This month marks the 90th anniversary of Giant Food, the share of market leader in Baltimore-Washington for the past 60 years. The Landover, MD based “brand” of Ahold Delhaize USA officially opened the doors to its first store on Georgia Avenue NW and Park Road in Washington, DC on February 6, 1936. The company was founded by N.M Cohen and Jac Lehrman.
To commemorate this milestone, Giant unveiled its “90 Days of Giving” campaign. The retailer will make donations totaling $990,000 to local Feeding America Food Bank organizations to support the fight against childhood hunger and has launched a fundraising campaign at its 163 stores to raise nearly a million additional dollars for more than a dozen community groups.
Since the start of its partnership with Feeding America, Giant Food and the Giant Family Foundation have donated more than $23 million in monetary contributions and more than 26.6 million meals through fresh food recovery programs.
Moreover, Giant’s Family Foundation fund donated to six hunger-fighting organizations, including the Capital Area Food Bank and Maryland Food Bank, at community events this month.
The “90 Days of Giving” campaign, which began January 9, will also allow Giant Food customers to round up their totals with each purchase at stores across Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. The retailer hopes to raise an additional $990,000 earmarked for 13 community groups, including the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington, Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Capital Region, American Farmland Trust, Building Bridges Across the River, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and more.
That initial Giant on Georgia Avenue and Park Road was reportedly the first self-service market to open in the region. Over the years, the company continued to open stores in the DC area and by the early 1960s when N.M Cohen’s son Izzy took the helm, Giant Food’s growth became dynamic as it expanded to Baltimore and the Eastern Shore.
Highlights in the early years included the opening of the company’s Heidi Bakery in 1948; the debut of the first “Super Giant” – a store that combined the supermarket, the department store, and a discount house to offer customers a wider range of inventory at lower prices – in 1958; and the debut of its first food and drug combination store in Glen Burnie, MD in 1962.
In 1970, Giant hired former U.S. Labor Department employee Esther Peterson to serve as the company’s first consumer affairs advocate, the first grocery chain in the U.S. to create such a position. In that same decade, Giant became the first grocery chain to introduce computer-assisted checkout, and shortly thereafter, began installing computerized pharmacy system in all stores.
In 1994, Giant expanded into a new state – Delaware.
In 1998 Giant Food was purchased by Dutch merchant Royal Ahold, one of the largest retailers in Europe, which nearly 20 years earlier had entered the U.S. with its acquisition of Giant Food Stores based in Carlisle, PA.
In the 2000s, Giant launched its “Bonus Card” loyalty program and introduced a new logo. The company also re-invested in more than two thirds of stores through “Project Refresh,” remodeling or replacing stores to best serve customers’ changing needs. Giant was also the first Mid-Atlantic grocer to launch a gas rewards program, in partnership with Shell.
Its rich history perhaps can best be summarized by the words of then-CEO Izzy Cohen, one of the greatest leaders in supermarket history, during the retailer’s 50th anniversary in 1986:
“This is a young country and while you can still find corporations that are 100 years old, there are companies in Europe that have been around for over 400 years. Many of them maintain the same philosophy of business that they adopted centuries before. I’m convinced that the reason we’re a premier operation today is because we have the right people; motivated, disciplined, caring people at every level of the company. Today, we have associates whose families have been with Giant for two and three generations. We believe that’s our strength – that when you deal with this corporation, you deal in perpetuity. If I weren’t doing this job, I’d enjoy being a store manager, motivating associates and satisfying customers. There’s no greater pleasure than having a clean, friendly store with courteous, caring, concerned people. That’s our way of life.”
