What’s Missouri’s Top Grocery Chain? Hint – Began as Meat Masters

If you had to guess, what would you say is the top grocery store chain in Missouri? I tried to guess, but got it completely wrong. I'll give you a hint. It began its existence as "Meat Masters" and it doesn't have locations in around 75% of the Show Me State.

Get our free mobile app

Placer.ai has a ranking of the top grocery store chains in the Midwest. Artificial intelligence analyzing top places to get food? That's right. Here's what the robots say are the best grocery store chains in the Midwest.

AI says that the top grocery store chain in Missouri is Schnucks. Scrape Hero created a map of all the Schnucks locations and you'll see they're heavily-concentrated in the St. Louis area. They now have 71 locations in Missouri and a total of 114 nationwide with expansions now into 3 other states including many towns in Illinois.

The history of the Schnucks stores is interesting. The official website says it was started by Edwin Schnuck in 1939 when he started his own meat business in St. Louis. "Meat Masters" was his calling card at the beginning. They say Edwin's wife Anna was the next to open a store followed by their oldest son, but none of the stores worked together - at least at first. Now, they have over 100 locations in 4 states. The American dream.

The Placer.ai site says that Hy-Vee and Aldi are #2 and #3 in Missouri now. No surprise at all that Hy-Vee is #1 in Iowa without a close second.