[16] In 1883, 23-year-old Bernard Kroger, the fifth of ten children of German immigrants, invested his life savings of $372 (equivalent to $12,164 in 2023) to open a grocery store at 66 Pearl Street in downtown Cincinnati.

[35] Kroger had a number of stores in the Western Pennsylvania region, encompassing Pittsburgh and surrounding areas from 1928 until 1984 when the U.S. began experiencing a severe economic recession.

One of them was that the highly cyclical manufacturing-based economy of the region declined in greater proportion than the rest of the U.S., which undercut demand for the higher-end products and services offered by Kroger.

[citation needed] Kroger sought wage rollbacks in several areas during this time period including in Western Pennsylvania,[36] Eastern Ohio, the West Virginia Panhandle[37] and Michigan.

Today, Chattanooga is the only metropolitan market in Tennessee in which Kroger does not operate with the nearest location being Dalton, Georgia, with 2 stores (Walnut Avenue and Cleveland Highway).

Hannaford purchases also included the competitive Hampton Roads market, where it now competes with Farm Fresh, Harris Teeter (which is owned by Kroger), and Food Lion.

[citation needed] On July 9, 2013, Kroger announced that it would acquire the 212 stores of Charlotte-based Harris Teeter in a deal valued at $2.5 billion and that it would assume $100 million in the company's outstanding debt.

Kroger, which is in the process of looking for locations to open its first store, will face competition from Honolulu-based rivals Foodland and Times; major retailers Safeway, Walmart, and Costco; Japanese-owned Don Quixote; and Department of Defense-owned DeCA Commissaries.

[66] In June 2015, Kroger eliminated the Harris Teeter brand from the crowded Nashville, Tennessee, market, where its growth had been stunted by aggressive competition since it entered with six stores in the early 2000s.

The acquisition, which brought Kroger back to Wisconsin after a 43-year absence, will retain the Roundy's, Pick 'n Save, Mariano's, Metro Market and Copps names, along with its Milwaukee operations.

This agreement makes the University of Kentucky the first school in the Southeastern Conference to enter into a corporate partnership for the naming rights to their football stadium.

[98] In September 2019, Kroger announced a partnership with the Plant Based Food Association (PFBA) to test a plant-based meat retail concept in 60 stores in Denver, and parts of Indiana and Illinois.

[104] In January 2021, the Long Beach City Council in California passed an ordinance making it mandatory for some large grocery stores—like Kroger—to provide their essential workers with a hazard pay increase of US$4 an hour "effective immediately for 120 days".

[106] The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), with members whose jobs had been terminated, viewed the closures as a "warning to other cities considering hazard pay mandates".

[104] Andrea Zinder, president of the UFCW Local 324 that represents employees at the two Long Beach stores—Ralphs and a Food4Less—said that compared to the same time period in 2019 both stores saw an increase of about 30% in sales.

[114] In 2021, the company was reported to have been breached by a third-party hack which compromised the pharmacy records of Kroger owned Fred Meyer and QFC stores' customers.

[115] In April 2021, Kroger sold what were previously Fred Meyer properties located in Shoreline, Puyallup and Tacoma to Benderson Development Company for a combined $98.7 million.

[118] The news was met with backlash from a small number of Kroger customers on Twitter, with calls for a boycott trending nationally due to her ties to the Trump administration and to her husband, Mitch McConnell.

Kroger Delivery is also set to launch in the Northeast of the US and expand its operations in California, to be followed by sites in Texas, Georgia, Maryland, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and North Carolina.

[126] On October 14, 2022, Kroger announced a merger with Albertsons in a deal worth $24.6 billion, combining both companies into one entity but divesting some stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers to secure regulatory approval.

However, in January 2024, Washington state sued to block the proposed $25 billion merger between Kroger and Albertsons, warning that if approved it could raise prices and harm consumers.

[127] In February 2024, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser also filed a lawsuit, saying consumers told him they feared it "would lead to stores closing, higher prices, fewer jobs, worse customer service, and less resilient supply chains.”[128] In February 2024, the FTC sued to block the acquisition stating that the deal would negatively impact consumer prices and workers' wages.

[129] A 2022 Economic Roundtable survey of 10,000 Kroger's workers in Colorado, Southern California, Washington found that wages have declined over the last several years while over the same period executive pay has increased.

[132] On July 9, 2024, Kroger released the complete list of 579 stores that would be divested in order to satisfy anti-trust concerns from the Federal Trade Commission.

[1] Similar to rival chains Meijer, Kmart, Target, Walmart, and Albertsons; the stores are modeled after Kroger-owned Fred Meyer which house multiple departments.

A second Kroger Marketplace opened on October 4, 2012, from a rebuilt Scott's Food and Pharmacy in the Village at Coventry on the southwest side of Fort Wayne.

This store was formally a Kroger Food & Drug with twelve aisles, now rebuilt with sixty-four, in addition to having a Starbucks, ClickList, and expanded deli inside.

[175][176] In addition to stocking a variety of regional brand products, The Kroger Company also employs one of the largest networks of private label manufacturing in the country.

The brand's launch marked the first time Kroger had delved into making its own gluten-free products, including flour mixes, bread, etc.

In 1985, Kroger outbid Rite Aid for the Hook's Drug Stores chain, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and combined it with SupeRx to become Hook's-SupeRx.