Meijer

Meijer is a regional department store and grocery retailer with about half of the stores located in Michigan, and the rest scattered across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. Meijer primarily operates department stores under the "superstore" philosophy (also known as a hypermarket), in which groceries and department store goods are carried in the same large store.

Meijer was founded in 1934 as Meijer's Grocery in Greenville, Michigan by Hendrik Meijer, a local barber who decided to invest in the grocery business. His employees included Fred Meijer, then 14 year old grocery bagger, who would later become the well-known chairman of the company.

The store slowly grew, and by 1960 had over two dozen stores (primarily near Grand Rapids, Michigan) and 4,000 employees. In 1962, the modern format of Meijer was started, with the opening of the first Meijer Thrifty Acres store, combining grocery shopping and department store shopping in a single large store. The Thrifty Acres stores, now under the leadership of Fred Meijer, stores became a tremendous success, and now the stores (renamed to simply Meijer in 1966) have over 150 stores across five states.

Trivia

Note that despite the near-identical name and store concept, there is no relationship between Fred Meijer and the similarly-named Fred Meyer stores (now a division of Kroger) of the Western U.S.