It’s Been 75 Years Since Giant Spurred a Grocery Revolution

The story goes that the man who started one of the first supermarkets in the Baltimore-Washington area would pace the aisles of his stores scrutinizing the smallest of details even as he was revolutionizing the way people purchased food.

If Nehemiah Myer Cohen saw a piece of bad fruit or celery, he would make sure it was thrown out, according to a 1986 publication from the chain on the company’s history.

Cohen and Samuel Lehrman opened the first Giant supermarket on Feb. 6, 1936, and it grew into the locally well-known grocery chain. Within a year of its Depression-era opening, the supermarket was able to lower its prices by 35 percent because it was selling more items, said Giant spokesman Jamie Miller.

At first, the concept of a large supermarket felt disorderly to shoppers, said Tracey Deutsch, a history professor at the University of Minnesota who studies consumer culture. “[It] felt ungainly to people and stood out in the retail landscape,” Deutsch said. Instead of going to a neighborhood butcher, apothecary or grocer, residents were expected to walk into one sprawling store called a supermarket and find all their week’s groceries.

Businesses that asked consumers to change the way they shopped turned out to be revolutionary, and Giant is celebrating 75 years as a company this year.

“It was transformative,” Deutsch said. “The way we live is designed around this model now….We have this understanding that that is how shopping will work. We organized communities around that.”

The is now in its 14th year. "We're still going strong here; 75 years later, we’re still the number-one grocery chain in the Maryland-D.C. area," said Ted Sutton, customer service manager at the Elkridge store, located in the Lyndwood Shopping Center. "We change with the times, with technology, and we're still leading the market."

Three years ago, the Elkridge location introduced Scan It!, a system that enables customers to scan their items while shopping throughout the store. At checkout, the device calculates the total and rings people up right away. Two years ago, Sutton said that 10 percent of customers were using Scan It! Now, that number has risen to 20 percent.

In addition to Scan It!'s ability to increase efficiency, "kids look forward to it because they get an opportunity to do the shopping" when parents put them in charge of scanning, said Sutton. He added that many kids also have their own carts, adding to the experience.

Activities for children and raffles for adults are among the activities coming down the line as Elkridge Giant celebrates the company's 75th birthday. In February, the store hosted a Valentine's Day-themed party with a surf-and-turf dinner giveaway for adults and cookie decorating for the kids. Monthly celebrations are planned for the rest of the year, though Sutton said dates haven't been determined yet. Staff members will dress up on the given day each month in the style of a decade in Giant's history; this month was the 1930s, March will be a nod to the 1940s, and so on.

“It is a big deal,” said Miller. “You know, a lot of the things we stood for when Giant opened up in 1936—quality, service and value—those were the foundations that Giant was built upon and continue to be our guiding principles. Giant’s been an instrumental part of the community for the 75 years.”

The chain now operates 178 stores, 100 of which are in Maryland, and employs more than 22,000 associates in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C.

Elkridge Patch editor Elizabeth Janney contributed to this article.