Kroger copies small business – and then steals their photos to promote it: ‘Boycott confirmed!’
Kroger has come under fire for stealing promotional photos from The Peach Truck, a family-owned business that delivers fresh Georgia peaches to people’s homes.
Stephen Rose, a Georgia native, has been selling peaches for 12 years after being disappointed with the quality of peaches in Nashville grocery stores.
Then two weeks ago, Kroger announced its own service to sell Georgia peaches from brightly colored trucks.
Amazingly, Rose discovered that Kroger – the largest supermarket operator in America with 2,700 stores in 25 states – had used images from his company’s Instagram after receiving a Google Alert.
One egregious example Rose mentioned was an image of one of his employees holding a box of peaches and standing in front of a company vehicle. The truck, peach boxes and even the employee’s shirt feature Kroger colors and logos.
“I was shocked at the image they used,” Rose said in one TikTok video that has been viewed almost a million times. ‘I recognize the person in the photo. That’s our team member Michael…who sold peaches for The Peach Truck.”
The Peach Truck posted the left image to his Instagram in 2021. There was an employee selling crates of peaches. Kroger is accused of taking that image and editing it to create its own brand name
“That’s the same image, they just edited the photo to change the branding,” Rose added.
Rose also claimed that Kroger stole another photo from one of The Peach Truck’s pit stops in 2020.
“Kroger, you are a billion-dollar, yes, billion-dollar company with a ‘b’ dollar business. Do you really need to rework our marketing along with our business model?”
The controversy comes after Kroger announced Thursday that it exceeded Wall Street’s sales and profit expectations, while also experiencing a 5.1 percent increase in customer visits to its stores.
Rose’s video received thousands of supportive comments, with people telling him to file a lawsuit or proclaiming they would stop shopping at Kroger altogether.
“Boycott of Kroger confirmed,” one person wrote.
Kroger responded to the backlash by removing the offending photos and apologizing to The Peach Truck.
‘We were ashamed when we heard this. You could say we have peach on our face! While these images were not approved to be shared as part of our marketing campaign, they should never have been created in the first place,” a Kroger spokesperson said in a statement from KPLC.
‘We have deleted the images from our system. We apologize to The Peach Truck and wish them nothing but success.”
“How do you find out what you did?” he said in a follow-up video. “It was an intentional copy of our brand, our model, the way we do things.”
Stephen and Jessica Rose, twelve years ago, when they started delivering fresh peaches
The company delivers to 25 states and customers have the option of having their peaches delivered directly to their home or picking them up locally from one of the bright orange trucks.
Employees are photographed in front of a company car during the 2022 peach season
Kroger will not do home delivery like The Peach Truck, but will stock stores in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia with 12-pound cases of Georgia peaches for $20 each.
All of Kroger’s Instagram posts related to the limited sales of peaches have been flooded with comments attacking the company for copyright infringement of The Peach Truck.
The Peach Truck, which Rose drives with his wife Jessica, has soared in popularity in recent years, with people across the country clamoring to get their hands on his peaches.
Rose’s company delivers to 25 states and customers have the option of having their peaches delivered directly to their home or picking them up locally from one of the bright orange trucks.