Meijer: the Grand Rapids store that invented one-stop shopping

If you’ve shopped at a Meijer, you’ve used a West Michigan invention. The store started in 1934, when Hendrik Meijer — a Dutch immigrant and barber in Greenville, Michigan — opened a little grocery during the Great Depression. His 14-year-old son, Fred, helped him run it. The big idea came in 1962. That year the Meijers opened a store in Grand Rapids called “Thrifty Acres.” It put a full grocery store and a department store under one roof, with a single set of checkouts. People said it would never work. Instead, it’s widely considered the first “supercenter” in America — the one-stop-shopping idea that even Walmart would follow years later. Meijer is still a family-owned company, headquartered in Walker, just outside Grand Rapids. It has more than 500 stores across six Midwestern states.

Fred and Lena Meijer also helped turn a long-planned West Michigan Horticultural Society project into Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. It opened in 1995 and now covers 158 acres. The grounds include a five-story tropical conservatory, an 8-acre Japanese garden, a spring butterfly exhibition, and a 24-foot bronze horse based on a design Leonardo da Vinci never completed. The gardens are at 1000 East Beltline Avenue NE in Grand Rapids.