What We All Learned from the A&P
LIVING ON LONG ISLAND IN THE 1950s, my family held three core beliefs. We rooted for the Dodgers against the Yankees (then waited for the Mets and rooted for them); we voted the straight Democratic ticket; and we shopped at the A&P.
Others on the block might belong instead to the tribes of Grand Union, Walbaum or Bohack; a few were even rabid King Kullen-ites. But for our family — and I mean the extended one of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins — we were sustained thanks to the good graces and low, low prices of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company.
I begin to see why in a new book, The Great A&P, by Marc Levinson. In it he outlines the strategy that grew the supermarketer from a small coffee and tea seller during the Civil War to the largest retail chain in the country before Sam Walton signed his first store lease.
At the heart of that growth was cost-cutting, specifically enabled by doing an end-run around a huge, complex network of wholesalers, jobbers and middlemen who each added to the final cost of a grocery item. Just like Henry Ford’s River Rouge plant, George and John Hartford took in raw materials and used their company-owned fish canneries, industrial bakers, dairy and food processors to develop products they could then get to their stores more cheaply.
Those savings were passed on to shoppers. “We would rather sell 200 pounds of butter at 1-cent profit than 100 pounds at 2-cents profit,” John Hartford said in 1945. It was an attitude that roused the ire of independent grocer associations and other businesses and kept A&P (and other large chain stores) fighting state pricing restrictions and federal antitrust suits from the ’20s through the ’40s.
After expansion to a national footprint, A&P became the first grocery chain to place ads in national magazines; it also sponsored early radio content. Those ads often touted the unique value of its store brands. My family lived largely on Ann Page cookies, Jane Parker donuts and Silverstone butter. My uncles drank Tudor Beer; to my knowledge, my grandmother never brewed a cup of coffee that wasn’t Eight O’Clock. All A&P house brands.
Think how different the marketing landscape is now, both in retail overall and specifically in grocery marketing. Price competition was widespread even before the arrival of the Internet and mobile apps that can let shoppers know who in their neighborhood is selling milk, pasta or a gallon of gas for the least. As outlined on page 9 of this issue and throughout our cover story, retailers are strategizing ways to draw and retain customer loyalty without slicing into margins. CPG manufacturers are on the hunt for touchpoints that let them message to shoppers outside of the purchase stream. And store brands have become a point of contention between retailers and the other brands they sell.
A&P started a slide in the ’60s that led to store closings and a 2010 bankruptcy filing. But the chain deserves to be recognized for the retailing and marketing ground-breaker that it was for most of the last century.
And gee, those Ann Page cookies were good.
