Early history (1883 to 1950s) In 1883, 23-year-old
Bernard Kroger, the fifth of ten children born to
German immigrants, invested his life savings of $372 () to open a grocery store at 66 Pearl Street in downtown Cincinnati. He operated under the motto: "Be particular. Never sell anything you would not want yourself." He experimented with marketing products his company had produced so that his customers would not need to patronize separate stores and farms. In 1884, Kroger opened a second location, and by 1902, the Kroger Grocery and Baking Company was incorporated. By this time, the business had expanded to 40 stores with annual sales of $1.75 million. In addition, Kroger became the first grocery chain to have its own bakery. In 1916, Kroger company began using self-service shopping. Previously, all goods were kept behind counters, customers had to request items from clerks who would then retrieve and deliver them. By the end of the 1920s, Kroger, through its acquisition of smaller chains, controlled more than 5,500 stores, mainly in the Midwest and South. During the 1930s, Kroger Grocery and Baking Company became the first grocery chain to monitor product quality and to test foods offered to customers. It also became the first company with a store surrounded on all four sides by parking lots. In 1932, the company tested a pilot project after it opened a grocery store in Indianapolis.
1950s and 1960s Beginning in 1955, Kroger began acquiring supermarket chains, expanding into new markets. In May, Kroger entered the
Houston, Texas, market by acquiring the Houston-based 26-store chain
Henke & Pillot. In June, Kroger acquired the Krambo Food Stores, Inc. of
Appleton, Wisconsin. In July, it purchased Child's Food Stores, Inc. of
Jacksonville, Texas, and operated 25 supermarkets in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In January 1956, the company bought out Big Chain Stores, Inc., a chain of seven stores based in
Shreveport, Louisiana, later combining it with the Childs group. All of these chains adopted the Kroger banner in 1966. During all the acquisitions, in September 1957, Kroger sold off its
Wichita, Kansas, store division, which consisted of 16 stores, to
J. S. Dillon and Sons Stores Company, then headed by Ray S. Dillon, son of the company founder. In October 1963, Kroger acquired the 56-store chain Market Basket, providing them with a foothold in the lucrative southern California market. Prior to this time, Kroger had no stores west of Kansas. Kroger, however, failed to make significant headway, only managing a 5 percent market share. By 1982, it withdrew from the California market. In 1965, Henke's Family Center stores were folded into the newly-created Kroger Family Center subdivision. These retail units were typically 50,000–80,000 square feet and included expanded home goods and pharmacy departments. The format was a response to the 1962 emergence of
big box discount retailers including
Woolworth's Woolco, Kresge's
Kmart, and the Waltons'
Walmart. The Family Center concept was also an answer to grocery chains creating big box grocery and variety store combos including
A&P's The Family Mart and
Meijer's Thrifty Acres which were also created in 1962. The Kroger Family Centers were a forerunner of the Kroger Marketplace
hypermarket stores of the 21st Century. Kroger opened stores in Florida under the SupeRx and Florida Choice banners from the 1960s until 1988, when the chain decided to exit the state and sold all of its stores;
Kash n' Karry bought the largest share. The company also exited the Washington, D.C., market in 1966 after it sold its stores to another grocery chain operating in the area. In 1967, the first bar code scanner was introduced in a Kroger supermarket in Cincinnati, Ohio. Although Kroger has long operated stores in the
Huntsville-
Decatur area of northern
Alabama (as a southern extension of its
Nashville, Tennessee, region), it has not operated in the state's largest market,
Birmingham, since the early 1970s, when it exited as a result of intense competition from
Winn-Dixie and local chains
Bruno's Supermarkets and Western Supermarkets. Kroger built an ultra-modern dairy plant (Crossroad Farms Dairy) in Indianapolis in 1972. At the time, it was considered the largest dairy plant in the world. Kroger exited the
Chicago market in 1970, selling its distribution warehouse in Northlake, Il. and 24 stores to the Dominick's Finer Foods grocery chain. Kroger exited the
Minneapolis–Saint Paul area in 1970, selling 16 stores to Quality Foods, which rebranded the stores to
Piggly Wiggly. Kroger exited Milwaukee in 1972, selling a few stores to
Jewel. Kroger would later return in 2015 upon its acquisition of
Roundy's. Kroger entered the
Charlotte market in 1977 and expanded rapidly throughout the 1980s when it bought some stores from
BI-LO. However, most stores were in less desirable neighborhoods and did not fit in with Kroger's upscale image. Less than three months after BI-LO pulled out, that company decided to re-enter the Charlotte market, and in 1988, Kroger announced it was pulling out of the Charlotte market and put its stores up for sale.
Ahold bought Kroger's remaining stores in the Charlotte area and converted them to BI-LO. In 1978, sixteen retail members of Parkview Markets Inc., filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Kroger.
1980s Kroger had a number of stores in the
Western Pennsylvania region, encompassing
Pittsburgh and surrounding areas from 1928 until 1984 when the U.S. began experiencing a severe economic
recession. The recession had two significant and related effects on Kroger's operations in the region. One of them was that the highly cyclical manufacturing-based economy of the region
declined in greater proportion than the rest of the U.S., which undercut demand for the higher-end products and services offered by Kroger. Kroger sought wage rollbacks in several areas during this time period including in Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, the West Virginia Panhandle and Michigan. The second effect of the economic recession was to worsen labor-management relations, causing a protracted labor strike in 1983 and 1984. During the strike, Kroger withdrew all of its stores from the Western Pennsylvania market, including some recently opened "superstores" and "greenhouses", selling these stores to Wetterau (now part of
SuperValu), who promptly
flipped the stores to independent owners while continuing to supply them under the
FoodLand and
Shop 'n Save brands. Kroger's exit ceded the market to lower-cost, locally owned rivals, most notably
Giant Eagle and the SuperValu-supplied grocers. (Kroger purchased Eagle Grocery company, whose founders went on to create Giant Eagle.) Kroger still maintains a presence in the nearby
Morgantown, West Virginia,
Wheeling, West Virginia, and
Weirton, West Virginia/
Steubenville, Ohio, areas where Giant Eagle has a much smaller presence and the SuperValu-supplied stores are virtually nonexistent, though in all of these cases, Walmart remains a major competitor, with
Aldi and
IGA affiliate Reisbeck’s Food Market. Kroger entered the
San Antonio, Texas, market in 1980 but pulled out in mid-1993. On June 15, 1993, the company announced the closure of its 15 area stores. From 1984 to 1986, Kroger exited the Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Akron, and St. Louis markets. The company cited that higher wages for union employees made it unable to compete. The chain closed several stores around
Flint, Michigan, in 1981, which were converted by local businessman Al Kessel to a new chain called
Kessel Food Markets. Kroger bought most of these stores back in 1999 and began reverting them. Several other Michigan stores were sold to another Flint-based chain,
Hamady Brothers, in 1980. The Hamady acquisition was short-lived. In 1982, Kroger sold the 65-store Market Basket chain it had operated for several years in southern California. The stores were reverted to the
Boys Markets branding, after acquiring the chain. Boys Markets was acquired by the
Yucaipa Companies in 1989. When Yucaipa acquired
Ralphs, the Boys brand disappeared. In 1983, The Kroger Company acquired
Dillon Companies grocery chain in Kansas along with its subsidiaries (
King Soopers,
City Market,
Fry's and
Gerbes) and the convenience store chain
Kwik Shop.
David Dillon, a fourth-generation descendant of J. S. Dillon, the founder of Dillon Companies, became the CEO of Kroger. In northeastern Ohio, Kroger had a plant in
Solon, Ohio, until the mid-1980s. When that plant shut down, Kroger closed its northeastern Ohio stores in the Cleveland,
Akron, and
Youngstown areas. Some of those former Kroger stores were taken over by stores like Acme Fresh Markets,
Giant Eagle, and
Heinens. Kroger opened and had about 50 stores in
St. Louis until it left the market in 1986, saying that its stores were unprofitable. Most of its stores were bought by
National,
Schnucks, and
Shop 'n Save. Most of the remaining Kroger stores in eastern Missouri and west-central Illinois became a western extension of the Central Division (headquartered in
Indianapolis). Kroger also experienced a similar withdrawal from
Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1989. Many of these stores were sold to the local grocery chain
Red Food, which was in turn bought by
BI-LO in 1994. Today, Chattanooga is the only metropolitan market in Tennessee in which Kroger does not operate with the nearest location being
Dalton, Georgia, with 2 stores (Walnut Avenue and Cleveland Highway).
1990s , opened in 1997 (2014) (Store #035-00536) In the 1990s, Kroger acquired Great Scott (Detroit),
Pay Less Food Markets,
Owen's Market,
JayC Food Stores, and
Hilander Foods. Additionally, the Houston market was strengthened when Kroger bought several stores from
AppleTree Markets, which were former Safeway stores in early 1994. In 1998, Kroger merged with the then fifth-largest grocery company
Fred Meyer, along with its subsidiaries,
Ralphs,
QFC, and
Smith's. In the late 1990s, it acquired many stores from
A&P as it exited many markets in the South. Kroger also swapped all ten of its
Greensboro, North Carolina-area stores in 1999 to
Matthews, North Carolina-based
Harris Teeter, for 11 of that company's stores in central and western Virginia. Kroger in turn would acquire Harris Teeter 15 years later.
2000s Long the dominant grocer in western Virginia, Kroger entered the
Richmond, Virginia, market in 2000, where it competes against market leaders
Martin's (including former Ukrop's stores) and
Food Lion. Kroger entered the market by purchasing
Hannaford stores that either already existed or were being built in Richmond. Hannaford purchases also included the competitive
Hampton Roads market, where it now competes with
Farm Fresh, Harris Teeter (which is owned by Kroger), and Food Lion. The Hannaford locations in these markets were purchased from
Delhaize by Kroger as a condition of Delhaize's 2000 acquisition of the Hannaford chain, which had previously competed against Food Lion, also owned by Delhaize. Walmart Supercenters are also major competitors in both markets, and the chain briefly competed against
Winn-Dixie, which has now exited Virginia. In 2001, Kroger acquired
Baker's Supermarkets from Fleming Companies, Inc. Albertsons exited the San Antonio and Houston markets in early 2002, selling many of the Houston stores to Kroger. In 2004, Kroger bought most of the old Thriftway stores in
Cincinnati, Ohio, when
Winn-Dixie left the area. These stores were reopened as Kroger stores. In 2007, Kroger acquired
Scott's Food & Pharmacy from
SuperValu Inc., and in the same year, also acquired 20 former Michigan Farmer Jack locations from A&P when A&P exited the Michigan Market. in a
Dayton, Ohio Kroger In 2008, Kroger began a partnership with
Murray's Cheese of New York City. Murray's Cheese counters within Kroger stores sell various artisanal cheese from all parts of the world.
2010s On July 9, 2013, Kroger announced that it would acquire the 212 stores of Charlotte-based Harris Teeter in a deal valued at $2.5 billion and that it would assume $100 million in the company's outstanding debt. Harris Teeter's stores are in eight Southern states, with a major portion of them in its headquarters state of North Carolina. Doing so, Kroger acquired Harris Teeter's click-and-collect program, which allows online ordering of groceries. Some industry experts saw this as a competitive move against
online grocers such as
AmazonFresh. The Harris Teeter acquisition marked Kroger's return to the Charlotte market after a 25-year absence. It also allowed Kroger to enter
Asheville for the first time. Charlotte and Asheville had been the only large markets in North Carolina where Kroger had no presence. In 2013, Kroger announced that the spouses of the company's unionized workers would no longer be covered by the company's insurance plan. The company cited the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as a prime reason for the move. The benefit cut affected roughly 11,000 workers in Indiana. The company announced in April 2013 that full-time employees would maintain their health insurance benefits. In 2013, Kroger was noted for carrying 17 out of 22
Red List species, four of which are in the top list of said species. On February 11, 2014, Kroger announced it would acquire YOU Technology, a digital coupon/identity company founded by Ajay Amlani, that pioneered the ability for shoppers to load digital coupons onto their loyalty card profiles. It also specialized in being one of the earliest companies to use AI/ML to personalize digital coupons to shoppers based on their past purchase history and intent to buy. The company enabled the loading of billions of coupons and singlehandedly drove the demise of paper coupons. It was later sold to by Kroger to Inmar with a $565 million price disclosed. On March 3, 2015, Kroger announced it would enter
Hawaii, having registered with the state as a new business in February 2015. Kroger was planning to expand to Hawaii in 2006 but withdrew after it had already submitted registration. Kroger, which is in the process of looking for locations to open its first store, will face competition from Honolulu-based rivals
Foodland and
Times; major retailers Safeway, Walmart, and
Costco; Japanese-owned Don Quixote; and Department of Defense-owned DeCA Commissaries. On May 1, 2015, Kroger announced the acquisition of the seven-store Hiller's Market chain in Southeast Michigan, and that it would operate all but one of those stores under the Kroger banner. In June 2015, Kroger eliminated the Harris Teeter brand from the crowded Nashville, Tennessee, market, where its growth had been stunted by aggressive competition since it entered with six stores in the early 2000s. Kroger has traditionally had a market-leading presence in Nashville and initially promised to keep the five remaining Harris Teeter stores open when it acquired the chain, but the market "did not support Harris Teeter's future business plans". Two Harris Teeter stores were closed outright, and three closed temporarily while being converted to the Kroger brand (one of these would undergo a major remodeling and replace a neighboring Kroger store). On November 11, 2015, Kroger and
Roundy's announced a definitive merger, bringing Roundy's chain's 166 primarily Wisconsin-based chains under Kroger ownership. The merger is valued at $800 million, including debt. The acquisition, which brought Kroger back to Wisconsin after a 43-year absence, will retain the Roundy's, Pick 'n Save, Mariano's, Metro Market and Copps names, along with its Milwaukee operations. (Within a year-and-a-half, however, Kroger had rebranded all Copps locations to the Pick 'n Save banner.) In April 2016, Kroger announced that it had made a "meaningful investment" in the
Boulder, Colorado-based
Lucky's Market, an organic foods supermarket chain that operated 17 stores in 13 states throughout the Midwest and Southeast United States. In February 2017, Kroger withstood large community protests after announcing the closing of two smaller-sized Louisville-area stores. Despite high store volumes and high population densities, the Old Louisville (lease expiration) and Southland Terrace stores closed. On February 7, 2017, it was announced that Kroger Co. had purchased Murray's Cheese. , Kroger is no longer offering a discount to senior citizens 59 and up. On May 1, 2017, Kroger, along with the
University of Kentucky and
UK Athletics, sports and campus marketing partner JMI Sports, announced a 12-year, $1.85 million per year campus marketing agreement. Included in the agreement is the
naming rights to Commonwealth Stadium, the university's
football stadium, which will be renamed
Kroger Field. This agreement makes the University of Kentucky the first school in the
Southeastern Conference to enter into a corporate partnership for the naming rights to their football stadium. On May 10, 2017, Kroger opened its first convenience store in
Blacklick, Ohio, labeled "Fresh Eats MKT". The new
prototype stores will have about of space, and will be very similar to the
Walmart Neighborhood Market project, as these stores only sell food. These stores have a
Starbucks, and a Kroger Pharmacy. On June 1, 2017, Kroger opened their second Fresh Eats. Kroger is also going to convert some
Turkey Hill stores into the concept store. The
CFO, Mike Schlotman, has called these stores a "small test." Local reaction to this new concept has been positive. The concept was discontinued in March 2020. In February 2018, Kroger announced that it will be selling its 762 convenience stores to
EG Group, a British service station operator, for $2.15 billion. They operate under the
Turkey Hill, ''Loaf 'N Jug
, Kwik Shop
, Tom Thumb
and Quik Stop'' banners. Kroger will retain just over 20 convenience stores. Kroger's supermarket fuel centers are not included in the sale. The sale was closed on April 20, 2018. On April 10, 2018, Kroger announced plans to hire an estimated 11,000 new employees. An estimated 2,000 managerial positions will be filled by the new hires. With the addition of these new hires, the total number of people employed by the company is close to half a million. On May 17, 2018, Kroger announced a partnership with
Ocado, a UK-based online supermarket. The partnership is designed to improve Kroger's ecommerce program, including online ordering, automated fulfillment, and home delivery via the construction of 20 new, automated fulfillment centers. The first of these fulfillment centers, located in
Monroe, Ohio, opened in April 2021. , eight total fulfillment center locations have been constructed and opened, with additional locations in
Groveland, Florida,
Forest Park, Georgia,
Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin,
Dallas, Texas,
Romulus, Michigan,
Aurora, Colorado, and
Frederick, Maryland. Each fulfillment center also operate in conjunction with several "spoke" facilities, which assist to further extend the capable range of delivery. , the latest "spoke" facility to be opened is located in
Johnstown, Colorado. Kroger has taken advantage of its investment in online shopping capability to grow rapidly during the pandemic. In 2020, Kroger's online sales grew by 116%, to over $10B annually. On May 24, 2018, Kroger announced they were acquiring
Home Chef for $200 million with an additional $500 million in incentives if certain targets are met by Home Chef. On June 13, 2018, Kroger Mid-Atlantic announced the Kroger branding will be leaving the Raleigh-Durham area by eliminating all 14 Kroger-branded stores, eight of which will transition to Harris Teeter (also owned by Kroger). One will become a Crunch Fitness and another will become a Food Lion. The fate for the remaining four stores is unclear. In July 2018, Kroger officials backed off a
Net 90 payment plan to the produce industry. In October 2018, Kroger announced online wine delivery to 14 states in partnership with DRINKS. Customers can select assorted wines in 6-bottle or 12-bottle packs. On December 4, 2018, Kroger announced a deal to sell food inside drugstore
Walgreens. Kroger Express will offer meal kits and other meal solutions. In the light of increased self-checkout usage via kiosk or smartphone app in 2019, Kroger is gradually shifting towards creating more self-checkout smartphone apps and lanes than cashier lanes. The company has been investing millions of dollars, in replacing many cashier stations with automation by 2023. As many other supermarkets (such as
Walmart and
Target) are also shifting towards automation, and displacing cashiers in the near future. In March 2019, Kroger announced it was expanding its service with robotics company
Nuro to Houston, Texas, with Nuro's autonomous Priuses. In August 2019, Kroger began charging customers between $0.50 and $3.50 for receiving cash back while making purchases with debit cards. The new fees were first test marketed in March at Kansas area
Dillons stores, a Kroger-owned supermarket chain, before the new fees were rolled out to other Kroger-owned supermarket banners in the rest of the nation. In September 2019, Kroger announced a partnership with the Plant Based Food Association (PFBA) to test a plant-based meat retail concept in 60 stores in Denver, and parts of Indiana and Illinois. In November 2019, Kroger unveiled an updated logo for their stores and company, with the '"Fresh For Everyone" tagline and the "Krojis". The company also announced an expansion of its online wine delivery program into Arizona. In partnership with DRINKS, the service is now available in 19 states plus Washington D.C. In December 2019, Kroger was named the second-largest grocer in the nation with $110 billion in 2016 sales. The same month,
USA Today listed Kroger—and its brands—as the top supermarket (based on Google searches, Yelp data, and 24/7 Tempo's research) in Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.
2020s According to a
PBS NewsHour February 13, 2021 broadcast, during the pandemic, Kroger provided their
essential workers with a hazard pay, which the company called "hero pay." The hero pay consisted of a raise of US$2 an hour from the end of March 2020 until May 2020, when the hero pay ended. In January 2021, the Long Beach City Council in California passed an ordinance making it mandatory for some large grocery stores—like Kroger—to provide their essential workers with a hazard pay increase of US$4 an hour "effective immediately for 120 days". The ordinance affected companies with "more than 300 workers nationwide and more than 15 employees per store". Kroger closed two Seattle QFC stores in April 2021 blaming that City's Covid Related Hazard Pay Law. The
United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), with members whose jobs had been terminated, viewed the closures as a "warning to other cities considering hazard pay mandates". Kroger's quarterly revenues as reported by November 20, 2020, were US$29.72 billion, and the corporation's per-share earnings and dividends grew at a rapid rate in 2020. Its dividend increase was about 14% annually. Starting in early 2020, Berkshire Hathaway began buying shares of Kroger, and by August 2021 became a top ten shareholder. In July 2021, a wrongful-death lawsuit was filed against Kroger by the family of worker Evan Seyfried. Seyfried committed suicide after allegedly enduring abuse at the Kroger location in Milford, Ohio, where he had worked for 19 years. According to the lawsuit, Seyfried was bullied for wearing a mask in the early days of the pandemic and taunted for his political views. Also on the receiving end of alleged workplace sabotage, one of Seyfried's co-workers called the company's ethics helpline and reported that she and Seyfried were being bullied. However, no action was taken. In December 2021, Kroger Co. announced the elimination of some COVID-19 benefits for unvaccinated employees. In 2021, the company was reported to have been breached by a third-party hack which compromised the pharmacy records of Kroger owned Fred Meyer and QFC stores' customers. In April 2021, Kroger sold what were previously Fred Meyer properties located in Shoreline, Puyallup and Tacoma to Benderson Development Company for a combined $98.7 million. In May 2021, Benderson Development bought an additional twenty-eight Fred Meyer properties (as part of a "sale-leaseback investment") for an estimated $500 million as part of a sale totaling 380 acres and 4.5 million square feet of retail space. On August 2, 2021, Kroger announced that it had elected
Elaine Chao to its board of directors. Chao was formerly
Secretary of Labor under President
George W. Bush and
Secretary of Transportation under President
Donald Trump. The news was met with backlash from a small number of Kroger customers on Twitter, with calls for a boycott trending nationally due to her ties to the Trump administration and to her husband,
Mitch McConnell. On September 23, 2021,
a mass shooting occurred at a Kroger location in
Collierville, Tennessee. One person was killed and 13 others were injured before the gunman, identified as 29-year-old Uk Thang, committed suicide by gunshot. Thang was working at the store as a third-party vendor. In the aftermath of the shooting, Kroger offered counseling services for its employees and closed down the store until November 10. In September 2021, Kroger tweaked its logo to add the "Fresh Cart" symbol. The symbol is an abstract
shopping cart with the basket represented as
citrus slices. In October 2021, Kroger announced an expansion into South Florida with its online delivery service, Kroger Delivery. To do this, Kroger will build two new automated fulfilment centers assisted and facilitated by the UK-based technology company
Ocado Group. Kroger Delivery is also set to launch in the Northeast of the US and expand its operations in California, to be followed by sites in Texas, Georgia, Maryland, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and North Carolina. The company launched its online delivery services in Central Florida earlier in 2021. On April 5, 2022, Kroger launched Kroger Restaurant Supply in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, a new business distributing food and related supplies to restaurants, bakeries, and catering companies. For Kroger, this move into foodservice distribution represents an expansion beyond its core retail grocery operations. On October 14, 2022, Kroger announced a
merger with Albertsons in a deal worth $24.6billion, combining both companies into one entity but divesting some stores to
C&S Wholesale Grocers to secure regulatory approval. However, in January 2024, Washington state sued to block the proposed $25 billion merger between Kroger and
Albertsons, warning that if approved it could raise prices and harm consumers. In February 2024, Colorado Attorney General
Phil Weiser also filed a lawsuit, saying consumers told him they feared it "would lead to stores closing, higher prices, fewer jobs, worse customer service, and less resilient supply chains." In February 2024, the FTC sued to block the acquisition stating that the deal would negatively impact consumer prices and workers' wages. In March 2024, Kroger announced the closure of facilities servicing the Miami, San Antonio, and Austin regions, marking the end of their delivery service in those regions. On July 9, 2024, Kroger released the complete list of 579 stores that would be divested in order to satisfy anti-trust concerns from the Federal Trade Commission. Within the list of stores being proposed for divestment, the
Dallas market would be the most affected, with 26 Albertsons locations being sold which includes the
Tom Thumb chain and six
Market Street locations. Following the announcement, the
United Food and Commercial Workers made a statement saying that they will continue to oppose the merger and that Kroger's announcement "changes nothing". In December, 2024, a U.S. district judge ruled against the proposed merger, stating that it would be bad for consumers and employees. In November 2025, Kroger announced it would be closing distribution facilities in
Groveland, Florida,
Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and
Frederick, Maryland. As a result of the closures, Kroger is ending its delivery service in Florida and almost entirely leaving the state, while expanding its partnerships with
Instacart,
DoorDash, and
Uber in other locations. In December 2025, Kroger announced plans to establish a new $391 million distribution center in
Franklin, Simpson County, Kentucky, a project that will create approximately 430 new full-time jobs. == Business trends ==