9 Meijer Perks Michiganders Take for Granted Until They Move Away

Grand Rapids gave the world a grocery store that doubles as a childhood memory.

Michiganders grow up riding the penny pony at Meijer, then spend adulthood pushing a cart past it every Saturday.

It takes a move to Tennessee or Florida to notice what the rest of the country shops without.

Sandy the Pony

Meijer has parked a penny pony by the door since the first Thrifty Acres opened near Grand Rapids on June 5, 1962.

The rides cost a dime that morning. But co-founder Fred Meijer cut the price to one cent on the spot, and Sandy has cost a penny ever since.

Now the penny itself is being phased out of circulation, and Meijer says Sandy stays anyway.

Three generations of Michigan kids have ridden that horse, and the fourth is climbing on now.

Michiganders who move away learn fast that other chains greet kids with a gumball machine and a shrug.

Shop & Scan

Shop & Scan turns your phone into the register at Meijer.

Scan each item as it goes in the cart, bag as you go, and skip the checkout line at the end.

You settle up at a kiosk on the way out, phone in one hand, keys in the other.

The app applies your digital coupons along the way, so the running total on your screen is what you pay.

Michiganders treat the feature like standard equipment.

Then they move somewhere that makes them unload the whole cart onto a belt again, and the Sunday shop takes twenty minutes longer.

mPerks Points

mPerks hands Meijer shoppers back a steady trickle of grocery money.

You earn 10 points for every dollar you spend, and each $100 in spending turns into a dollar off a future trip.

Prescriptions earn bonus points too, so the pharmacy run helps feed your grocery budget.

Stack personalized digital coupons on top, and a routine week of shopping keeps shaving small amounts off your bill.

Plenty of chains elsewhere still make you clip paper to match it.

10 for $10 Deals

Meijer’s 10 for $10 sale comes back around every few weeks, and Michiganders plan pantry restocks around it.

Mix and match anything in the sale: Ten items, ten dollars, and the eleventh item free.

Canned tomatoes, pasta, frozen vegetables, dish soap. The list runs deep on staples.

You don’t need ten of the same thing, which is what makes the deal work for a normal household instead of a bunker.

Move away, and the same restock rings up at whatever the new store’s shelf tags say that week.

Purple Cow Ice Cream

Purple Cow is Meijer's own ice cream, and Michigan kids can spot the label from across the freezer aisle.

The name goes back decades at Meijer, and the price still undercuts the national brands.

Scooperman, the blue-and-yellow flavor with the cape on the carton, has fueled birthday parties from Traverse City to Monroe.

Limited-edition flavors rotate through the freezer aisle, and the good ones disappear fast.

Try asking for Purple Cow in Georgia.

Blank stares, every time.

Free Prescriptions

Meijer's pharmacy fills select antibiotics and prenatal vitamins free, no insurance required.

The program has saved customers more than $500 million since it began.

The covered list has shrunk over the years, so ask the pharmacy counter what still qualifies before you assume.

Even trimmed, a free antibiotic for a sick kid at 8 p.m. is the kind of perk you only notice once it's gone.

Former Michiganders find out the hard way that the new state's pharmacy charges full price for amoxicillin.

Meijer Brand Basics

The Meijer brand label covers milk, bread, trash bags, garden soil, dog food, and nearly everything between.

Store-brand pricing across a supercenter's range means one cart handles the whole errand list.

Michigan households build entire grocery budgets around that blue-and-white label without thinking of it as a strategy.

Snowbound Januaries taught those households which Meijer basics hold up, and the answer is nearly all of them.

After a move, the one-cart habit splits into three stops: Groceries here, hardware there, prescriptions across town.

Midnight Meijer Runs

For decades, Meijer never closed, and Michiganders built lives around that fact.

Third-shift workers shopped at 4 a.m.

College kids bought ramen at 2.

The pandemic ended the all-night era in 2020, and most stores now run 6 a.m. to midnight.

Even the trimmed hours beat the competition by a couple of hours on each end.

Grand Rapids radio hosts still float rumors of a 24-hour comeback every year or so, and Meijer hasn't bitten.

Former Michiganders still walk up to locked doors at 11:30 in their new state, holding a phone flashlight and their disbelief.

The Original Supercenter

Meijer invented the one-stop supercenter in 1962, decades before the format showed up on competitors' signs.

Groceries, clothes, hardware, a pharmacy, and a garden center under one roof was a Michigan idea first.

The company itself reaches back further.

Hendrik Meijer, a Greenville barber, started selling groceries during the Depression in 1934 and put his son Fred to work from the start.

Today the chain runs nearly 280 stores across six states, and about 130 of them sit in Michigan.

Home base never moved either.

Meijer remains family-owned and headquartered in Walker, right outside Grand Rapids, sixty-plus years in.