Fred G. Meyer
Encyclopedia
Fred G. Meyer was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 businessman
Businessperson
A businessperson is someone involved in a particular undertaking of activities for the purpose of generating revenue from a combination of human, financial, or physical capital. An entrepreneur is an example of a business person...

.

Born Frederick Grubmeyer in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, he traveled through the American West before settling in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

 in 1909, where he founded a horse-drawn coffee service for lumber camps around Portland. After a few years of new ventures in Alaska, he returned to Oregon and founded a coffee shop (the Java Coffee Company, later changed to Mission Coffee Company in 1915) and then in 1922, a grocery store
Supermarket
A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

 bearing his name in downtown Portland. He expanded this store into the Fred Meyer
Fred Meyer
Fred Meyer, Inc., is a chain of hypermarkets founded in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, by Fred G. Meyer. The company was one of the pioneers of one-stop shopping, eventually combining a complete grocery supermarket with a drugstore, clothing store, shoe store, fine jewelers, home decor store, home...

 chain of supermarket
Supermarket
A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

s and department store
Department store
A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

s.

Biography

Meyer introduced innovative marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

 concepts; he is often credited as one of the originators of the "one-stop shopping" concept, when in 1933, he built the Hollywood Fred Meyer, his first full-block megastore on Northeast Sandy Boulevard at 42nd Avenue in Portland (now a Rite Aid
Rite Aid
Rite Aid is a drugstore chain in the United States and a Fortune 500 company headquartered in East Pennsboro Township, Pennsylvania, near Camp Hill. Rite Aid is the largest drugstore chain on the East Coast and the third largest drugstore chain in the U.S....

 since the store's relocation to Hollywood West in 1988).

Fred G. Meyer's wife, Eva Marie, died in 1960.

Meyer was opposed to zoning
Zoning
Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...

, specifically naming the model of Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...

 as a successful example.

Upon his death his stock in Fred Meyer established the Meyer Memorial Trust, leaving behind $60 million to be used for "religious, charitable, scientific, literary or educational purposes." The Meyer Memorial Trust is distinct from the Fred Meyer Foundation. The latter is sponsored by now Kroger
Kroger
The Kroger Co. is an American supermarket chain founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It reported US$ 76.7 billion in sales during fiscal year 2009. It is the country's largest grocery store chain and its second-largest grocery retailer by volume and second-place general retailer...

-owned subsidiaries of Fred Meyer Stores and Quality Food Centers
QFC
Quality Food Centers is a supermarket chain based in Bellevue, Washington, with over 75 stores in the Puget Sound region of Washington state and in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area.-History:...

.

External links

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