Fred Meyer

Beginnings

Fred G. Meyer, originally of Brooklyn, New York, opened his first stand on the corner of a busy highway in Brooklyn selling cherries. Meyer said he originally started his cherry selling business, because he "needed the extra cash to buy a car." Meyer eventually expanded his store to selling items for cleaning, as well as cereal, until he eventually opened his first permanent location in Portland, Oregon.

The first suburban one-stop shopping center opened in 1931 in the Hollywood District of Portland, a neighborhood he deliberately chose through a shrewd and prescient application of market research: he would pay customers' overtime parking tickets that they incurred while shopping at his downtown store, just to obtain their home addresses. The store's innovations included a grocery store alongside a drugstore plus home products, off-street parking, gas station, and — eventually — clothing. Fred G. Meyer would base store locations on planned highway construction.

In 1951, the Fred Meyer Company built a large warehouse near Providence Portland Medical Center in Laurelhurst, despite complaints and controversy from neighbors and the city council. Neighbors didn't want large truck volume in their city, but the area was already zoned for industrial and commercial east of 44th Avenue. The huge warehouse was built to the detriment of the Banfield Expressway, built in Sullivan's Gulch less than five years later. The warehouse had to be condemned and partially destroyed for the freeway, with the state highway commission selling the remaining sections to the Bemis Company. The Fred Meyer Company moved to Swan Island on land formerly occupied by wartime housing for Kaiser Shipyards.

In the 1960s, Fred Meyer entered the Seattle market by acquiring Seattle-based Marketime Drugs. Fred Meyer also acquired a Spokane-based grocery wholesaler, The Roundup Company. Roundup owned no stores in Spokane but owned Kalispell, Montana-based B&B stores in northwest Montana and Consumer Warehouse Foods in Soap Lake, Washington.

By March 1968, Fred Meyer Inc. was operating in four states — Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana — and had 48 retail stores. Later in 1968, the first full-fledged Fred Meyer in the Seattle area opened, in Lynnwood, Washington. It was the largest Fred Meyer for about a decade.

Valu-Mart acquisition, death of Fred Meyer

In 1973, Fred Meyer acquired all five Oregon stores of the Valu-Mart discount chain (formerly known as Villa-Mart in Oregon) from its parent company, Seattle-based Weisfield's, Inc. The following year, Weisfield's leased its remaining stores (renamed "Leslie's"), in 1975 According to an article published in the business section of The Seattle Times on August 10, 1975, Fred Meyer signed long-term leases with most of the 21 Weisfield's-owned stores (Tacoma and Everett locations were not acquired). Some of the properties may have been purchased by Fred Meyer at the time in the Oregon market but Weisfield's maintained existing leases on properties in the Seattle/Tacoma market since leases for the grocery sections (leased to Associated Grocers in 1973) and other smaller businesses within the stores were kept. Kroger acquired these properties from Weisfield's during the 1990s and 2000s. Some of these properties such as the Greenwood and Midway locations were demolished to rebuild the locations. In 1975, Fred Meyer opened its first stores in Alaska as a result of acquiring Leslie's/Valu-Mart, and changed the Leslie's/Valu-Mart stores to the Fred Meyer banner. As Fred Meyer became better known in the Seattle area, the Marketime Drug chain became known as Fred Meyer-Marketime. While Fred Meyer was building new stores in Washington state some smaller discount stores in the state would lease a portion of their stores to Fred Meyer as well such as The Hi-Ho Shopping Center in Puyallup and the Yard Birds Shopping Center in Centralia.

In 1977, Marketime was renamed Fred Meyer. In the mid-1980s, the Northwest Montana B&B stores also acquired the Fred Meyer name.

On September 2, 1978, Fred G. Meyer died at the age of 92. Until his death, Mr. Meyer had continued to play an active role in the day-to-day operation of his company. Also in 1978, Fortune placed Fred Meyer as the 45th largest retail company by sales. The chain had over $1 billion in sales in 1979.

In 1981, the company was purchased by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in what was one of KKR's first major leveraged buyouts. As of May 1988, the chain had 99 stores in six states.

California expansion and retreat

In the 1990s Fred Meyer expanded into California by opening a store in Chico. Plans had been made to open a store in Redding and expand into Sacramento with several sites having been acquired. Eventually the Chico location was closed and sold and the Sacramento sites sold; the Redding site eventually became a Wal-Mart store in 1996.

Acquisitions of Grand Central and Smith's

In 1984, Fred Meyer acquired Grand Central of Salt Lake City, Utah. The Grand Central stores in Utah and Idaho were converted to Fred Meyer stores, although most did not receive full supermarket departments until the mid-1990s.

In 1997, Fred Meyer Inc. acquired Smith's Food and Drug of Salt Lake City, though both companies maintained separate operations. In 1998, Fred Meyer acquired Ralphs Grocery Company of Los Angeles, California, and QFC of Seattle. Both acquisitions also maintained separate operations with Fred Meyer, Inc. as the holding company. In that fast string of mergers, Fred Meyer quickly became the nation's fifth largest food and drug store operator.

In 1997, Fred Meyer converted its Columbia Falls and Kalispell stores into Smith's Food & Drug Stores, and closed its Polson location. In 2001, the Kalispell store was demolished and replaced with a newer Smiths location adjacent to the older, obsolete store. The Columbia Falls store retained the Fred Meyer decor (with Smith's logos over the old Fred Meyer logos) but only contained a grocery department, with none of the other departments or product offerings.

Merger with Kroger

In May 1999 Fred Meyer, Inc. merged with Kroger of Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2000, the Arizona Fred Meyer stores, all of which were formerly Smith's stores that Fred Meyer acquired in the Smith's merger, were re-branded as Fry's Marketplace.

In 2004, Smith's Food and Drug assumed the operations of the Utah Fred Meyer stores, which were re-branded as Smith's Marketplace. Also, since the acquisition of the Fred Meyer Company, Kroger has been unifying standards across the company, adopting many of the Fred Meyer store standards, and implementing their own standards to the Fred Meyer stores. Kroger and Fred Meyer stores are slowly becoming more similar in management and merchandising.

Additionally, one Fred Meyer in Seattle in the Capitol Hill neighborhood merged its operations with QFC which had a grocery store across the street from the Broadway Market. This particular Fred Meyer, probably the smallest one in the chain, had only drugs and general merchandise, but no food or apparel. This store is now a QFC Marketplace, the only one of its kind, but it is not signed as such.

Private label brands

Fred Meyer employs Kroger's manufacturing by adding its own private label brands alongside national brand products. Aside from products labeled Kroger or Fred Meyer, one might also find the following brands at a Fred Meyer store: Kivu Coffee (locally roasted in Portland, OR & Seattle, WA), Country Oven, Everyday Living (and the more upscale eL²), F•M•V ("For Maximum Value") is now Kroger value, Moto Tech, Private Selection, HD Designs, Michael Morgan, Great Northwest, GNW, Curfew, Kidz Korner, Splash Spa, and Naturally Preferred. Former brands associated with Fred Meyer were My-Te-Fine, President's Choice, Fred Bear, F. G. Meyer First Choice, Personal Choice, and Perfect Choice.

Rewards program

On May 4, 2004, Fred Meyer introduced Fred Meyer Rewards, a program that rewards customers for shopping in their stores. To participate, a customer completes a registration form and receives 3 purple cards (a credit card-sized card and two keytags). When the program was introduced, participating customers received one point for every $5 they spent in a single transaction (transactions totaling under $5 did not receive a point). If a customer earned 100 points (spending at least $500) during a 13-week rewards cycle, they would receive about $5 in rebate vouchers. The rewards mailer also typically included percentage discount coupons on specific items.

On April 29, 2007, the company revised the program somewhat, simultaneously with the launch of their Fred Meyer Rewards MasterCard. Effective on that date (which was the beginning of a 13-week cycle), customers receive a point for each dollar spent, but the value of each point decreased proportionally, and a customer must earn 500 points in a 13-week rewards cycle to receive a rebate voucher. Customers who use the MasterCard version of Rewards earn double points at Fred Meyer (2 points per dollar spent), and single points everywhere else where MasterCard is accepted (1 point per dollar spent).

In 2011, the company switched from MasterCard to Visa, which uses the same points format as the MasterCard program. In addition to reward points, Visa rewards card holders receive 15 cents off fuel per 100 fuel points.

Plastic bag ban

In July 2010 Fred Meyer announced that, effective August 1, it would no longer offer plastic bags at any of its 10 Portland stores, due to their perceived negative environmental impacts. Until the City of Portland banned the use of plastic bags in grocery and certain big box stores in October 2011, Fred Meyer was the largest retail chain in the Portland metropolitan area to adopt such a policy. A spokesman indicated that an increasing number of the chain's customers have been choosing to use reusable bags, noting that Fred Meyer's own sales of such bags at its check stands had increased 30 percent from 2008 to 2009.