Giant Eagle
Giant Eagle, Inc. is an American supermarket chain with stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and Maryland. The company was founded in 1918 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and incorporated on August 31, 1931. Supermarket News ranked Giant Eagle 21st on the "Top 75 North American Food Retailers" based on sales of $11 billion. In 2021, it was the 36th-largest privately held company, as determined by Forbes. Based on 2005 revenue, Giant Eagle is the 49th-largest retailer in the United States. As of summer 2014, the company had approximately $9.9 billion in annual sales. As of summer 2025, Giant Eagle, Inc. had 8 stores across the portfolio: 211 supermarkets and 8 standalone pharmacies, having sold off its 274 fuel station/convenience stores under the GetGo banner to Alimentation Couche-Tard. The company is headquartered in an office park in Cranberry Township, PA in Butler County.
History
After World War I, three Pittsburgh-area families—the Goldsteins, Porters, and Chaits—built a grocery chain called Eagle Grocery. In 1928, Eagle, which at the time had 125 stores, merged with Kroger. The three families agreed to stay out of the grocery business for at least three years.Meanwhile, the Moravitz and Weizenbaum families built their own successful chain of grocery stores named OK Grocery. In 1931, OK Grocery merged with Eagle Grocery to form Giant Eagle, which was incorporated two years later. Giant Eagle quickly expanded across western Pennsylvania, weathering the Great Depression and World War II.
Image:GiantEagleStowOhio.jpg|thumb|right|234px|Giant Eagle in Stow, Ohio. This is the current Giant Eagle prototype, used since the late 1990s, but has the 1980s-era Giant Eagle logo font.
The chain remained based solely in western Pennsylvania until the 1980s, when it bought Youngstown, Ohio-based wholesaler Tamarkin Company, and its Valu-King stores that were converted to the Giant Eagle name. The Kent and Ravenna stores were the first to be converted at that time; the Youngstown stores were then converted years later. In the 1990s, Giant Eagle reached Cleveland by acquiring the Rini-Rego Stop-n-Shop stores in the area. Rini-Rego Stop-n-Shop stores were family owned and operated in the Cleveland area. The family operators of Rini-Rego Stop-n-Shop formed a holding company named International Seaway Foods as the main umbrella for Rini-Rego Stop-n-Shop. In 1998, Giant Eagle acquired the International Seaway Foods and converted the Rini-Rego Stop-n-Shop stores into Giant Eagle Stores. Giant Eagle also purchased or opened other Northeast Ohio stores outside the Stop-n-Shop area, such as the former Apples supermarkets in the nearby Akron area.
The company entered the Toledo market, opening two stores in 2001 and 2004, both of which eventually closed. Giant Eagle emerged as one of the dominant supermarket chains in Northeast Ohio, competing mainly against the New York-based Tops, from which it purchased 18 stores in October 2006. The purchases came as Tops exited the Northeast Ohio area.
Giant Eagle purchased independently owned County Market stores, giving it a store in Somerset, Pennsylvania, a new store in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and its first Maryland stores: one in Cumberland, one in Hagerstown, and two in Frederick. The Cumberland store closed in December 2003, and the Hagerstown store closed in August 2005.
Giant Eagle has aggressively expanded its footprint in the Greater Columbus area, capitalizing on the demise of the former Big Bear supermarket chain, and taking Big Bear's traditional place as Columbus's upmarket grocer. Giant Eagle first entered what it calls its "Columbus Region" in late 2000, opening three large newly built stores at Sawmill and Bethel Rd., Lewis Center, and Dublin-Granville Rd., with two more following in 2002 and 2003 at Gahanna and Hilliard-Rome Rd. The Hilliard-Rome Rd. location closed in early 2017. In 2004, Giant Eagle purchased nine former Big Bear stores in Columbus, Newark, and Marietta from parent company Penn Traffic. Giant Eagle has since expanded to several additional locations, acquiring other abandoned Big Bear stores and in newly constructed buildings using the current Giant Eagle prototype. Giant Eagle opened its 20th Columbus-area store at New Albany Road at the Ohio Rt. 161 freeway in August 2007, its 21st area store at Hayden Run and Cosgray Roads in November 2007, its 22nd area store at Stelzer and McCutcheon Roads in July 2008 and its 23rd area store at South Hamilton Road and Winchester Pike in August 2008. A new Giant Eagle opened in Lancaster, in November 2008, and the former Big Bear located at Blacklick Crossing has undergone an expansion and remodeling.
On September 27, 2018, Giant Eagle announced it would purchase the Ricker's convenience store chain in Indiana, marking the largest acquisition for GetGo since the chain's launch. It is not known if the Ricker's chain will be integrated into the GetGo brand following the closure of the deal. Much as it has done in Pennsylvania alongside Sheetz, GetGo plans to join Ricker's in having Indiana change their laws regarding alcohol sales.
In 2023, the company parted ways with Laura Shapira Karet who was both chairman of the board and CEO. Bart Friedman was appointed chairman. This marked the first time in the company's history when the chairman was not a member of one of the five founding families. In addition, Bill Artman was appointed CEO, which marks the first time the position was not held by a member of the Shapira family since 1968.
In August 2024, Giant Eagle reached a deal to sell GetGo to Alimentation Couche-Tard, the parent company of Circle K, which closed on June 29, 2025. Giant Eagle, which initially approached Couche-Tard about offering some private label items in their standard Circle K stores before Couche-Tard countered by offering to buy GetGo, used the proceeds to reinvest in their standard supermarkets as well as expand in its pharmacy business following the collapse of Pennsylvania-based Rite Aid.
Loyalty program
In 1991, Giant Eagle introduced the Advantage Card, an electronic loyalty card discount system, as a sophisticated version of the obsolete stamp programs. The card was later modified to double as a video rental card for Iggle Video.The company began the Fuelperks! program, allowing customers the opportunity to earn 10 cents off each gallon of gas at GetGo fuel stations. In early 2009, Giant Eagle launched the Foodperks! program, mainly geared towards GetGo, allowing customers who use their Fuelperks! at GetGo to also save on groceries at Giant Eagle. In February 2013, Giant Eagle discontinued the Foodperks! program because it was "a little too complex".
In 2017, Giant Eagle changed Fuelperks! to Fuelperks+ and reintroduced the benefits of Foodperks!. Under the new program, among other benefits, customers earned points by shopping at Giant Eagle, Market District, or GetGo stores and by filling prescriptions at Giant Eagle Pharmacies. These points could be redeemed to save on groceries and gas.
In late 2021, Giant Eagle began to roll out another new system, myPerks and myPerks Pro, which allows customers to take advantage of exclusive sale prices and earn bonus points. Switching from Fuelperks+ to myPerks became an option for all customers in 2022.
Giant Eagle retired its longtime Fuelperks+ program on January 25, 2024. All existing Fuelperks+ customers were merged into the new myPerks program.
Operations
There are 211 Giant Eagle locations in the United States: 103 supermarkets in western Pennsylvania, 111 in northeastern and central Ohio, two in Morgantown, West Virginia, two in Frederick, Maryland and one in Carmel, Indiana. Each store carries between 22,000 and 60,000 items, approximately 5,000 of which are branded by Giant Eagle.Giant Eagle offers more than two dozen departments across its stores. The range of services includes Redbox video terminals, Happy Returns, dry cleaning, Bissell carpet cleaner rental, Primo Water, lottery, the Flashfood app, Coinstar, grocery pickup and delivery, and pharmacies. Giant Eagle also has banking partnerships with Citizens Bank in Pennsylvania and Huntington Bank in Ohio and West Virginia.
The chain has built large prototypes, and it has experimented with many departments unusual to supermarkets. Larger stores feature vast selections of ethnic and organic food, dry cleaning services, catering, drive-thru pharmacies, in-store banking, as well as in-store coffee shops, pubs, restaurants, and prepared foods. Prepared foods are also sold at larger GetGo locations that can accommodate a GetGo Kitchen.
Although older Giant Eagle locations tend to be unionized and some are even franchised stores, in recent years the company has started leaning toward non-union company-owned and operated stores. Prior to the sale of GetGo to Couche-Tard, Giant Eagle operated any GetGo directly that was near a franchised Giant Eagle as opposed to the franchisee itself.
Current brands
Market District
Giant Eagle rebranded some of its stores as Market District in an attempt to attract upscale shoppers. The initial two stores opened in June 2006 in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh and Bethel Park, just outside Pittsburgh. Since that time, additional Giant Eagle locations were renovated into the Market District format or constructed as newly build locations. There are now 21 stores under this brand. The 21st store opened in Westfield, Indiana in 2024, which is the chain's second location in the Indianapolis market.An additional Market District store is under construction in Pittsburgh as the replacement for the previous Giant Eagle location on Shakespeare Street. That location was demolished to make way for the new Meridian mixed use development.