Everybody credits Walmart with inventing the supercenter.
The giant store where you buy milk, motor oil, a lamp, and a prescription in one trip. It changed American shopping forever.
Except a family in Michigan was already doing it. Decades earlier.
They had a grocery store. They put a department store inside it. Nobody thought this was a good idea, including, for a while, the banks.
It worked so well that the model eventually took over the entire country, and the family that invented it is still running the same stores, still privately held, still not on a stock exchange.
Gif by MeijerStores on Giphy
The interesting part is not that they were first. It is why the combination works at all, because on paper it should not.
Groceries and general merchandise are two completely different businesses with opposite economics. Putting them under one roof should create a mess.