The Untold Truth Of Meijer

Hendrik Meijer opened his first store in 1934, but that store wasn't the same as the one Meijer shoppers will see today. Meijer's Grocery, as it was called, opened in the middle of the Great Depression in Greenville, Michigan (the chain's headquarters is still in Grand Rapids, Michigan, today). Originally a barber and a Dutch immigrant, Meijer opened Meijer's Grocery as an extra benefit to his barbershop clientele. He started out with just $338.76 worth of inventory, all purchased on credit, but with the help of his son Fred and daughter Johanna, the concept became a success, and less than a decade later, in 1941, he opened a second store. Four more stores followed in the 1950s and, by the 1960s, there were more than a dozen Meijer's Grocery stores across the Grand Rapids region.

Why was the Meijer family so successful in the grocery business? Part of their success could be credited to their forward-thinking modernization attempts.

While Walmart is admittedly more well-known than Meijer today, Meijer actually provided the inspiration Sam Walton needed to launch his initial venture. In 1962, Meijer opened the first American "hypermarket," a concept that was already popular in Belgium, but that had yet to reach U.S. shores. The hypermarket was a newfangled idea that allowed shoppers to buy everything they needed in one spot — groceries, home goods, clothes, and all the rest. Meijer named the first American superstore Thrifty Acres and its slogan was "a self-service discount department store with the hometown touch" (via the Detroit Free Press). It offered 18 checkout lanes and 7 acres of parking.

According to the Michigan Historical Center, which erected a historical marker at the existing Meijer store on the same plot in 2015 (the name was changed from Thrifty Acres to just Meijer in the 1980s), "It really was a new business model. Even the founder of Walmart cites them as an example of who they were looking at when they were inventing their business model. ... Today, they're everywhere, but when they made that big change, they really were changing how we shop today."

Once Walmart came along, following this model, it had its critics, and one of the loudest criticisms? That Walmart's produce simply wasn't as good as what Meijer offered.

However, even after these decades of unsuccessfully attempted spin-offs, Meijer hasn't completely ceased its foray into other endeavors. In the 2010s, it broached the high-end grocery market with Fresh Thyme (via Michigan Radio), which an investigative reporter found that Meijer started "from the ground up." However, as of 2020, Fresh Thyme was described as being "partially backed" by Meijer. At the time, Fresh Thyme had roughly 75 stores in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Fresh Thyme combines the savings and value of a traditional Meijer store, with the all-natural, organic appeal of a health food store. On the brand's website, it calls itself a "farmer's market grocery concept." It also compares itself to Whole Foods, thanks to its organic, natural, and gluten-free selections. Additionally, news coverage has called Fresh Thyme a "Whole Foods-Trader Joe's hybrid, seeded with Meijer money." Whatever you want to call it, though, or however you want to describe it, one thing is clear: Fresh Thyme is doing a lot better than Meijer's other spin-offs have historically.

We know, we know. In this day and age, it sounds like a hoax. Free prescriptions? In America? Someone's going to give you health care for free? What nonsense! But, yes, Meijer offers free prescriptions via its select free prescriptions program. On the program webpage, the brand details how health care costs have a big impact on families across the Midwest and, so, Meijer offers free prescriptions (with limitations) regardless of a customer's insurance or co-pay. The program will give you, primarily, free select antibiotics and free prenatal vitamins, with a few exceptions. All you need for either is a doctor's prescription and to show up in person to pick up your items.

In 2019, Meijer reached a milestone of having given out 50 million prescriptions through the program since its start in 2006, which saved customers more than $650 million in health care costs. Unfortunately, in 2020, Meijer did make a few changes to its free prescription program, dropping two medications from the list of covered prescriptions: Metformin, for Type 2 diabetes, and generic Lipitor, for cholesterol (via the Detroit Free Press).

As mentioned, Hendrik Meijer, the man who started it all, was a Dutch immigrant. Today, the Meijer family, now in its third generation of Meijer leadership, still recognizes their Dutch heritage. Frederik Meijer, for example, established the Frederik Meijer Chair in Dutch Language and Culture at Calvin University in 2006 to support Dutch history education, including the aspects of Netherlandic culture that have played a role in the Meijer brand's success, such as innovation, technology, and economic stability. Frederik Meijer himself is called an "avid student of Dutch history" and a frequent visitor to the Netherlands.

In addition to establishing the Frederik Meijer Chair in Dutch Language and Culture, Frederik and his wife (who worked at the original Meijer grocery store as a cashier) have established a range of other initiatives and organizations to help the Grand Rapids area, such as the Fred and Lena Meijer Heart Center and the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

For all its modern appeal, Meijer was found stuck in the dark ages in one key area. As The Motley Fool reports, in 2017, according to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index, which measures how corporations in America treat gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals, Meijer earned a 0 rating, meaning that Meijer did not "take any positive steps toward [LGBTQ] employees." The only other two corporations in the country to earn a 0 rating that year were ExxonMobile and Perot Systems.

The index looks at how companies not only treat employees, but also consumers and investors, looking at aspects such as health insurance, retirement benefits, diversity training, job protection, and more. In comparison to Meijer's rock-bottom score, Walmart scored a 40. Companies that earned 100s on the index that year included Xerox, Cisco Systems, and Sun Microsystems. At that time, researchers said the index was particularly meaningful, as the gay and lesbian population in the country was around 15 million, and that population boasted a purchasing power of $650 billion-plus.

Environmental friendliness is becoming more of an issue for brands around the country and Meijer is among them. In early 2022, Meijer announced a goal to reduce absolute carbon emissions by 50% by 2025. Already, Meijer is on the right track, as it's managed to reduce its emissions by 17% since 2014.

So how does the brand plan on meeting this audacious goal? It says it will add renewable energy procurement technologies to its operations, such as new refrigeration methods. It's also committed to constructing environmentally-responsible buildings. It likewise announced a renewable solar project, which will generate 200,000 megawatt hours of energy in just its first year. The impact of this switch to clean energy will reportedly remove an amount of greenhouse gases and carbon emissions from the atmosphere equal to that of 20,000 automobiles on the road, and do the work of approximately 125,000 acres of forestland. The project is intended to benefit Meijer's energy usage for at least 15 years.