Bernard Kroger - Biography

Biography

Kroger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio the fifth of ten children in a family of German immigrants. The family lived above a dry goods store that his parents owned, but Kroger was forced to go to work at age thirteen to help support his family. He quit his first job in a drug store because his religious mother objected to his working seven days a week. He then worked as a farmhand near Pleasant Plain, Ohio before contracting malaria and coming home.

Kroger then began working as a door to door salesman for the Great Northern and Pacific Tea Co., eventually ending up at the Imperial Tea Co. The grocery was not doing well, and the two owners made Kroger a manager. When the owners later refused to make Kroger a partner, he used his own money to open his own grocery.

Kroger's store, The Great Western Tea Co., succeeded despite numerous growing pains and catastrophes. Kroger opened four separate locations within two years. He renamed the company Kroger Grocery and Baking Co. in 1902, later shortened to Kroger, and opened over 5500 stores by the end of the 1920s. He is credited with introducing the low-cost grocery chain models that persist today.

Kroger also invested in the creation of Provident Bank, selling his holdings in the bank in 1928, shortly before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. During a bank crisis in 1933, he converted $15 million of his savings into cash and displayed it at the bank to demonstrate the financial soundness of the bank, averting the crisis locally.

Kroger was also involved in many charitable ventures, including the opening of parks, donations to zoos, and medical research.

Kroger died of a heart attack on July 21, 1938 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at the age of 78. He was buried in Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery.