GIANT EAGLE

'Giant Eagle, Inc.' is an American supermarket chain with stores located in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland. Giant Eagle was founded in 1918 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ''Supermarket News'' ranked Giant Eagle No. 22 in the 2007 "Top 75 North American Food Retailers" based on 2006 fiscal year estimated sales of $6.5 billion.^[1] In 2005, it was the 32nd largest privately held corporation, as determined by Forbes.^[2] Based on 2005 revenue, Giant Eagle is the forty-ninth largest retailer in the United States.^[3] As of June 2006, the company had 144 company-owned and 72 franchised stores. The company also operates 110 fuel station/convenience stores under the GetGo banner.
The company operates its corporate headquarters in a suburban Pittsburgh office park in O'Hara Township, Pennsylvania.

Contents

History

Loyalty program

Operations

GetGo

Giant Eagle Express

Employees

Optical

Advertising

Trivia

References

External links

History

Eagle Grocery was founded by the families of Goldstein/Shapira, Porter, and Chait in 1918 in Pittsburgh. In 1928, the families sold the Eagle Grocery company to the Kroger Company. In 1931, however, the families regained ownership of the Eagle Grocery stores and combined with the Moravitz and Weizenbaum families' OK Grocery chain to form Giant Eagle. The chain continued to prosper even through the 1930s and 1940s, an era of poverty and war. In the 1950s, the average size of a Giant Eagle grocery store was 15,000 ft².
The chain entered Ohio in the 1980s, reaching Cleveland in the 1990s, by acquiring the Stop N Shop stores in the area. Stop N Shop stores were family owned and operated in different areas of Cleveland. For an example if a person lived in Parma, Ohio, they shopped at Rini/Rego, if a person lived in Garfield Heights, Ohio, they shopped at Reiders. The family operators of Stop N Shop formed a holding company named International Seaway Foods as the main umbrella for Stop N Shop. In 1998, Giant Eagle acquired the International Seaway Foods and converted the Stop N Shop Stores into Giant Eagle Stores. The company entered the Toledo, Ohio, market by opening two stores in the area in 2001 and 2004. Giant Eagle emerged as one of the dominant supermarket chains in Northeast Ohio, competing mainly against the New York-based Tops, of which it purchased 18 stores in October 2006.
Giant Eagle purchased independently-owned County Market stores, giving it a replacement store in Somerset, Penn.; a new store in Johnstown, Penn.; and its first Maryland stores: one in Cumberland, one in Hagerstown, and two in Frederick. The Cumberland store closed in December 2003, and the Hagerstown store closed in August 2005.
Giant Eagle has aggressively expanded its footprint in the Greater Columbus area, capitalizing on the demise of the former Big Bear supermarket chain and taking Beg Bear's traditional place as Columbus' upmarket grocer. Giant Eagle first entered what it calls its "Columbus Region" in late 2000, opening three large newly-built stores at Sawmill and Bethel Rd., Lewis Center, and Dublin-Granville Rd. with two more following in 2002 and 2003 at Gahanna and Hilliard-Rome Rd. In 2004, Giant Eagle purchased nine former Big Bear stores in Columbus, Newark and Marietta from parent company Penn Traffic. Giant Eagle has since expanded to other several additional locations, both in abandoned Big Bear stores and in newly-constructed buildings using the current Giant Eagle prototype. In 2007, Giant Eagle will be opening its 20th and 21st Columbus-area stores in the Columbus suburbs of New Albany (New Albany Road at the Ohio Rt. 161 freeway) and in Dublin (at Hayden Run and Cosgray Roads).
Giant Eagle has the highest share of any supermarket chain in the Pittsburgh area, largely due to being a de-facto monopoly in the region (only Aldi and stores supplied by Supervalu such as Shop 'n Save, FoodLand, and Save-A-Lot even have a presence in the area, let alone significant market share), but has lost some market share in recent years due to Wal-Mart's construction of supercenters in the area. The company was also rumored to be considering a relationship with regional department/grocery store chain Meijer in an attempt to expand in the Midwest.

Loyalty program

Like many grocery chains, Giant Eagle ran a trading stamp program, which it named "Profit Sharing Blue Stamps." This program led to a strong sales growth for some time. In the 1960s, Giant Eagle eliminated the program to focus on a simple low-price strategy; and as a result, in the 1970s the company advertised a pledge that it offered the lowest prices of all the grocery stores.
In 1995, Giant Eagle introduced "Advantage Card", an electronic loyalty card discount system (already popular in many chains), as a sophisticated version of the obsolete stamp programs. The card was later modified to double as a video rental card for Iggle Video.

Operations

There are 216 store locations in the United States: 100 in Western Pennsylvania, 110 in Central, Northeast and Eastern Ohio, 2 in Morgantown, West Virginia, and 2 in Frederick, Maryland. Each store carries between 22,000 and 60,000 items, approximately 5,000 of which are manufactured by Giant Eagle.
Giant Eagle offers over twenty-four different departments across its stores. The range of services includes Iggle Video (a store for renting videos, DVDs, and video games, though this is currently being phased out), dry cleaning, banks such as Citizens Bank (in Pennsylvania, mostly former Mellon Bank branches) and US Bank (in Ohio, due to Tops having a separate contract with Charter One that predated Citizen's acquisition of that bank in 2004; it is not known if Ohio stores will switch to Charter One now that Tops has since closed all of their remaining Ohio stores not sold to Giant Eagle), in-store day care, and pharmacies.
The chain has built large prototypes, and it has experimented with many departments unusual to supermarkets. Larger stores feature vast selections of ethnic and organic food, dry cleaning services, Iggle video, drive-thru pharmacies, in-store banking, Eagle's Nest (for daycare purposes while shopping), as well as in-store coffee shops and prepared foods. Prepared foods are also sold at larger GetGo locations that can accommodate a GetGo Kitchen.
Giant Eagle has rebranded two of its stores as 'Market District', an attempt to woo upscale shoppers. The two stores are located in the upscale communities of Shadyside in Pittsburgh and Bethel Park in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The stores offer free Wi-Fi, Churrasco-style foods, a kosher deli, a smoothie bar and other options not offered at other Giant Eagle locations.^[4][5] Despite the wording of the one report, the Giant Eagle name is still evident on the logos for the rebranded stores.[1]

GetGo

Giant Eagle created the GetGo brand chain of self-service gas stations - some in conjunction with existing Giant Eagles, but most having their own convenience store. To compete with other local convenience store chains, Giant Eagle has instituted the Fuelperks! program, in which customers are rewarded by saving $0.10 per gallon they buy on a fill-up with every $50 they spend in Giant Eagle using their Advantage card. Most GetGo's are built from the ground-up, though Giant Eagle has bought several existing gas stations that are near Giant Eagle locations and has converted them into GetGo's, including some former Shell stations in Ohio and most former Cross Roads locations in Pennsylvania. Some GetGo's also have a WetGo automatic car wash and a GetGo Kitchen, the latter of which is used to help GetGo compete better with its main rival in Pittsburgh and up-and-coming rival in Cleveland: the more established, fast growing chain Sheetz. There is also one location in West Virginia and one in Maryland.

Giant Eagle Express

Giant Eagle express is a recently opened concept store of Giant Eagle. As of May 2007, there is only one operating store located in Harmar, PA. This store type is thought of as an attempt by Giant Eagle to stave off Tesco's expansion into the United States with a similar store concept. The store is larger than a GetGo, but much smaller than a regular Giant Eagle supermarket store. However, the store offers many of the same services as a Giant Eagle, such as a deli and a drive-through pharmacy. Giant Eagle Express also offers a café with prepared sandwiches, Giant Eagle's own Market District coffee, and a wireless internet connection. Outside, GetGo gasoline is available.^[6]

Employees

The chain has many workers unionized under United Food & Commercial Workers Local 23 of Pittsburgh, and UFCW Local 880 of Cleveland. The Frederick, Md. Parma Hts, Oh. and Columbus, Oh. stores are not unionized, much like some independently owned stores throughout Pennsylvania and the Youngstown, Ohio area.

Optical

In December of 2005 Giant Eagle launched Giant Eagle Optical outside of their McIntyre Square Location. Currently there are three locations in the Pittsburgh area; North Hills-McIntyre Square, South Hills-Donaldson's Crossroads, East-Monroeville. The stores accept most major vision plans and offer a wide variety of designer frames as well as exclusive giant eagle brands. They also participate in the Fuelperks! program and are staffed by ABO certified opticians.

Advertising

Giant Eagle uses the slogan "Make every day taste better", after having eliminated their previous slogan, "It takes a giant to make life simple." The former was introduced in August 2001, while the latter was first seen around January 1993. The "It takes a giant to make life simple" slogan spawned the "Fe Fi Fo Fum" commercials, which featured everything from the general store, the produce and deli departments to a spot featuring Jay Bell and Jeff King of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The slogan replaced the previous "A lot you can feel good about...especially the price" motto.
The chain, under pressure from Wal-Mart, has implemented a lower prices campaign throughout its stores, featured on products customers buy most. Giant Eagle has also reconfirmed its commitment to value by selling Topco-produced Valu Time products, which are substantially cheaper than other private-label and name-brand merchandise. These co-exist with the Giant Eagle branded items, which are priced lower than national brands yet higher than Valu Time. Before these brands existed, Giant Eagle generally used Topco's Food Club label as the generic product.

Trivia

Giant Eagle is commonly referred to as "Jian Iggle" in the Pittsburghese dialect, hence the name "Iggle Video" for the store's video rental service.
Giant Eagle has an "Accu-scan" policy that basically states if an item is ringing up other than advertised, the first item is free and the remaining identical items are rung up at the expected advertised price. If employees take advantage of a pricing error, they are usually fired over this same policy that is extended to customers because management will frequently view it as fraud.

References

1. 2007 Top 75 North American Food Retailers, ''Supermarket News'', Last accessed February 24, 2007.
2. The Largest Private Companies
3. Top 100 Retailers: The Nation's Retail Power Players (PDF), ''Stores'', July 2006.
4. Giant Eagle woos foodies with 'Market District'
5. Giant Eagle gets creative with marketing
6. The Express Experience, 30 May 2007.

External links

★ Giant Eagle's official website

★ Market District's official website

★ Giant Eagle Optical's official website

★ Giant Eagle Express official website