Cleo Stater, 89; Began Supermarket Chain

Cleo Stater, who purchased the original Stater Bros. Market in Yucaipa with his twin brother for a $600 down payment during the Great Depression and saw the company grow into a Southland chain of 155 supermarkets, has died. He was 89.

Stater, who retired in 1968 when the brothers sold their interest in the company, had been in failing health and died Sunday at his home in Newport Beach.

“Cleo was the real ‘soul’ of our company and he came to visit me often here,” said Jack H. Brown, chairman of the board, president and chief executive of the Colton-based company.

In 1936, Stater was working in a small grocery store in Yucaipa in San Bernardino County, earning 10 cents an hour doing everything from stacking canned goods to cutting meat and working the cash register.

When the store’s owner told the 24-year-old Stater that he and his twin brother, Leo, could buy the market for $10,000, Stater, a high school dropout who had long dreamed of running his own business, jumped at the chance.

The only problem was coming up with the money. The owner agreed to let the brothers have the store for a $600 down payment and monthly payments of $300.

With the Staters using their cars as collateral to borrow half the down payment, Cleo Stater approached the only man he knew who could help them with the other half: The owner of a rival grocery store across the street.

“Every small town had a big shot who owns everything, and Yucaipa was no different,” Stater told the Inland Empire Business Press in 1998. “Everyone was afraid of him, but I went across the street and asked him for the money. He just looked at me and said: ‘If [the other market owner] is crazy enough to sell you his store, then I’m going to be crazy enough to give you the money.’ ”

Between 1936 and 1939, the Stater brothers opened four more stores in San Bernardino County.

During World War II, while Cleo and Leo Stater served as pilots in the Army Air Corps, their parents kept the markets running. A third brother, Lavoy, joined Cleo and Leo in the business after the war, and by the end of 1949 there were 12 Stater Bros. Markets.

Stater Bros. Markets became a public company in 1964 and in 1968 the brothers sold their interests in the company, which became a division of Petrolane Inc., a Long Beach energy company.

“The Stater brothers created what today in the industry is called EDLP, which means ‘every day low prices.’ They created that 65 years ago,” Brown said. “Their philosophy was to sell brand-name merchandise at the lowest possible price and have the most outstanding service meat department of any of their competition, and those principles really remain with us today.”

Leo Stater died in 1985 and Lavoy Stater died in 1988.

During his retirement, Cleo Stater pursued his passions for boating and flying and piloted his own Lear jet until he was 70. He attended the company’s annual anniversary dinners and sales and management meetings and continued to show up at ribbon-cutting ceremonies whenever the chain opened a new store.

Stater is survived by his wife, Elsie; a daughter, Virginia Foster of Newport Beach; a son, Stanley Stater of Temecula; and a grandson.