Schoch Grocery Store

Schoch Grocery Store

Andrew Schoch built the Twin Cities’ first  supermarket in downtown St. Paul

Schoch’s Grocery, ca. 1932, looking along the south side of East Seventh St. between Wall (originally Rosabel) St. (at right) and Broadway St. (Minn. Hist. Soc.)

On the site of a gas station at East Seventh and Wall Sts. in downtown St. Paul there once stood a remarkable grocery store that was the first true supermarket in the Twin Cities.

Built beginning in the 1880s by a German immigrant named Andrew Schoch, the store at its peak stretched for an entire block along East Seventh St. between Rosabel (now Wall) and Broadway Sts. The store was known nationally and even internationally, shipping goods to as far away as the Philippines.

Schoch was one of many German immigrants who found success in St. Paul in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in 1850 in the Kingdom of Württemberg in what is today southern Germany, Schoch arrived in Minnesota in 1868 with his father. By 1871 he’d made his way to St. Paul, where he spent three years working for a grocer before buying the store and going into business for himself, with a cousin as his partner.

Andrew Schoch’s first grocery store in St. Paul, ca. 1880 (Minn. Hist. Soc.)

His first store occupied a simple wood-frame building at Seventh and Rosabel. It was one of nearly 100 grocery stores—most of them very small— in St. Paul at the time. 

As St. Paul began to boom in the 1880s, Schoch’s business prospered, soon becoming the largest grocery store in a city. To accommodate his growing business, Schoch in 1887 built a new, Gothic-tinged four-story building at the southwest corner of Seventh and Broadway Sts. It’s possible the building was designed by Augustus Gauger, a German-born St. Paul architect who had numerous clients from the city’s German community. 

Schoch’s Grocery Store, 1912, with Broadway St. at left and East Seventh St. at right (Minn. Hist. Soc.)

According to an excellent article by Susan B. Spellman at www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org, Schoch was a brilliant businessman who pioneered many features in his store that that would later become commonplace in supermarkets.

In effect, Schoch created a grocery superstore, offering a huge selection of goods, including fresh produce year-round. He also roasted and blended his own line of coffee and made sausages and pickles at the store. His customers ranged from some of St. Paul’s wealthiest families (James J. Hill’s among them) to those of more modest means looking for basic food at an affordable price. 

Schoch was a savvy marketer as well. He placed daily ads in the local newspapers, including the city’s German-language publications, of which there were seven at one time. He also offered regular food shows that highlighted new products.

Schoch Grocery delivery truck, ca. 1910 (Minn. Hist. Soc.)

Quick to adopt new technologies, Schoch was among first grocers in the region to install mechanical refrigeration in his store. He also embraced the internal combustion engine, building up a fleet of delivery trucks that by 1912 had replaced his old horse-drawn wagons.

Schoch suffered a blow in 1893 when fire raced through parts of the store, causing significant damage. He immediately rebuilt and enlarged the store with a two-story addition that incorporated several existing buildings along Seventh. The addition extended for an entire block to Rosabel St., where a corner tower put a nice exclamation point on the design. 

There was another damaging fire in 1910, after which Schoch installed a newly developed sprinkler system that drew water from a 12,000-gallon rooftop tank

By 1922, the store had $1.5 million in annual sales and employed 150 people. Trade publications such as Progressive Grocer hailed the store as a model of its kind, noting that its stock could supply “at least 100 small-town grocery stores.”

In 1923 Schoch, always on the lookout for new opportunities, made plans to build a large grocery store near the new Ford Motor Co. assembly plant in the Highland neighborhood. But the plant didn’t open until 1925, the same years Schoch died, and new store never materialized.

Schoch and his wife of 48 years, Rosalia, had 12 children, many of whom worked at the store. Like many of the city’s leading German businessmen, Schoch built a large home for his family on what is today Mounds Blvd. (formerly Hoffman Ave.) in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood (see my blog on “Dayton’s Bluff Mansions”). I’ve found no photos of the house (long gone), which probably dated to the 1880s. Schoch later built a garage for his delivery trucks on the same property.

After Schoch’s death in 1925, his family (led by one of his sons, Charles) continued to operate the store for many years.

Clerks taking orders at Schoch’s Grocery, ca. 1925

By the 1930s, as the first modern-style supermarkets appeared, the store went into a slow decline. The rush to the suburbs after World War II further eroded Schoch’s business, as fewer and fewer people came downtown to shop and more modern supermarkets opened. 

Schoch’s mighty store finally closed for good in 1956 after 82 years in business—a long run by any standard. The store buildings came down three years later as the way was being cleared for construction of I-94 and I-35E.