Kroger Flips Its Logo, Uniting Banners and Emphasizing Fresh

Kroger Co. this week has unveiled a new visual element to its corporate branding effort, flipping its signature wordmark “swoop” so as to resemble a grocery cart hauling fruit—and an icon for its varied store banners.

The tweak is intended to highlight an ongoing strategic initiative to emphasize the retailer’s leadership in fresh foods and symbolize what the company said was the “future of shopping.” The switch, which was introduced in social media channels late Wednesday, comes less than two years after Kroger made a major move to modernize its logo and adopt an overarching brand identity, including a contemporary redesign of the iconic swooping “K-G” logo that dates to 1939.

Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen—who in the runup to the 2019 rebrand sought to become “better at telling the customer our story,” has since made fresh food leadership and omnichannel central tenets of a corporate strategy introduced earlier this year.

The new icon, which Kroger is calling its “Fresh Cart,” does double duty by further uniting owned brands with different regional banner names under a single visual identifier. For example, its King Soopers, Fred Meyer and Ralphs chains are executing the icon in red color resembling their banner logo; the Kroger and QFC banners do so in blue.

In a Twitter post that introduced the new look, the company said flipping the swoop on the modernized logo was a “a nod to the future of shopping,” while a stylized segmented fruit inside represents a “commitment to fresh—not just in food but in everything we do.”

Cincinnati-based Kroger operates nearly 2,800 stores in 35 states. It is scheduled to report its financial results from the second quarter on Sept. 10.