The Legend of the Great A&P Tea Co.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company is a New Jersey-based, and for the last thirty years, German-owned supermarket chain. As of today, according to their website, they operate 435 stores in six Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states (including a lone Washington, D.C. unit) under a number of different banners, including Super Fresh, Food Basics, The Food Emporium, Waldbaum’s, Pathmark and of course, A&P. The last couple of years have seen the company exit the Detroit and New Orleans markets, and after an 80-year presence there, the A&P banner is no longer to be found in Canada.

For many cities, the A&P story over the last several decades has been a sad one of retrenchment, and ultimately of disappearance. For those born in the last twenty years or so, unless they live in one of A&P’s current or recently vacated markets, chances are good they’ve only heard of A&P in passing - a brief mention in an American history class, perhaps, or a fond anecdote from an older relative.

It wasn’t always this way. As recently as the mid-1960’s, A&P was the largest retailer in America. Not just the largest supermarket chain – the largest retailer, period. Larger than Sears at the peak of its power. Larger than their nearest two competitors – Safeway and Kroger - combined. Responsible, to a great extent, for the very concept of the “chain store” itself. A part of daily life for Americans (and a fair amount of Canadians) from a multitude of communities, large and small.

The story of A&P begins in the mid-19th century, with two men, both named George, both natives of Maine, and both of whom eventually moved to New York to seek their fortunes. George Francis Gilman was born in Waterville, Maine, in 1826 to a prominent, wealthy family who owned a leather goods business. George Huntington Hartford, seven years younger than Gilman, was born in Augusta, to a farm family of far more modest means. Details on how the two men met are sketchy and somewhat contradictory in the various accounts I’ve read (not surprising given the event took place over 150 years ago, and the fact that stories like this tend to take on a mythical quality over time), but it is apparent that Hartford had worked for Gilman at a dry goods business some years prior to their arrival in New York - possibly in St. Louis. Hartford also lived and worked in Boston at one point as well.

By the 1850’s, Gilman had turned his sights from the family’s leather goods business to a new interest – the importing and brokerage of tea. Eventually, he asked Hartford to join him in the business, which consisted at first of a single delivery wagon. In 1859, their company was formally established as The Great American Tea Company. By this time, their roles were more or less set – Gilman was the financier and promoter. Hartford was the operator, though over time he would develop impressive skills as a promoter himself.

The first store was opened at 31 Vesey Street in New York City. The company’s early stores featured very ornate décor - vermilion red (sort of an orange-red) walls and gilt fixtures, oriental paintings and a plethora of ornamental gas lights. In 1869, Gilman and Hartford modified their company’s name in a tribute to the establishment of America’s first transcontinental railroad – the driving of the “golden spike” at Promontory Point, Utah, uniting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, east and west. Henceforth, the company would be known as “The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company”. The new name, of course, was also a not-so-subtle indicator of the company’s aspirations.

In its earliest days, A&P employed a very different marketing approach from “the most good food for the least money” philosophy upon which their fame and fortune would later be built. Prior to 1912, the company relied on all manner of premiums and giveaways to stimulate sales. Millions of “trade cards”, essentially postcards with Victorian scenes of angels, children, pets, flowers and other idyllic subjects on the face and A&P advertising on the reverse were given out. In those modest times, the cards did much to endear A&P to their customers. A high percentage of them were saved for decades, displayed for decorative use in homes. Even today, 100 or more years later, A&P trade cards turn up frequently in antique malls or on Ebay.

In 1878, Gilman retired to enjoy the New York social whirl, turning the operation of the business over to Hartford, while retaining his half ownership stake as a silent partner. By this time, the company was growing at a nice clip - according to the Progressive Grocer book “A&P, Past, Present and Future”, by 1876, A&P’s domain extended as far east as St. Paul and by 1881 as far south as Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia.

One development of the 1880’s that was no doubt unheralded (and probably little noticed) at the time would have a profound effect on A&P’s destiny well into the next century - the entry of two of George Hartford’s sons into the business. Only teenagers at the time, the sons – George Ludlum Hartford and John Augustine Hartford - would become two of the most influential figures of all time in the grocery business, and are still regarded as such today. For over sixty years they would helm A&P. The brothers were polar opposites by nearly every measure – George, born in 1864, was the guardian of A&P’s finances. Short and somewhat rumpled in appearance, he settled in a New Jersey suburb, where he lived conservatively, and enjoyed simple hobbies. He disliked taking vacations. John, born in 1872, headed up A&P’s operations and marketing. A true visionary, John’s initiatives were the life force behind A&P’s phenomenal growth in the first half of the 20th century. Tall, dashing and always impeccably tailored, as an adult he lived in grand style in tony Valhalla, New York, a member of the top social echelon. Despite their vast differences and frequent disagreements, the brothers had an abiding personal regard for each other and a strong respect for the different roles they fulfilled for A&P. As young men, to avoid confusion with the elder Mr. Hartford, the brothers were given the nicknames “Mr. George” and “Mr. John”. Long after their father’s passing, indeed for the rest of their own lives, they were referred to within A&P circles as such.

In 1901, A&P co-founder George F. Gilman passed away. It was a sad occurrence, to be sure, but Gilman’s death also had an exasperating side effect. It came to light soon afterward that no contracts or agreements of any kind had ever been drawn up at the time of the company’s founding 40 years earlier. As a result, George Huntington Hartford had no documentation to confirm his ownership stake in the company – and no way to defend it from claims against the estate of Gilman, who had no children. After a harrowing four-year court battle, Hartford’s rights were established, although a big chunk of Gilman’s estate (largely composed of A&P stock, of course) was awarded to his longtime female companion, according to the book "The Rise and Decline of The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company" By William I. Walsh. Hartford eventually bought her shares out, gaining complete control of A&P for his family.

By the dawn of the 20th century the younger Hartfords, George and John, were firmly in charge of the “Tea Company”, as insiders tended to call it, an empire that consisted of nearly 450 stores by 1912. Certainly A&P was prosperous, but John Hartford saw ominous warning signs for the future. The company’s growth had plateaued, despite the fact that A&P had begun to evolve into a true “grocery store” through the addition of hundreds of food items alongside their tea and coffee offerings. Prices and profit margins were high and the gaudy premiums were taking up half the shelf space in some locations, presumably leading Hartford to grow concerned that A&P was slowly becoming a pricey “boutique” operation, damaging its appeal to the average customer on a modest budget.

What John Hartford conceived as a solution to this dilemma – the “Economy Store”, as it was called, would not only launch A&P into the stratosphere and ultimately into legend, but also formed the basis of modern mass retailing – the “everyday low price” concept. Under Hartford’s new concept, the giveaways and premiums would become history. Profit margins would be cut to half the previous level. The fancy decor would be scrapped. The “vermilion red” walls would become simply red. (The color, not the band.)

Despite the initial objections of his brother and father, Hartford pressed on, wisely placating them by agreeing to move forward on a “test” basis, first with a single store in Jersey City, N.J., then on a larger basis with a few stores in one of the company’s New York City districts. The customer response was overwhelming, and within a couple of years, the Economy Store program was running full tilt. The traditional A&P stores began to close as the new Economy Stores opened. The Progressive Grocer book cites some impressive statistics – In 1915, 95 stores were opened in the Boston area alone. By February of that year, A&P had more than doubled in size to 938 stores, hitting the 2,000 store mark following year and 3,000 stores the year after that, 1917. Ten years later, in 1927, A&P could boast an astonishing 15,000 stores, all sporting A&P’s new slogan, “Where Economy Rules”, in a bar beneath the famous A&P “red circle” logo.

One particular group was less than thrilled with A&P’s new pricing policy. Some of A&P’s brand name suppliers, under pressure from other chains and thousands of independent grocers, were furious that the A&P Economy Stores were undercutting their suggested retail prices. Out of this morass came a famous lawsuit, filed by The Cream of Wheat Company, whose namesake product was heavily advertised nationally and was enormously popular in those days. Cream of Wheat had set a price of 14 cents per box at that time, which virtually all retailers, except A&P, honored. A&P cheerfully sold it for 12 cents a box, moving huge quantities. In 1915, Cream of Wheat filed suit against A&P to force them to stop the practice. A vigorous defense notwithstanding, A&P lost the case. The experience did much to convince A&P to invest heavily into manufacturing their own private label goods. By the end of the 1920’s, A&P was as formidable in food manufacturing as it was in retail, with factories strewn throughout the country, processing every type of food imaginable – even to the extent of operating their own fisheries and packing plants in Alaska.

In 1917, A&P’s other co-founder, George Huntington Hartford, passed away. Two years earlier, he had formed a trust that equally divided A&P ownership among his five children, but specifically placed all decision making authority with George and John.

Closing in on 14,000 stores in 1925, the task of running all aspects of the company from A&P’s headquarters was becoming unwieldy, to say the least. That year, the company shifted to a decentralized management structure which split their operating area into six regions, each with its own administrative offices and distribution centers.

When the depression hit in October 1929, A&P was in a far stronger position than most retailers. The “Economy Store” concept was a perfect fit for the times. Just two years previously, John Hartford had laid down the law to A&P’s command corps when he noticed that profit margins were starting to creep up again, past a level he considered acceptable. “The most good food for the least money” was the slogan, and would be the non-negotiable rule. Challenges would follow in the 1930’s, both from competition and from government, but for now A&P was standing strong.

The two photographs above, depicting a circa-1931 A&P store, are Property of the Holyoke Public Library History Room and Archive, and appear here by their kind courtesy. The Library’s collection, along that of several other Central and Western Massachusetts institutions can be viewed on the wonderful Digital Treasures website. Below is another A&P “Economy” storefront, from roughly the same time period, from a 1970 Progressive Grocer article. Last is a photo of a much earlier A&P store, typical of the ornate treatment (check out the sign lettering and the trellis work in the window) these stores received. Picture it in vermilion and gold. Thanks to Cynthia Closkey for the use of this great early photo. Her great-grandfather and his siblings, who operated the store, are featured in the photo.

Wards, America's Cheapest Cash House

The 1872 founding of Montgomery Ward & Co. was not just the beginning of a company, but of an entire industry – one that thrives today, years after Wards ceased to be a major part of it, or to exist at all. Mail order pioneer, Chicago legend, and nationwide department store fixture, Montgomery Ward is part of the American story – mention the name “Monkey Wards” and most folks will know what you’re talking about, whether their family shopped there or not.

The company’s founder, Aaron Montgomery Ward, was not a Midwesterner by birth. Born in Chatham, New Jersey in 1844, Ward and his family “headed west” when he was 8 years old, settling in Niles, Michigan. Later on, Ward moved some 30 miles away to St. Joseph, on the shores of Lake Michigan, where he took a job as a retail clerk. Within three years, Ward was running the store. In 1866, at age 22, Ward moved to Chicago, where he accepted a position with the new wholesale “dry goods” firm Field, Palmer and Leiter, forerunner to Marshall Field and Company. After two years with the Field firm and one with another company, Ward moved to St. Louis to work as a traveling salesman for another wholesaler, calling on stores via horse and buggy. Before long, Ward was back in Chicago, working for yet another wholesale firm, C.W. Pardridge Co.

Over the previous couple of years, while in the employ of others, Ward was diligently developing his own business idea, one based on his observations of the farmers who patronized the stores on his wholesale routes. In those days, rural customers generally had to contend with high prices on a very limited merchandise selection. Ward came up with an idea for a “mail order store”, where catalogs (which were initially just “merchandise price lists”) were mailed out to potential customers far and wide. Orders would be mailed to and shipped out of a centralized warehouse. By 1871, Ward had saved up enough money to give it a go, and began to stock up on merchandise to sell though his own catalog.

On October 8, 1871, the great Chicago fire struck, destroying major parts of the city, including countless homes and businesses. While Ward’s employer’s (the Pardridge firm) business escaped unscathed, the stock of merchandise Ward had put together for his own fledgling business was destroyed. “Like the rest of the city”, as Ward’s 1972 100th anniversary publication put it, “Ward dusted himself off and went back to work”. By the following August, two of Ward’s fellow Pardridge employees had joined him, and with $1600 in hand Ward purchased new goods, rented an office on North Clark Street and issued his first one-page price list.

The rise of Montgomery Ward & Co. coincided with that of the National Grange of Husbandry, an organization dedicated to advancing the interests of the farmer. Known popularly as “the Grange”, local chapters were set up in rural areas far and near. Starting as basically a social organization, the Granges quickly gained power and political influence in their communities. Wisely, Ward closely aligned his company with the Granges, sending out price lists to each Grange Hall and encouraging members to pool their orders to save on shipping costs. For decades, even after the Granges’ influence had receded, Montgomery Ward was thought of by many as “The Grange Supply House”.

Ward received an unlikely boost from what could have been a disastrous event in the young company’s life. On November 8, 1873, the Chicago Tribune published a blistering editorial about the company entitled “Grangers beware. Don’t Patronize Montgomery Ward & Co. – They are Dead-Beats!” The rousing headline was followed with a series of charges – “Another attempt at swindling has come to light”…”they keep altogether from the public gaze, and are only to be reached through correspondence sent to a certain box in the Post Office.” Ward’s customers were caught in the crossfire as well – “it is known that a certain proportion of the multitudes of circulars issued fall into the hands of credulous fools, who place boundless faith in anything which is set up in type and printed. If such fools would only consider how easy a thing it is to start a swindle of this kind, the dead-beats who get them up would be driven to hard work, or still better, perhaps, starvation.” Ah, the journalistic restraint of days gone by! Ward threatened to sue.

The Tribune’s retraction, published in the December 24th edition, would prove to be worth its weight in gold to Wards. An early paragraph read: “The (November 8) article was based on what was supposed to be correct information, but a thorough investigation by this office satisfies us that the article was grossly unjust, and not warranted by the real facts. The firm of Montgomery, Ward & Co. is a bona fide firm, composed of respectable persons, and doing a perfectly legitimate business in a perfectly legitimate manner.” Ward was so pleased with it that he reprinted the article in its entirety in his next price list.

In 1874, Ward, now joined by his brother-in-law George Thorne as a partner, moved his business to a larger building at the corner of State and Kinzie Streets. Through the remainder of the 19th century, Montgomery Ward & Co. grew impressively, and the Wards catalog, which had evolved from the simplest type-set sheet to a 150-plus page magazine with ornate engraved covers, was wildly popular with consumers across the entire country, but especially so in the nation’s frontier heartland. In addition to clothing and farm goods, Ward carried groceries, and for a few years, liquor. In these years, Wards advocated for their customers by battling a number of industry trusts, which had attempted to fix prices on such basic needs as sugar and binding twine.

Ward and Thorne gradually turned the day-to-day management of the company over to younger men, including Thorne’s five sons, all of whom would eventually join the business. In 1887, Montgomery Ward moved to a new six-story building on Michigan Avenue, which would be expanded many times by the end of the century. In June 1889, the Ward-Thorne partnership was formally chartered as a corporation.

In 1893, Sears Roebuck and Co. was incorporated, moving their offices from Minneapolis to Chicago the following year. In just a few short years, Sears, who adapted the mantra “Cheapest Supply House on Earth” (similar to Wards’ “Cheapest Cash House in America”) emerged as Montgomery Ward’s chief rival, and what would be a century-long rivalry was underway.

1893 was a key year for Ward in a number of other ways. The company gave away tens of thousands of a special “World’s Fair Edition” of its catalog at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition. Even more important than that was Congress’ passage of the Rural Free Delivery Act (R.F.D.) which opened the door to mail delivery to individual rural homes. Prior to that, most country dwellers had to pick up their mail from a post office. As R.F.D. was implemented, Wards’ catalog deliveries and sales skyrocketed, provoking the ire of local country merchants. A number of them staged “catalog burnings”, encouraging locals to toss their treasured Wards catalogs into a bonfire - something the founder took as a true validation of his company’s success.

That same year, Ward sold his majority interest in the company to George Thorne. By this time, Ward was devoting his full-time energies to a new passion – the preservation of Chicago’s lakefront as a city park, off-limits to developers. More than anyone else, Ward deserves the credit for the priceless asset that is Chicago’s Grant Park. Ward fought for twenty years and through four legendary court battles to achieve this, losing many friends among Chicago’s business and social elite along the way. Aaron Montgomery Ward, retail and environmentalist pioneer, known in his last years as “the watchdog of the lakefront”, passed away at the age of 70 on December 7, 1913.

His namesake company continued to thrive. In 1908, Montgomery Ward opened its massive new distribution center, a 500-foot long, 9-story high, 2 million square foot colossus along Chicago’s riverfront, a facility the company would use into the 1970’s. Wards had opened its first of many branch operation “catalog houses” in Kansas City in 1904, replacing it with a much larger building in 1907. Later on, Wards would open more of these huge facilities – in Oakland in 1923, Baltimore in 1925, Fort Worth in 1928, and Albany, NY and Denver in 1929.

George Thorne’s sons had operated the company with varying degrees of efficiency in the early years of the 20th century. Today, the Thorne name is probably best known in Chicago in connection with the “Thorne Rooms”, a fascinating collection of miniature dioramas first exhibited in the 1930’s at the Art Institute of Chicago. They were conceived and funded by Mrs. James Ward Thorne, the wife of one of Mr. Thorne’s sons.

One brilliant hire they made was Robert E. Wood, a former World War I Quartermaster General, who shaped up their distribution system and advanced a new idea to help the company get the most mileage out of its gigantic branch warehouse operations – to open 40 to 50 retail stores within a radius of each “catalog house”, tapping the revenue possibilities of these facilities, adding a potential $20 million a year to Wards’ coffers. Alas, General Wood proved to be “the one that got away”, leaving Wards, whose top management was painfully slow to respond to his proposal, for Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 1924. Wood, who at Sears would become one of the most legendary retail figures of the 20th century, opened Sears’ first retail store the following year. 350 Sears stores would be in operation by 1930, drastically changing the competitive dynamic between the two companies.

By 1927, the Montgomery Ward management had come to view their lack of a retail store presence as a mistake. A decision was made to open a handful of “display stores”, under the assumption that customers would be favorably inclined to buy merchandise they could actually touch as opposed to making their decision based only in catalog pictures. The problem was, the term “display store” meant exactly that – customers could order but not bring home the merchandise! It would be shipped to them in the standard manner from the closest Wards warehouse. The goal was to rotate the selection of merchandise shown in the display stores, choosing from Wards’ then 33,000 different items carried. The first display stores were slated for “Marysville, Kansas, Plymouth, Indiana and Little Falls, Minnesota, all good mail order areas”, according to the Wards 100th Anniversary book.

The conversion of the Plymouth, Indiana store from a purely “display” store to a conventional retail store happened in an interesting way, as related in story in the Anniversary book. Although the Plymouth display store was well-received, there was a fair amount of frustration expressed by customers about the inability to buy and take home the merchandise on the spot. This led to grumblings to the effect that Wards’ display units might be superior quality to the actual products shipped, a classic “bait-and-switch”, that in this case was patently untrue. It all came to a head one day when a carpenter showed up at the store and noticed that a saw was selling for 75 cents less than he could buy a comparable one for down the street. When told of the store’s policy, the carpenter became irate, demanding to buy and take home the saw. Finally the store manager relented and sold it to him. When word of this got around, the store was besieged, and was forced to sell off their sample stock to the clamoring public.

Montgomery Ward brass, upset about this at first, began to come around when the profit potential became too obvious to ignore. A test program was put in place with eight more display stores, now allowed to stock and sell the actual products, was put in place. The following year, now satisfied with the idea, Ward’s board of directors put the pedal to the metal, approving a program to open 212 retail stores in 1928.

Were it not for that carpenter, would any of us have “Monkey Wards” store shopping memories today? It boggles the mind - almost too deep to ponder.

The photo above, from the book “1872-1972 A Century of Serving Consumers – the Story of Montgomery Ward”, depicts the Plymouth, Indiana display store discussed above. Below are two photos from the E.M. Ball Photographic Collection (1918-1969), Special Collections, D.H. Ramsey Library, University of North Carolina at Asheville depicting two early Montgomery Ward stores in Asheville, North Carolina, the first on Biltmore Avenue and the second on Patton Avenue, both circa 1930’s.

A Very Merry Christmas

From Christmas 1971, a beautiful night view of a Chicago department store legend – the Carson Pirie Scott & Co. flagship, a familiar sight on the corner of State and Madison Streets since 1899. (The store closed last year and is now being renovated for other uses.) The Louis Sullivan masterpiece, with its magnificent iron scrollwork façade, is a lily that certainly doesn’t need gilding. In my opinion however, the multi-colored Dickensian false façade Carsons installed that season, dubbed “The Village of Lights”, took Christmas window design to an entirely different plane.

For years, a semi-friendly rivalry existed between Carsons and their State Street neighbors, Marshall Field & Company and Goldblatt’s (Thanks to commenter Randy for pointing that Wieboldt's was a key player in the contest also. They purchased the former Mandel Bros. store, directly across Madison Street from Carsons, in 1961. Their suburban locations usually had Christmas windows as well.), to win the hearts of holiday shoppers and their kids with elaborate dioramas in their store windows. These usually involved a storyline sequence that unfolded as one walked along the sidewalk, straining with the rest of the crowd to get the best view of each successive window. A dwindling number of stores in Chicago and elsewhere carry on this tradition today. Our family usually felt that Field’s won the contest, but not every time. Unfortunately, I don’t remember this 1971 edition personally. We went downtown occasionally at that time, but it was a few years before we made it a regular “day after Thanksgiving” tradition. Nonetheless, I feel safe in saying that Carsons probably won the rivalry that year.

A couple of other interesting aspects shown in the photo are the classic 50’s-70’s Carsons logo and the futuristic, fluorescent State Street lighting of the same era. Years later, these light towers would be replaced with 1920’s-style fixtures to emulate an earlier era.

In 1979, following what looked at the time to be an emerging national trend, the City of Chicago closed off State Street to automobile traffic to create State Street Mall, allowing only pedestrian and bus access, and replacing a wide portion of the street with huge sidewalks, planters and the like. Slowing sales of State Street merchants and the flight of many shoppers to nearby Michigan Avenue's “Magnificent Mile” proved this to be a mistake within just a few years, but the problem wasn’t corrected until 1997, when State Street was “de-malled” and once again traffic flowed, to the relief of retailers up and down the strip. By then, of course, the retail world had dramatically changed.

Once again, I want to take this time to let everyone know how deeply I appreciate your support of this website, and to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season, spent with family and close friends. I especially want to thank you who have commented on the site, and who have sent me such warm, heartfelt emails with your own treasured memories. It means more than I can say. Thanks so much.

May the True Joy and the real meaning of Christmas be yours, and may you and your families enjoy a happy and healthy New Year. See you then!

Dave

Barney Kroger - The Cincinnati Kid

The history of Kroger, like that of so many companies born in the same era, is a great American story. The roots of today’s Kroger Company reach back to 1876, when 16-year old Bernard Henry Kroger took a job selling coffee and tea door-to-door for The Great Northern and Pacific Tea Company in his hometown of Cincinnati. Kroger, one of ten children born to German immigrants, worked hard to help support his family, who lived in a flat above a dry goods store the family owned. After two years, Kroger left Great Northern to join the William White Company, another coffee and tea firm, leaving that firm shortly thereafter for the Imperial Tea Company.

When Imperial began to run into trouble, the owners asked young Kroger (who had been working a wagon route up to that point) to manage the company’s store for a 10% cut of the profits, which at the time were virtually nonexistent. Convinced he could turn things around, he took up the challenge. A stickler for quality with more than a bit of starch in his personality, Kroger built a following for the store. Interestingly, as Progressive Grocer noted, “It wasn’t a wealthy clientele. They were wage-earners’ wives who came back to shop, and told their friends…” Having saved up $372 from a year of toil, a considerable sum in 1883, Kroger approached the Imperial Tea owners with an offer to buy a one-third interest in the company. They refused, offering an increased share of the profits instead. Adamant about owning a stake in the game, Barney decided to strike out on his own.

With an additional $350 borrowed from a friend, Kroger opened “The Great Western Tea Company”, a tiny store on Cincinnati’s Pearl Street, replete with fire-engine red paint and gilt lettering, with a horse-drawn wagon sporting the same colors. Through some initial setbacks, including the loss of the horse and wagon in an unfortunate train crossing accident, a flood which destroyed the store’s initial stock, and an attempt by his landlord to increase his store’s rent (forcing Kroger to move to a less attractive location on a side street), Kroger persevered.

Within months, Kroger opened a second store, and by mid-1885 had added two more for a total of four units. By 1893, after ten years on his own, Kroger had 17 stores and was considered one of the most successful businessmen in Cincinnati. In 1902, The Great Western Tea Co. was reincorporated as The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company, which would remain the company’s legal name for the next 40 years. The word “baking” in the company’s name reflected an important aspect of Kroger’s business. At the turn of the century, Kroger made a splash by announcing his plans to set up the company’s own bakery, selling loaves to Kroger customers at half the average going price, then 5 cents each. Not only would this help build business for his stores, but it also would enable Kroger to capture a bigger chunk of his customers’ bread budget, beyond just bulk flour, butter and egg sales. As he acknowledged to a New York Times interviewer in 1901 - “In Cincinnati, with its large percentage of thrifty Germans, bread is usually baked in the home”. At two for a nickel, Kroger projected sales of 25,000 loaves per day to those thrifty folks.

Another innovative step Kroger took was born out of the company’s 1904 acquisition of the Nagel butcher shop chain in Cincinnati. After initially operating the meat markets separately, Kroger made a decision to integrate them into his grocery stores. Over the initial objections of his butchers, who resented the loss of their independence and the new bookkeeping requirements Kroger imposed, these early forerunners of the “complete food market” proved to be a huge success and had a great influence on the chain food store business as a whole.

With a solid base in Cincinnati, Kroger began to expand to other areas, first to nearby Hamilton, Ohio, then to Dayton and Columbus, where the company had 15 and 8 stores respectively by 1910. These initial forays were followed by an expansion drive (which reached a fever pitch by the late 1920’s) to other cities and the smaller towns in between- Detroit, St. Louis, Peoria, Indianapolis, Toledo, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Youngstown and Charleston (WV), to name some examples. Much of this growth was accomplished through acquisition – 109 Piggly Wiggly and 43 Kohn Stores in the St. Louis and Central Illinois areas, 108 Piggly Wiggly stores in Louisville, 114 Bowers grocery stores in Memphis and the surrounding area, (along with yet more Piggly Wigglys) and Universal Stores of Madison, Wisconsin. In the coming decades, acquisitions would continue to provide a major vehicle for Kroger’s growth.

In late 1926, rumors began to fly that Kroger would merge with Philadelphia-based American Stores Company, possibly in combination with First National Stores or the H.C. Bohack chain. While some talks were held, these plans never came to fruition, and in my opinion would likely have not gone over well in light of the beginnings of a movement against chain store “monopolists” (or more accurately, oligarchs) that would gain sentiment as the 30’s rolled on.

In December 1927, B.H. Kroger sold his stock in the company, staying on as chairman but stepping down as president, turning that responsibility over to William H. Albers. Later on, he would repurchase a huge block of Kroger stock to help bolster confidence in the company through the depression years that followed. In November 1931, with nearly 4,900 stores in operation, he retired altogether. Barney Kroger passed away in July 1938, leaving behind a company that 70 years later is the largest company in America whose mainline business is supermarkets – an admirable legacy.

These photos are undated – the top photo showing a “B.H. Kroger” store circa the dawn of the 20th century. Below is a typical Kroger from the early 30’s, near the end of Mr. Kroger’s tenure with the company.

Chicago's Little Jewel

Jewel Tea Company, as it was known from its inception in 1899 until 1966, had a national reputation as a home delivery service long before it became established as the dominant Chicago grocery chain. The company was founded in 1899 with a rented horse and wagon by Iowa native Frank Skiff, who two years later would be joined in partnership by his brother-in-law, Frank Ross. Starting with a single Chicago route, sales of coffee (always the bedrock of the business) and other food items – mainly tea, spices and soap products were $11,000 in 1901, the first year of the partnership.

Jewel grew rapidly, to the point that they opened their own manufacturing plant in Chicago in 1909, in order to accommodate the growing demand for their private label foods and cleaning products. By 1910, sales had grown to a million dollars annually, and 100 routes were in operation. By 1915, sales had surpassed the $8 million mark and 850 routes were established, remarkable by any standard.

One of the keys to Jewel’s growth was the company’s practice of giving away premiums to their customers in order to help ensure their loyalty. Some of the premiums, for example, were giveaway lithographs featuring engraved, idyllic scenes in the Currier and Ives mold. These lithographs did much to stimulate the sales of Jewel’s soap flakes, a harder sell than one would think in those days when many families made their own soap from animal fats and such (yeesh, shades of Granny Clampett!). The most common premium approach, however, usually consisted of a coupon included in a package of coffee or tea which customers could save and redeem for a piece of Haviland China. For years Haviland would enjoy a very successful partnership with Jewel. (Later the company would partner with East Liverpool, Ohio-based Hall China, manufacturers of the famous Jewel “Autumn Leaf” pattern, a wildly popular series with collectors today. As John Wright points out in his Marketing History of the Jewel Tea Company, “(Jewel’s) coffee sales spiraled even at company prices of twenty-five cents a pound at a time when grocery stores only charged seventeen cents”.

Frank Ross was responsible for one of history’s most successful marketing devices, one which would pay dividends for Jewel Tea and a good number of other companies through the years – the advanced premium. Now a Jewel salesman would offer a homemaker an entire set of Haviland China up front – her family would have use of the wonderful new dishes right away. All she had to do was buy a certain number of Jewel products over an agreed period of time. Customers appreciated the trust, and Jewel’s sales exploded. More than any other factor, the advanced premium placed Jewel atop the industry.

A major milestone was reached in March, 1916 when Jewel Tea Company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Fueled by their success, Skiff and Ross set out on an ambitious expansion drive to double the amount of service routes, adding distant regions of the country to the company’s operating area, whereas previous growth had always been contiguous to their existing territory, radiating from Chicago. Events would prove the drive to be a bit too ambitious in light of the onset of World War I, with its attendant shortage of raw material and other problems. In 1919, by which time both Skiff and Ross had stepped aside, the company incurred its first loss, ($1.6 million) and new president John S. Hancock took the reins.

The new team took steps to turn Jewel around, one of which was trimming low volume or unprofitable routes, ending up with some 1,000 routes by 1921 from a previous high of over 1,600. The cutbacks helped restore Jewel’s financial health, and over the next 10 years Jewel would regrow the route business, albeit at a much more conservative rate of 50-60 new routes a year.

In June, 1929 Jewel began construction of a magnificent headquarters complex in Barrington, Illinois, 32 miles northwest of Chicago, in what then could only be loosely called a suburb. “Jewel Park”, as it was called, would be the new home of the company’s headquarters and would also host their coffee roasting operation, turning out the company’s signature product in vast quantities.

In 1932, a new law was passed in the tiny community of Green River, Wyoming, which would have at least a partial hand in shaping the destiny of Jewel Tea. The law, which came to be known as the “Green River Ordinance”, forbade uninvited solicitors, striking at the very heart of Jewel’s livelihood, driving home the necessity to Jewel management of diversifying the business. Also, the company, now fully recovered from its earlier travails, found itself at this point with a large surplus of cash and a critical need to put the money to good use. The perfect vehicle was about to come their way.

On March 14, 1932, The Wall Street Journal announced that the Jewel Tea Company had purchased 77 Chicago-area grocery stores from Loblaw Groceterias, Inc., a Canadian firm (which is still a familiar name to Canadian shoppers, by the way) which was seeking to trim back its operations during the darkest economic hour of the 1930’s. At the same time, Jewel bought out four stores from the Middle West Grocery Co., about which I’m pretty sure next to nothing is known today. So out of the box, Jewel entered the market with 81 stores.

Pictured above are three 1930’s Jewel Food Stores with an average of probably 5 to 7,000 square feet, very much in keeping with other chain grocers of that era. Oftentimes the stores occupied the first floor of a much older building. As Jewel upgraded from the Loblaw properties, more and more of the stores had the porcelain glazed brick facades. The location of the first two stores is unknown; the third features a pocket-sized Jewel (next to a pocket-sized Woolworth’s) in Des Plaines, a Northwest Chicago suburb. Below, in a nod to Jewel’s original home-service business, are some 1940's photos featuring Jewel’s lineup of home delivery products.