Kroger Also Owns These Familiar Grocery Store Chains, If You Weren't Aware

You've undoubtedly seen our series on the best monthly Kroger finds (like those from March 2026), or our coverage of private-label fails like the store's white chocolate mocha coffee creamer with a bevy of bad reviews. On the whole, however, we think Kroger is a pretty cool place to do your grocery shopping. With a self-stated purpose to "Feed the Human Spirit," the supermarket chain has taken a strong stand on human rights, pay equity, pollinator protection, and greenhouse gas reduction, among other initiatives. What you may not know about Kroger is that The Kroger Co., its parent company, is a grocery store monolith that owns a ton of major names in American food. 

To wit, Kroger also owns Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, Foods Co., Ralphs, Dillons, Smith's, King Soopers, Fry's, QFC, City Market, Owen's, Jay C, Pay Less, Baker's, Gerbes, Harris Teeter, Pick'n Save, Metro Market and Mariano's. For several of those brands, like Dillons and King Soopers, Kroger owns Marketplace format stores that also offer general merchandise along with groceries. This is to say nothing of the almost 1,500 Kroger gas stations that the company owns as well!

In 2024, a judge blocked Kroger from becoming even bigger than it already is by halting a deal that would have seen Kroger acquire Albertson's, another major grocery group. That business entity owns Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen, Carrs, Kings Food Markets and Balducci's Food Lovers Market. The reason for blocking the sale came down to the fact that Kroger would effectively have a monopoly on grocery sales in certain areas, violating federal antitrust laws.

When you are pushing a blue shopping cart in Kroger and wondering why grocery stores play music as you grab the essentials for your dinner, you probably aren't considering why Kroger's parent company owns hundreds upon hundreds of stores under different brand names. It wasn't always a goliath of groceries, however. In 1883, Bernard "Barney" Kroger opened a single store in Cincinnati, into which he poured his life savings of $372. Mr. Kroger pioneered the concept of the in-store bakery and more fully pushed the idea of a one-stop grocery store when he created the first Kroger meat department (previously, customers would have had to make a separate trip to a local butcher for their meat).

In 1928, Mr. Kroger sold his shares of Kroger stock and retired. But that was far from the end of Kroger's story. The company sported over 5,500 stores, and was on the grow. As the century moved on, Kroger began purchasing other supermarkets. By 1979, it had attained the title of the second-largest grocery store in the United States. In 1999, by scooping up the Fred Meyer superstore family, Kroger became the biggest retail grocer in America — and it has added more brands to its roster since.

Throughout its 100+ years in business, Kroger has repeatedly made history. In addition to launching the first in-store bakery, it also revolutionized grocery store checkouts by experimenting with early electronic scanners in the 1970s. Other firsts that Kroger has claimed? Taking customer surveys to implement consumer feedback, and donating excess food to food banks to reduce waste.