Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Pick n Pay founder, Raymond Ackerman, has passed away after brief illness.
“This morning we have been greeted with a downhearted reality. Mr. Raymond Ackerman has passed away. We send our deepest love, strength and condolences to Wendy and the rest of the Ackerman family. We thank you for all you did for us. He battled with short illness,” A source tells Kossyderrickent.com.
Pick n Pay also highlighted how he would stop and ask customers walking home with shopping bags from rival stores why they had not shopped at Pick n Pay.
However, he was “about much more than shopping,” said Pick n Pay, describing him as “a compassionate employer and a committed philanthropist”.
He was “a man of the people,” the group noted, who was “never too busy or too proud to make time for others”.
Raymond Ackerman grew up in Cape Town, matriculated from the Diocesan College (Bishops), and earned a commerce degree from the University of Cape Town.
He started his career with the retail chain Ackerman’s, which was founded by his father Gus. In 1946, the chain was sold to Greatermans, which started the supermarket group Checkers. Ackerman became CEO of Checkers in 1959, but seven years later was fired following clashes with the Greatermans board.
In 1967, he bought four Cape Town stores named Pick n Pay with the help of investors. The chain quickly expanded, and by 1975, he opened South Africa’s first hypermarket – a supersized 22 000m² store – in Boksburg.
The entrepreneur, visionary and humanitarian died at the age of 92.
In an X [formely Twitter] post on Thursday morning, Pick n Pay – the company Ackerman founded in 1967 with his wife Wendy – expressed “profound sadness” regarding the death of “a visionary entrepreneur, humanitarian and a great South African”.
