It’s remarkable how many products and services we take for granted were once thought to be risky innovations. Perhaps the one that is the most ubiquitous, and yet most taken for granted, is the supermarket. Today’s supermarkets were preceded by multiple small shops  that required shopper visit multiple establishments to for meat, produce, baked goods and other needs. These were typically smaller stores  (500 to 600 sq ft), even the ones that later became much larger later such as Kroger or the now defunct A&P.

It took a former Kroger and A&P executive, Michael Cullen, to envision the supermarket as we know it today. He pitched the idea of a new store, “monstrous in size” compared to other stores of the time, to his bosses at Kroger to no avail. A&P leadership rejected it as well.    

Undaunted, Mr. Cullen, initiated the age of the supermarket on August 4, 1930, with the opening of the first “King Kullen” store in Queens, NY. Ten times the size of its competitors’ stores, it was instantly successful. It was an idea whose time had come but was incomprehensible to those blinded by earlier success. (Sam Walton’s story in creating Wal-Mark several decades later is similar).

Rethinking how an existing product or service could be distributed can be just as much an innovation as the innovation that created the good or service in the first place. Learn more about the origins of the “Supermarket: One of the Most Important (and least known) American Inventions of All Time”. (Mr. Cullen’s original memo to his bosses outlining the idea is included in the article and worth the read by itself.)