“I will lead the public out of the high-priced houses of bondage into the low prices of the house of the promised land”
- Michael J. Cullen

Born in 1884, the son of Irish immigrants, Michael Cullen went to work as a teenager for The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P.) After 17 years he moved to Kroger Stores and stayed with them for 11 years. During all that time, he studied the food retailing business and secretly developed a new concept for selling groceries at higher volume and increased sales. Cullen secretly called his invention a “Super-Market.”

Old-time Kroger store.

At the time, food markets, like most other retailers, were much smaller operations, requiring each shopper to be served by a clerk, who retrieved the customer’s requested items from behind a counter, a back room, or a barrel. He then packed everything up, totaled the costs and collected payment. This time-consuming, one-on-one service prevented markets from expanding and adding new items. Grocery stores remained tiny, labor-intensive ventures with a low profit margin.

Typical pre-supermarket grocery store.

Cullen’s brilliant plan was based on the unusual idea of “self-service.” His customers could leisurely shop on their own in a single, roomy facility. To stock the giant store he would purchase in bulk, slashing prices lower than the competition. And by adding free parking, shoppers could fill their vehicles with food, greatly increasing profits.  

The enthusiastic Cullen decided to explain these innovations in a letter to Kroger’s CEO. He described his “low prices/self-service/high volume” theory, boasting, ”I would save the public so much money that I would be the ‘miracle man’ of the grocery business. The public would not and could not believe their eyes.” He offered to invest his life savings, $15,000, if Kroger came on board as a partner.

Cullen and his Queens home.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) the CEO never replied to the letter. Cullen would have to go it alone. So he moved his family to Long Island and began searching locations for his newfangled “super-market.” He found it, in a big, vacant garage at the corner of 171st Street and Jamaica Avenue in Queens, near a busy shopping district. He fixed up the building and stuffed it full with the unheard-of amount of 1,000 products.

But what to call this “super-market?” His young son Bobby had the answer. One day Dad spotted the boy drawing a picture of a man sitting on top of a globe – sitting on top of the world! The picture was titled “King Kullen.” The name (with the youthful spelling) was adopted.

The world’s first Supermarket, 1930.

Cullen bally-hooed the opening of his first store with full-page ads in every newspaper. A barrage of sales circulars listing brand names with low prices were headed “King Kullen – The World’s Greatest Price Wrecker.” The world’s first supermarket opened on August 4, 1930, and was an immediate success, attracting customers from up to 100 miles around.

Cullen’s store created a sensation throughout the grocery industry. The single-service shops could not understand why people would drive an hour to shop in an old garage on the outskirts of the city. Why would they sacrifice the “personal service” of a traditional grocery store?

The answer, of course, was self-service, which we all take for granted today. People absolutely loved wandering around the huge store, filling a basket with whatever they wanted, finding much of it on sale. And the lack of clerks meant lower prices and a lean Kullen payroll.

A happy shopper selects her own groceries.

King Kullen expanded rapidly during the Depression. They reused older, abandoned buildings in low-rent borders of populated areas. The no-frills, bargain environment appealed to the cash-strapped crowds. By 1937 there were 17 King Kullen Supermarkets boasting an annual revenue of $6 million (in depression dollars.) Today, the “World’s Greatest Price Wrecker” boasts 52 stores with annual sales of $940 million.

The simplicity and cost-effectiveness of Cullen’s invention was easily and speedily copied by every grocery operation in the country. By 1936 there were over 1,200 supermarkets in 32 states, and over 15,000 by 1950. The entire planet now shops in supermarkets, thanks to Michael Cullen – King of the grocery world!