Case Study: The Kroger Grocery And Baking Company

The Kroger Company as it is known today was founded in 1883 by Bernard H. Kroger and his friend B.A. Branagan. The Kroger family were German immigrants who owned a dry goods store that eventually went out of business due to the financial panic of 1873 (Garrison, 2014). Kroger was then forced to drop out of school and work miscellaneous retail jobs as a grocery clerk and door to door salesman. Kroger invested his lifesavings of $372 along with Branagan and opened the Great Western Tea Company in 1883. In the early 1900’s Kroger noticed that there were no grocers who sold meats and breads in the same place (The Kroger Company, 2018). Kroger used this opportunity to begin baking its own bread. As a result in 1902, The Great Western Tea company became incorporated as The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company. The company’s name did not officially change to the Kroger Company until 1946 (The Kroger Company, 2018).

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The company is in need of revitalization. In October of 2017, Kroger made several executive changes to senior management. Katie Wolfram, president of the Central Division at Kroger, retired in early November. Fred Morganthall, vice president of the retail operations division, also retired in November. Mike Donnelly, executive vice president of merchandising, has now acquired the additional role of managing both merchandising and operations (Schilling, 2017). This change allows Kroger to achieve collaboration by the formation of teams across the merchandising and operations divisions. The executive changes are also vital to the success of Kroger’s new strategy called “Restock Kroger Plan”. This initiative involves taking a more data driven approach and leveraging technology to improve profits and ultimately change the method of how customers purchase food. Additionally, the company will be able to position itself accordingly to provide the best overall customer