Server: Microsoft-IIS/3.0 Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 17:42:51 GMT Content-Type: text/html Accept-Ranges: bytes Last-Modified: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 15:52:46 GMT Content-Length: 4185 Company History

Since its inception in 1859, A&P has epitomized the discount concept in food retailing. The company started when two entrepreneurs, George Gilman and George Huntington Hartford, established a tea emporium in New York City offering customers all types of tea blends at "cargo prices" - that is, up to 50% less than the competition's.
The partners worked as wholesalers, buying tea at the New York dockyards and passing it along to consumers at "2 cents per pound above cost". Departing from the clutter of the typical general store of the times, they created the concept of store decor by introducing an Oriental "palace" store theme, in sync with the fact that their tea was sourced from China.
Early stores featured paneled walls, flowery tin ceilings, crystal chandeliers, cash stations shaped like pagodas and red and gold tea bins. The exterior of the stores, done in red vermilion, featured a large "T" highlighted with small gaslights.
Early merchandising efforts included the organization of "tea clubs" in different cities. Members were offered tea at special discount rates and club organizers were given a premium.
Gilman and Hartford were probably the first consumer-oriented marketers. They offered money-back guarantees on their products and advertised in national publications such as Harper's Weekly. They also advertised in religious publications to reach teetotaler readers. They distributed colorful circulars that informed customers about tea prices and deliveries, the information surrounded by articles and poems. One such poem, first published in this form, starts "Twas the night before Christmas...".
On their 10th anniversary - the same year President Grant drove a golden spike to connect the transcontinental railroad in Utah - the partners celebrated by renaming their company the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. By then the business consisted of 10 stores with branches in Boston and Philadelphia. One large unit offered coffee.
They introduced a new concept to the grocery trade - giving bulk teas their own brand names. Each brand offered a different grade of quality and was priced accordingly.
In the early 1880s, as coffee drinking grew in popularity, Hartford, then in full charge of the company, dubbed his own brand, Eight O'Clock Breakfast Coffee. It was packed in a red bag, the dominant motif of the chain. Eight O'Clock bean coffee is not only the oldest private label in the grocery marketplace, but is the fourth-largest coffee brand in the United States. Excerpted from: Supermarket News, Dec. 19, 1994, Vol. 44, No. 51.





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