Michael J. Cullen
Michael J. Cullen (born April 10, 1884 in New Jersey , † April 24, 1936 in Queens County ) was an American entrepreneur and inventor of the supermarket .
Cullen's parents were Irish immigrants . He completed an apprenticeship in grocery retail , worked for The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company when he was 18, and was District Director of Kroger Grocery & Baking Co. in southern Illinois in 1930 . With the Great Depression of 1929, the high personnel costs in the over 5000 mostly small branches of Kroger - today the third largest retailer in the USA - came into the public eye. Cullen's proposal to Kroger's president, WH Albers, to close some of the small branches and open ten times larger branches outside the city center with self-service, lower margins and large free parking spaces went unanswered.
He then quit, moved his family to Long Island , founded the King Kullen Grocery Company with a business partner , rented a large empty garage on Jamaica Avenue in Queens and opened the first supermarket he imagined on August 4, 1930. He offered more than 1000 articles there, a small part of which he sold at cost price. He opened more stores in Queens, Long Island and the Bronx, and by 1936 he had 17 stores.
literature
- Georg Schwert: From corner shop to supermarket: A cultural history of shopping , Wiley-VCH Verlag, Weinheim, 2006 ISBN 978-3-52750218-9 , p. 20 ff
- Andrew Smith (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, OU, 2013 ISBN 978-0-19973496-2 , pp. 385 f
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.wiley-vch.de/templates/pdf/3527502181_c01.pdf ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cullen, Michael J. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American entrepreneur and inventor of the supermarket |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 10, 1884 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New Jersey |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 24, 1936 |
| Place of death | Queens County |