and Mary Gertrude Kroger. His mother was from Elve, Westphalia, and his father from Lüsche in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. The family lived above their dry goods store, which closed during the 1873 economic downturn. Kroger quit school at thirteen to support his family. He left his first job at a drug store because his Christian mother objected to Sunday work. He then worked as a farmhand near Pleasant Plain, Ohio, for six dollars a month. He later said of that time, "I shall never forget that first night I spent away from home... Although I was but fourteen and weighed only one hundred pounds, my job on the farm was that of any man." He hated his employer, contracted malaria, quit, and walked 37 miles back to Cincinnati.

Kroger then sold door-to-door for the Great Northern and Pacific Tea Co., eventually landing at the Imperial Tea Co. The struggling grocery’s owners made him manager, and he turned it around, earning a $3,100 profit. By 1885, the company had four stores, expanding to thirty by 1900. When the owners refused to make him a partner, Kroger invested his life savings of $372 with friend B.A. Branagan, who borrowed $350. They opened a grocery at 66 Pearl Street in downtown Cincinnati. An unexpected flood in 1884 ruined that store, so they opened another. They advertised as "B.H. Kroger & Co., proprietors of The Great Western Tea Co." The stores succeeded despite growing pains. In 1901, Kroger added a bakery, combining two separate businesses and selling bread at cost—a strategy others later copied. Wanting more control, he offered to buy Branagan’s share for $1,000; Branagan couldn’t afford that and instead sold his share to Kroger for $1,500. Kroger soon opened four more Cincinnati locations.

Kroger is credited with creating the low-cost, self-service grocery chain model. His innovations included marking sale prices on every item and giving a premium to every coffee or tea buyer. In 1902, he advertised a "profit-sharing" system where customers collected receipts to exchange for household goods. In 1912, he was the first grocer to use automobiles for delivery, buying 75 Ford Model Ts to replace 200 horses and wagons in Cincinnati. He also combined grocery stores with bakeries and later added stand-alone meat markets.

Kroger was among the first grocers to advertise in newspapers, starting in 1895. His ads listed items by category with "money-saving prices" and descriptions. By 1897, his ads filled entire pages in Cincinnati papers, a then-unprecedented marketing effort.

To control cost and quality, Kroger sought economies of scale through bulk purchasing and manufacturing his own private-label products. He paid suppliers cash and bought in bulk. He pioneered private-label manufacturing, producing items like preserved foods, jellies, and extracts in a factory built by 1902. Private labels eventually held over 25 percent of sales. Kroger opened the first grocery quality control lab in 1921 and introduced scientific consumer research.

Kroger was skilled at using price sensitivity in marketing. In 1902, when coal prices rose sharply, he did not raise prices, noting that his bakery produced about 100,000 loaves a week and consumed between eight and ten tons of coal.