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Charles Theodore Von der Ahe
- Charles Theodore Von der Ahe1882 - 1973
Facts and Events
Biography
Charles Theodore Von der Ahe (August 29, 1882 – June 4, 1973) was an American businessman, best known as an early innovator in the grocery business in Southern California, and founder of Vons supermarket chain in Southern California along with his two sons, Wilfred and Theodore.
Family
Von der Ahe's parents were Charles Rudolph Peter Von der Ahe (1858 – 1918) and Caroline Sophie Larsen (1858 – 1917).
Von der Ahe's family moved from Denmark to the United States in 1889, and they eventually settled in Illinois. Even though Charles was born in Denmark, the Von der Ahe family was of German extraction, having moved to Denmark one or two generations earlier.
Von der Ahe was married to Linda Augusta Luer (1887 – 1973, née Linda Luer) in 1907. The Von der Ahes had eight children, with five boys and three girls: Theodore (Ted), Wilfred (Wil), Karl, Walter, Virginia, Clyde, Muriel, and Dorothy.
Vons History
Von der Ahe began his career as a delivery boy for a meat shop and grocery store in Illinois. Then, he headed out west to seek his fortune. He arrived in Los Angeles, and in 1906 with a $1200 investment, he opened Von's Groceteria, a 20-foot store at the corner of 7th and Figueroa streets. Von der Ahe pioneered a system of cash and carry (as opposed to charge and deliver). He also pioneered the combination store concept, through his idea of leasing open storefronts to produce vendors and butchers, innovation which would eventually lead to the development of the first supermarket in California. His business grew quickly, and he had expanded to 87 stores by 1928, but he sold the business to McMarr Stores in 1929, in anticipation of the stock market crash, and retired from the business.
A few years later, Von der Ahe's sons Wilfred and Theodore convinced him to provide financial backing, and the Von der Ahes opened the Vons Grocery Company in 1932. In 1948, Vons opened a pioneering store which offered self-service, pre-packaged produce, meat, and deli items, which has been called by some the first supermarket and established Vons and the Von der Ahes as leaders in the industry. Many features of supermarkets today, such as volume buying, the big store, the open refrigerated case, centralized meat-cutting, and the cent-off food coupon stem from the early days of competition between Vons and Ralphs. By 1958, Vons was the third-largest grocery chain in greater Los Angeles. When the company went public, Vons had annual sales of $100 million and 28 stores. In 1960 it acquired the sixth-largest competitor Shopping Bag Food Stores, a merger that was challenged by the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust grounds. In 1966 the United States Supreme Court ruled against Vons in United States v. Von's Grocery Co. (384 U.S. 270), forcing a re-divestiture of the stores. The Von der Ahe family sold the chain to Household Finance Corporation in 1969. In 1970, Vons had 128 stores, making it the 2nd largest supermarket chain in southern California behind Safeway. By the end of 2011, Vons had 325 stores across Southern California and Nevada.
Von der Ahe was President and Chairman of Vons.
Von der Ahe was active in civic and charitable causes, and was a principal donor for the construction of the Charles Von der Ahe Library at Loyola Marymount, which opened in 1959
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Charles Theodore Von der Ahe (August 29, 1882 – June 4, 1973) was a Danish-American businessman, best known as an early innovator in the grocery business in Southern California, and founder of Vons supermarket chain in Southern California along with his two sons, Wilfred and Theodore.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Charles T. Von Der Ahe, in Find A Grave: Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Los Angeles County, California
Find A Grave Memorial# 5832475, Oct 08, 2001.
Charles T. Von Der Ahe
Copenhagen-born founder of Von's grocery/supermarket company.
Birth: Aug. 29, 1882, Copenhagen
Death: Jun. 4, 1973, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California
Burial: Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Los Angeles County, California, USA
Plot: St. Ann's section
- Hunt, Rockwell Dennis, and Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez. California and Californians. (Chicago [Illinois]: Lewis Pub. Co., 1932)
Vol. 3.
Charles Von der Aheis a California merchant and business man whose career has given a new meaning to the much abused word ?service.? It was service comprising hard work that not only laid the foundation but has been the dominating element in his entire career. Mr. Von der Ahe began life with a minimum of capital and a superabundant ambition, and before he was forty-five years of age he built up an organization known as Vons Incorporated, comprising a chain of more than eighty retail grocery stores.
Mr. Von der Ahe was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, August 29, 1883. His parents were Rudolph Peter and Caroline (Larsen) Von der Ahe. His father was a glass blower by trade. Charles Von der Ahe had his first school advantages in his native country. He was seven years of age when, in 1890, his parents came to the United States, landing at New York. For a time they lived at Colorado Springs, Colorado, later in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and his father also worked at his trade in the great glass factory at Alton, Illinois. The parents in 1921 moved to California and lived in Los Angeles until their death.
In the meantime Charles Von der Ahe had received his education and had experimented with various lines of work, eventually determining that his forte was in the mercantile field. In 1906, when he was twenty-three years of age, he arrived at Los Angeles. Not long afterward people living in the community of Fifty-fifth and Central Avenue and the outlying districts came to know something of this young man, who was driving a butcher wagon and selling meat at retail. Wherever he went he impressed by his thoroughly business like manner, his uniform courtesy, his unwavering honesty and his emphasis upon good service at reasonable charges. A number of years went into his apprenticeship and laying the ground work of experience. He was doing work that constituted a preparation for the future, but had accumulated no large volume of credit or actual capital when, in 1914, he made his independent start in the grocery business. His first store was located at South Figueroa and West Seventh streets, on the site now occupied by the Barker Brothers establishment. It was an independent venture under his own name, and he knew that only by starting at the beginning could he hope to grow, and he knew also that service would have to be the foundation on which to build. Even then he had in mind some general plan of building up a chain of stores. After two years he sold out his establishment and then went into the real estate business. He was too active and energetic to sit in an office waiting for customers to come to him, and after having been in business six months without making a single deal, he finally walked out and left the office, to take up something more in line with his previous experience.
His next departure was buying rundown grocery stores, building them up and selling out at a profit. His success in this made him known as a store speculator, and he was frequently called upon by wholesalers to look over certain stocks of grocers who had become dilatory in paying their accounts. Mr. Von der Ahe could step into a store and in a few moments accurately appraise the business, telling almost to exact dollars and cents how much stock was on the shelves and in the back room, and how much business was being done. For two years most of his time was taken up with this kind of work.
In the meantime, between 1914 and 1915, he started store No. 1, the first of the chain of stores that subsequently became Von's Incorporated. It was located at West Forty-eight Street and Vermont Avenue and is still in operation. From that small store, located on the outskirts of Los Angeles, his business expanded until in fifteen years Von's Incorporated operated over eighty stores, in twenty cities, fifty-three of them in Los Angeles residential and home communities. Other stores were scattered over a district from the mountains to the sea and as far east as Whittier. Mr. Von der Ahe developed a real genius in building up a system of merchandising, handling the finest of goods through attractive stores, and having started his career by handling goods over the counter he knew every detail of the work and had the gift of faculty of training others, so that the staff of employees of Von's Incorporated, from clerks to branch managers, were permeated with the spirit and enthusiasm of the head of the business. Von's stores had a distinctive character, and though not only clean, attractive, filled with tempting merchandise, there was something in the spirit of the personnel which caused customers to enjoy the experience of trading, whether their purchase was small or large, and consequently the volume of business grew steadily in the face of increasing competition.
About 1928, when Mr. Von der Ahe had a chain of eighty-seven stores in operation, he put this large ground into the still greater chain of the Mac Marr Stores, which embraced about 1500 individual stores located up and down the entire coast from San Diego to the Canadian boundary and many in the inter mountain places in Nevada, Utah and Montana. Mr. Von der Ahe was vice president of the Mac Marr Limited until September 1, 1930, when he severed his connection to give all his attention to his private interests. The general offices of the Mac Marr Limited are located in the Von Office Building on Central Avenue at Los Angeles.
Mr. Von der Ahe is a director of the Seaboard National Bank of Los Angeles, a member of the Breakfast Club, California Club, Commercial Club, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Merchants and Manufacturers Association, California. Country Club, Douvall Beach Club, and Los Angeles Lodge No. 99, B. P. O. Elks. He is a Lutheran. A hard worker all his life, he has appreciated the value of social contacts, is a popular member of the various organizations mentioned, and is also a patron of clean outdoor sport, and enjoys such pastimes as golf, bridge, and bowling.
While Mr. Von der Ahe was president and general manager of Von's Incorporated the vice president of that business was his wife, herself a very capable business woman, whose judgment has had much to do with his success. Mrs. Von der Ahe before her marriage was Miss Linda Luer of Los Angeles. She was born and educated in that city. Her father, A. O. Luer, is an early resident of Southern California and head of the Luer Packing Company, a well known wholesale meat packing house of Los Angeles. Mr. and Mrs. Von der Ahe were married January 22, 1907. Mrs. Von der Ahe is a member of the Catholic Woman's Club of Los Angeles. To their marriage were born eight children, five [p.280] sons and three daughters, all natives of Los Angeles. The names of these sons and daughters are Theodore, Wilfred, Carl, Walter, Virginia, Clyde, Muriel and Dorothy. Mr. Von der Ahe and family reside at 5250 West Second Street.
- ↑ Charles Von der Ahe, in Vons: Our Story
2014.
Vons, the Start-Up
Downtown Los Angeles was essentially a small town when Charles Von der Ahe opened his 20-foot wide Groceteria on the corner of 7th and Figueroa in 1906 with $1,200 in savings. It was a neighborhood store that catered to the needs of local families, where Von der Ahe pioneered "cash and carry" as an alternative to "charge and delivery." His formula proved so successful that by 1928 Vons had expanded to 87 stores. Charles Von der Ahe sold his chain the following year, but four years later, despite the Depression, two of his sons, Ted and Will re-started Vons. Its growth and innovation over the next 70 years was non-stop. In 1948 the brothers opened their most ambitious store at the corner of Santa Barbara and Crenshaw. Thanks to the introduction of pre-packaged perishables, they were able to offer some of the first self-service produce, meat and deli departments. This milestone marked the advent of the first true supermarkets as we know them today. The most explosive growth occurred during the 1970's when Vons branched out to 159 stores with 16,000 employees, making it firmly the #1 grocery retailer in Southern California. In 1996, Safeway Inc. acquired a 35% stake in Vons, and the two companies fully merged in 1997. Vons stretches from San Diego to Fresno, from Clark County, Nevada to the Pacific. Its 273 stores serve millions of Southern Californians and Nevadans.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Charles Theodore Von Der Ahe, in Geni.com
August 26, 2014.
Charles Theodore Von Der Ahe
Birthdate: August 29, 1882
Birthplace: Copenhagen, Denmark
Death: Died June 4, 1973 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, United States
Place of Burial: Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Los Angeles County, California, United States
Immediate Family:
Son of Charles Rudolph Von Der Ahe and Caroline Sophie Larsen
Husband of Linda Augusta Von der Ahe
Father of Wilfred Luer Von der Ahe; Theodore Albert Von der Ahe; Karl Von Der Ahe; Walter Rudolph Von der Ahe; virginia bolstad and 9 others
Brother of George Valdemar Von Der Ahe; Louis Christian Von Der Ahe; Rudolph Edmond Von Der Ahe; Emil Hugo Von Der Ahe; Caroline Von Der Ahe and 2 others
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