Fred G. Meyer

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Fred G. Meyer (February 21, 1886 – September 2, 1978) was a U.S. retailing pioneer.

Born Frederick Grubmeyer in Brooklyn^[1], he traveled through the American West before settling in Portland, Oregon 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 bearing his name in downtown Portland. He expanded this store into the Fred Meyer chain of supermarkets and department stores.

Meyer introduced innovative marketing 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 since the store's relocation to Hollywood West in 1991).

Fred Meyer's life as business entrepreneur is an example of commitment to the communities where he built his stores: he usually commercialized goods from local production, fostered production of new crops in the region, financed new business ventures, and aided some threatened workers during hard times of the economy. The inclusion of support to the local communities development and welfare is a fairly recent and advanced concept in the business management field, so, in this sense, Meyer may be regarded as a pioneer too.

Upon his death his stock in Fred Meyer established the Meyer Memorial Trust,^[2] which is distinct from the Fred Meyer Foundation. The latter is sponsored by now Kroger-owned subsidiaries of Fred Meyer Stores and Quality Food Centers.^[3]