Every Pound Custom Ground at A&P

Quick, name for me the one private label brand that through history has been most closely associated with A&P. Ah, “Ann Page Pickled Pigs Feet”, you say? Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not it. (Great guess, though!)

Even though the company started out as solely a merchant of tea, and 150 years after its founding still features the word “tea” in its name, the answer, of course, is coffee - “Eight O’Clock Coffee”, to be specific - a long-standing member of the pantheon of America’s legendary brands. For many people, the smell of fresh ground coffee and the sight of the huge in-store electric coffee grinders and the red and gold bags with the distinctive lettering constitute their fondest memories of A&P - long after they’ve moved away from an A&P, or A&P moved away from them.

Within a few short years after its 1859 founding, the company first introduced coffee. Eventually A&P’s house blend would come to be known as “Eight O’ Clock Breakfast Coffee”. The earliest use of this name that I’ve been able to find is in a small A&P ad that appeared in the May 27, 1888 edition of the Washington Post – “We recommend to all lovers of a cup of good coffee that they use our granulated Eight O’ Clock Breakfast Coffee which we sell at the low price of 25 cents per pound. Don’t fail to try it. For sale at all our stores.” Another line in the ad jumped out at me when I read it – “Coffee ground fresh with the aid of an electric engine.” Even today, the image of a manual hand-cranked coffee grinder is used in Eight O’Clock Coffee advertising, so it’s interesting to note that electric-motor driven grinders were indeed used in those long ago times.

Later on, the word “breakfast”, with its obvious limitations, was dropped from the brand name. In time, a legend formed around the creation of the name - that it was based on the times of day that people (in that era, at least) were most likely to drink coffee – 8 am and 8 pm.

Success was not long in coming, and soon several of A&P’s “tea company” competitors added coffee to their offerings. The book “That Wonderful A&P”, by Edwin Hoyt, cites the example of the Grand Union Tea Company, then known as Jones Brothers Tea Co., who introduced a line of “polished coffee”, in which their coffee beans were literally polished “to a shiny appearance”. Although this improved the taste not a bit, it made for an interesting, if bizarre, advertising angle. Hoyt quotes George Huntington Hartford’s advertising rebuttal on A&P’s behalf: “Positively no polishing matter is used in roasting our coffees. Our coffees are roasted and sold in their natural state, no ingredients whatever being used to make them glossy. BEWARE OF GLOSSY COFFEES!” Tell ‘em, George!

As coffee overtook tea as America’s most popular beverage in the early part of the 20th century, A&P, whose store count exploded in the ‘teens, found itself in a wonderful position to take advantage of the drink’s ever-growing popularity. For decades, Eight O’Clock Coffee would be the country’s largest selling coffee brand.

Having added a number of other coffee blends alongside their flagship Eight O’Clock brand through the years, A&P would eventually narrow their coffee lineup down to three main blends – “Eight O’Clock”, of course, the “mild and mellow” blend, “Red Circle”, the “rich and full-bodied” blend, and “Bokar”, the “vigorous and winey” blend (i.e.: the strong stuff.) In the early decades of the 20th century, each of the three brands had unique packaging.

In 1933, A&P introduced new, coordinated packaging for its three coffee brands. With bold colors – red for Eight O’Clock, yellow for Red Circle and black for Bokar - adorned with a gold band and a strikingly unique font, an American advertising icon was born. I’ve been unable to locate information on the designer A&P used, but would easily put it league with the best work of Raymond Loewy, designer extraordinaire, and the other great packaging designers of that golden era.

In the late 1930’s, Eight O’Clock coffee was hailed as the world’s top selling brand, and domestically, according to a 1935 Los Angeles Times article, A&P had three of the six bestselling brands – Eight O’Clock at number one, of course, with Red Circle ranked fourth and Bokar, sixth. Into the 1950’s, A&P’s share of the market remained strong, described variously as “one out of every six” or “one out of every four” cups of coffee served in the United States. (Today, one out of every six cups is consumed by me, when writing these posts.)

And so it continued for years, until A&P’s slow decline and exit from many of their major U.S. markets. Eight O’Clock’s fortunes were tied to A&P’s, of course, and as A&P began to contract its store footprint, the “number one” coffee crown would eventually pass to General Foods’ Maxwell House brand. (Currently, the largest individual selling coffee brand is Folger’s Classic Roast, with Maxwell House Original at number two, Starbucks at number three and Eight O’Clock Original at number nine, according to a recent CNBC survey. As far as overall sales go, Eight O'Clock is the largest selling bean coffee and the third largest overall brand in sales, according to their website.)

In the late 1970’s, A&P made an effort to shore up sagging profits through better use of its sprawling manufacturing operations. Through its subsidiary Compass Foods, A&P began to market its coffee brands to other chains, particularly in markets where they no longer had stores. In Chicago, for example, from which A&P pulled out in 1982, a cheery Chicago Tribune article proclaimed “Eight O’Clock coffee will stay in Chicago”, and would now be available at Jewel Food Stores.

The most important house brand manufactured by A&P would also be the last one they would hang onto. In 2003, A&P sold the Eight O’Clock brand to Gryphon, a San Francisco-based group of investors. In 2006, Gryphon sold the company to Tata, an Indian company that specializes in tea and coffee and owns the popular Tetley brand. Organized as “The Eight O’Clock Coffee Company” division, they have been very aggressive in marketing the famous old brand, adding several varieties and promoting it in new arenas – gas station convenience stores, for instance.
So, Eight O’Clock coffee might be as close as your nearest gas station! May have to drive a bit farther for those Jane Parker donuts, though…

The non-polished, yet glossy photos above depict various A&P coffee departments from the 1940’s and early 50’s. First is a 85th anniversary window display from Portland, Maine, followed by an iced coffee window display from Albany, New York. Next are two coffee department shots from Poughkeepsie, New York. The last shot is a bit more recent, from an unknown location, showing a common practice at the time - the placement of related magazine ads near the food displays. These local store publicity shots are part of a collection I bought a while back (Featuring, strangely enough, mostly A&P coffee displays. Not that I mind that!). Below are a group of wonderfully colorful A&P coffee ads from the 1930’s and 40’s, most of which are from Woman’s Day magazine, which was founded by A&P in 1942. These ads are from the Gallery of Graphic Design, a magnificent online collection of magazine advertising that is an absolute must-see. In that pre-television era, magazine ads were arguably the most important single vehicle for advertising to the mass market. The standard of artistry in these ads is high, to put it mildly.

Appropriately enough, the last ad, from 1938, has a Thanksgiving theme. An interesting year this has been, 2009. Great in some ways, difficult in others. I’m thankful for many things, though, and high on the list are those of you who read, enjoy and comment on this site. I hope yours is a wonderful one!

Bradlees' Crushing Success

I’ve probably read close to 100 archived store “Grand Opening” articles over the past year in gathering information to research for this site. While generally interesting, the articles almost always tend to fall into one of two distinct categories. The first is the “just the facts” reporting style: “A large crowd was on hand for the opening of the new Safeway yesterday…” The second is the “over the top” style, the kind of article that had to have been fed to the newspaper by the chain’s PR department : “Customers will be able to buy Kroger’s Tenderay beef from these ultra-modern cooler cases. Only Kroger cares enough to provide top-quality aged Tenderay beef…”

In an effort to dig up background info on Bradlees, I came across a great “Grand Opening” article by Edward J. Farrell from the October 30, 1965 issue of the Berkshire Eagle entitled “Bradlees’ Opening Described as Crushing Success” that really stands out from the pack. The chain’s Coltsville (Pittsfield), Massachusetts store had opened the previous week. The article is written with a wit more commonly seen in political or arts commentary, and also highlights some of the fine points that can aptly describe many of the grocery store/discounter combinations that were then coming into popularity. Some lengthy excerpts for your enjoyment:

“Bradlees’ opening in Coltsville Tuesday morning was vaguely reminiscent of the World’s Fair closing earlier this month. Customers jammed into the 85,000 square feet of merchandise. They tugged, they yanked, shoved and they pushed.

It was a smasshing (sp) success. Police had to take up posts at the main entrances and limit the inflow of customers. Company executives were pressed into service at grocery checkout counters “bagging” groceries. The lines waiting to get through the checkout stations choked off all aisles. Most swarmed around bargain counters like football players after a fumbled ball.

Wilted Bradlees executives, easily identified by their wilted carnations, were ecstatic. Pittsfield’s welcome was “tremendous, fabulous and overwhelming.” But there was no joy in other parts of the city. Zayre and the Big N (the long-gone department store division of the long-gone Neisner’s variety chain) played to nearly vacant parking lots. You could cross North Street walking on your hands without danger. Clerks in other grocery stores spent the day dusting off the string beans and bananas.

The only consolation the day offered other merchants was the thought that the novelty would wear off, and everyone could settle down to good, clean competition.

The store was “shopped” thoroughly. Just about every north Street merchant prince was either present or represented by a court member. The parking lot, with space for 1,000 cars, overflowed into the meadow across the road. It was difficult to determine where the shoppers were coming from because all registration plates were from Massachusetts.”

“The Merrill Road store conforms in design to the 34 other Bradlee stores in New England. It has the self-service food counter on the north and the mass merchandising on the south side. It is all under one roof, but the two departments are carefully separated and are operated as individual entities.

The two sections differ in design to a small degree. The grocery, or Stop & Shop area, looks like a supermarket with long rows of fluorescent tubes mounted on the ceiling for light. On the department store side, the lighting is recessed and is much softer.

The distribution of various departments in the department store area conforms to the accepted pattern established some time ago by the pioneers of mass merchandising. The theory is that women go to the right and men go to the left upon entering a store, and they will probably meet somewhere near the hardware department. Bradlee allows for deviations from the pattern by locating bargain counters on a scattered-site basis hoping to snare unsuspecting shoppers with a batch of irresistible buys.

Tuesday’s opening-day crowd conformed pretty much to the accepted, but the more experienced mass merchandise shoppers located the loss-leaders early in the game and walked off with the treasures.

Bradlees has made one important concession to the mass merchandise customer. Many departments are equipped with their own cash registers. This means shoppers can approach the checkout counters equipped to go right through.

The new Bradlees store is no architectural masterpiece. (Dave’s comment: Waat?!) It looks as though it had been mass produced. There is an enormous amount of glass on the front. This is framed by a mixture of tapestry brick and some rust-color field stone. Bright splashes of color are provided by the Bradlee signs.”

“The concept of a Bradlees store – combining grocery and mass merchandising under one roof – was a natural development. It seemed that every time a supermarket opened in a shopping center, a mass merchandising outlet followed. It was only natural and cost-saving, then, to put the two operations under one roof.

With this pioneering venture behind them, Stop & Shop officials looked around for other fields to conquer. They startled the grocery industry two months ago by announcing Stop & Shop would no longer give trading stamps. Instead, the company said it was going to pass on the savings to customers. This announcement has left the female population in a quandary torn between its two greatest loves – trading stamps and a penny saved. Tune in tomorrow to find out if Stella Bella, girl shopper, takes her stamps or takes her pennies.”

Great stuff. And I can’t help but wonder what choice “Stella Bella” made. Maybe there was a follow-up article that I’ve missed.

Oh well. Anyway, the three stores pictured are from 1963-64, and “masterpieces” or not, in my opinion they reflect a nice improvement over the Zayre-like design of the earlier Bradlees stores, such as the one pictured in the previous post. The first photo is of a Bradlees Family Center, a food and general merchandise combo store from Poughkeepsie, New York which opened in 1963. This store was Stop & Shop’s first corporate venture into New York State. The second photo, from 1964 is of a Family Center in Fall River, Massachusetts, and the third photo is of a Bradlees Discount Foods, a stand-alone discount food store, which gave the company a second food store banner besides Stop & Shop. The first of these opened in 1963 in Hingham, MA. I’m not sure of this store’s location.