The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company history

Gilman's father died in 1859, leaving the son wealthy.

In May 1861, Gilman turned over the tanning business to his brother Winthrop; George moved his tea business to 129 Front Street.

By 1866, the firm was valued at more than $1 million.

In 1869 the company became The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, to commemorate the joining of the first transcontinental railroad and to separate its retail stores from its mail-order operations.

The company was renamed Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company in 1870.

The company established a foothold in the Midwest in the aftermath of the Chicago Fire of 1871, when A&P sent staff and food to help the devastated city, and stayed to open stores in the region.

The firm rapidly expanded; in 1875 A&P had stores in 16 cities.

By 1876 the company had become the first significant grocery chain, having reached the 100-store mark.

In 1878, Gilman left the active management of the firm to Hartford.

Profits on these products declined; around 1880 A&P started to sell sugar in its stores.

In 1882 Eight O'Clock Breakfast Coffee was introduced; the Eight O'Clock blend remained a hallmark house brand into the early 21st century.

The company continued aggressive growth and by 1884 operated stores as far west as Kansas City and as far south as Atlanta.

In 1900 the company, which had nearly 200 stores, was incorporated.

In 1901, George Gilman died without a will, starting a legal battle among his numerous heirs.

Evidence provided to the court established that Hartford received half of A&P's profits starting in 1878 and that the company's leases were in his name. Therefore, in 1902 they agreed to a settlement where A&P was to be incorporated, with $2.1 million in assets.

By 1908, George Hartford Sr. divided management responsibilities among his sons, with George Jr. controlling finance with John directing sales and operations.

While Burger started with A&P in 1910 as a clerk in Glens Falls, New York, he was a staffer who lacked John Hartford's strategic marketing skills.

1912: First cash-and-carry A&P Economy Store opens its doors.

A&P quickly expanded the concept; by 1915 the chain operated 1,600 stores.

When George Hartford, Sr., died in 1917, George, Jr., became chairman of A&P, while John Hartford became president.

By 1925, A&P had 14,000 economy stores, with sales of $440 million, marking one of the greatest retail expansions ever.

In early 1926, the brothers discussed the situation with division management and launched a program to lower prices and improve cost controls.

In 1929 when the stock market crashed, causing other retail companies to fold, merge, or sell out in the subsequent Great Depression, A&P was so firmly established and soundly managed that it was virtually unaffected.

Along the way it grew and grew, often being called “Walmart before Walmart.” By 1930 A&P had 16,000 stores and nearly $3 billion in annual sales.

In 1933, A&P's sales dropped 19%, to $820 million, because of the competition.

In 1935, Texas Congressman Wright Patman introduced legislation that would have levied a federal tax on chain stores.

In 1936, the Robinson-Patman Act was passed, marking the beginning of the antitrust woes that shook A&P's hegemony.

The public's reception of these publications prompted the company to begin publishing Woman's Day magazine in 1937, at two cents per issue.

In late 1941, following Pearl Harbor, the military placed many large businesses off-limits to the anti-trust division because of defense priorities, leaving grocery stores as an option.

22, 1949 Sylva Herald undoubtedly raised alarm among some local shoppers, as the local A&P was undoubtedly a favorite among a fair amount of folks here.

In the ’30s it phased out smaller stores and had 4,000 larger stores open by 1950.

In 1951, John Hartford died in the Chrysler Building after returning from a meeting of the automaker's board of directors.

However, by late 1962, the initial sales gains evaporated and the six outside directors threatened to resign unless Burger retired.

In 1969, at the death of its eccentric and domineering president, Ralph Burger, A&P was the largest food chain in the United States, with more than twice the sales of its nearest competitor, Safeway.

In 1973, as A&P reported $51 million in losses and Safeway took its place as the largest food retailer in the country, Jonathan L. Scott was hired from Albertson's, marking the first time in history that A&P had looked outside its ranks for management.

The first Family Mart opened in Greenville, South Carolina as The Family Mart in 1977.

While initial results were promising, by 1978, A&P profits started to slide due to economic conditions caused by high inflation.

Beginning in 1979, after stock prices fell dramatically, the German supermarket giant Tengelmann bought a controlling percentage of the outstanding shares.

The Tengelmann Group appointed James Wood, the former CEO of the Grand Union Company, as chairman and CEO of A&P, in 1980.

Haub also quietly bought other shares until he owned 50.3% in February 1981.

Wood's reputation as a turnaround manager underwent a trial by fire, but his radical restructuring of the company was later lauded by analysts as "an outstanding success." By 1982, close to 40 percent of the company's stores had been shut down.

In 1983, A&P bought Wisconsin-based Kohl's Food Stores (which had been part of the Kohl's department store chain) from BATUS, enabling A&P to reenter Wisconsin and Illinois.

In 1984, A&P purchased Pantry Pride's Richmond, Virginia division.

Improved sales allowed the company to begin to undertake new-store construction by 1985: the "new" A&P aimed for an upscale, service-oriented image and catered to one-stop shoppers.

In 1986, A&P purchased Waldbaum's (with stores in southern New York and southern New England) and The Food Emporium, the latter an upscale New York City-based chain.

In 1988, Master Choice, a private-brand label of specialty chocolates, pastas, sauces, and herbal teas was introduced in order to compete with what industry experts considered the real competition: restaurants and fast-food chains.

In 1989 A&P made a bid for Gateway Corporation, the third largest grocery chain in Britain.

A&P also had trouble with another international venture, its $250 million acquisition of 70 Miracle Food Mart stores in Ontario in 1990.

Waldbaum's in New York was cited in 1991 as the worst of all area grocery chains for numerous problems with rodents and cockroaches.

Gateway would have offered A&P a whole new arena for growth, one that was of considerable interest to Erivan Haub, Tengelmann's owner, who wished to shore up his European retailing empire in preparation for the unification of the common market in 1992.

A&P also remodeled more than 100 stores in 1993 and built 20 new ones.

The Atlanta stores, however, lost money and only began to show a profit in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1994.

According to Haub, A&P planned to open 50 stores a year after 1996.

That, coupled with excellent results from the company's Michigan stores, helped A&P post a 28 percent increase in profits for the fiscal year ending in February 1997.

In December 1998 A&P announced that it would shut 127 smaller, underperforming stores.

Restructuring charges of about $120 million led A&P to post a net loss of $67.2 million for the fiscal year ending in February 1999.

In 2001, Wood also retired as chairman, with Haub assuming that title as well.

The company's stock began declining, reaching an all-time low in October 2002, the same month that Culligan tendered her resignation.

The company announced in early 2003 that it was exploring the sale of its Kohl's chain in Wisconsin.

In 2005, A&P sold its 237-store Canadian division (consisting of A&P, Dominion, Ultra Food and Drug stores, as well as the Canadian Food Basics units) to Montreal-based Metro Inc. for C$1.7 billion in cash plus shares of Metro.

Also in 2007, A&P acquired Pathmark, a long-time Northeastern rival, for $1.4 billion.

21 by Supermarket News of the top 75 North American grocery retailers based on 2008 fiscal year estimated sales of US$9.6 billion.

When A&P marked its 150th anniversary in 2009, it was ranked only No.

In June 2010, A&P stopped paying $150 million in rent on the closed Farmer Jack stores.

In November 2011, the corporation announced that it had entered into an agreement to receive $490 million of debt and equity financing from Yucaipa, Mount Kellett Capital Management, and investment funds managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

The agreement enabled A&P to complete its restructuring and emerge from Chapter 11 as a private entity in early 2012.

In 2013, again a company, A&P was put up for sale but could not find a suitable buyer.

On January 15, 2015, the trade publication Supermarket News reported that A&P was still for sale.