Giant Eagle is a large grocery chain which operates stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and Maryland. The company was founded in 1918 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by three families, Goldstein, Porter, and Chait. The small company which they named Eagle Grocery grew steadily, and in only a decade, they expanded to 125 stores. Despite the success they had achieved, the families decided to sell their enterprise to the Kroger Company in 1928. The agreement came with a condition that would force them to stay out of the grocery business for three years. Meanwhile, two other families called Moravitz and Weizenbaum were working on launching their own grocery store. These five families joined together and founded the first Giant Eagle store in 1936. Despite the Great Depression and World War II, Giant Eagle experienced outstanding growth through the innovations they introduced.

Some of these innovations were:

• Technology: computerized buying system and bar code scanners at registers and ATMs.

• Working hours: stores would be open for 24 hours during the week and some hours on Sundays.

• Store-within-a-store convenience: pharmacies, floral arrangement, automotive parts, housewares, books, etc.

Here are some of the great achievements of Giant Eagle:

• Supermarket News listed Giant Eagle as one of the "Top 75 North American Food Retailers" based on 2011 fiscal year.

• As of 2014, the company reached $9.9 billion in annual sales.

• As of 2019, Giant Eagle, Inc had 216 supermarkets, 56 Ricker's fuel station/convenience stores and 202 fuel station/convenience stores under the GetGo banner.

The long success behind Giant Eagle clearly has a lot to do about family tradition and values. The foundations of this company were built mainly on passion, hard work, and competitive spirit which made them the pioneers of the modern grocery industry.