George Huntington Hartford (September 5, 1833 – August 29, 1917) headed the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) from 1878 to 1917. During this period, A&P created the concept of the chain grocery store and expanded into the country's largest retailer. He joined the firm as a clerk in 1861 and quickly assumed managerial responsibilities. When A&P's founder, George Gilman, retired in 1878, Hartford entered into a partnership agreement and ran the company until the founder's death in 1901. In the settlement of Gilman's estate, Hartford acquired control of the company and ultimately purchased the interests of Gilman's heirs.
Hartford was born on a farm in Augusta, Maine, and started his retail career at age 18 in Boston. By 1861, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, where he married Marie Josephine Ludlum (1837–1925). They had three sons and two daughters. Although he was known to be a private person, Hartford was elected mayor of Orange, New Jersey, in 1878 and served for 12 years. Hartford retired from the active management of the business about 1907 or 1908 and turned the firm over to two of his sons, George Ludlum Hartford (1864–1957) and John Augustine Hartford (1872–1951). He continued as an advisor while they expanded the firm, which had become the country's largest retailer by 1915.
Hartford died in 1917, aged 84, and was interred at Rosedale Cemetery, in Orange, New Jersey. Hartford's estate was worth $125 million. The press respected that he was a private man, and there were few obituaries about him.
By 1930, A&P operated approximately 16,000 stores and became the first retailer to report combined revenue of US$1 billion. Time wrote, "the familiar red-front A & P store is the real melting pot of the community, patronized by the boss's wife and the baker's daughter, the priest and the policeman. To foreigners A & P's vast supermarkets are among the wonders of the age; to the US middle class, they are one of the direct roads to solvency. 'Going to the A & P' is almost an American tribal rite." The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial on August 29, 2011, wrote, "Together the brothers, neither of whom had finished high school, built what would be, for 40 years, the largest retail outlet in the world."
Biography
George Hartford's family came to New Hampshire in the late 1600s when Nicholas Hartford immigrated from Hertfordshire, England. George's grandfather moved to Augusta, Maine in 1796 and settled on a farm where their son, Joshua Brackett Hartford married Martha Soren and had two sons, George and his younger brother, John. Joshua and Martha operated a boarding house and livery stable that is now the site of a firehouse in Augusta. George received minimal formal education and at age 18 sailed to Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked as a dry goods store clerk. The company founding myth is that George Hartford and George Gilman started A&P in New York City in 1859. However, the 1859 St. Louis, Missouri directory lists George and his brother John Hartford as employees of Gilman's leather tanning firm which was based in New York but had an office in St. Louis. By 1860, the Hartford brothers returned to Augusta, Maine where John was listed in the census as a merchant and George as a box maker. Shortly after the census, John moved to New York City, where he is listed in the city directory with George Gilman in the tea importing business that ultimately became A&P. There is no known record of George Hartford in New York prior to 1861. While John Hartford quickly left the firm, George joined Gilman as a clerk by 1861; he later was promoted to bookkeeper, then cashier in 1866. The Trust was administered by his sons George and John who exercised control over the company's stock. As a result, the company's leadership remained constant until the two brothers died in the 1950s.
Business contributions
George Hartford revolutionized retailing. A&P reduced prices and made profit by heavy advertising and promotion. The company was one of the first marketers to use brand names when it started selling tea under the Thea Nectar label. This marketing decision came to pass after A&P faced a lawsuit against the creators of Cream of Wheat that were angered at A&P for attempting to undercharge for their product. Gilman and Hartford purchased damaged tea that cost relatively little and mixed it to create a black tea with a green tea taste that was considered by the public a specialty tea. In turn A&P was then able to sell Thea Nectar for less than the competitor's special tea. For customers who could not reach one of their stores, the company provided "tea clubs", where groups of people – either as a social group or as a business – could have tea shipped to them from the A&P for a third of the price. The tea clubs proved immensely popular, eliciting orders from Vermont to Wisconsin. The company also offered incentives to its customers, such as premiums. Based on the amount of product purchased, the customer received a gift from the A&P. Eventually, these premiums became based on stamps that were collected with each purchase and could be turned in for anything from lithographs to glassware. In the 1870s, Hartford expanded the company by opening stores outside of New York. During the next decade, Hartford and his sons expanded the product line to create the first chain grocery stores. Despite its size, A&P was run like a small family business and promotions exclusively took place from within the company. Hartford also instituted a pension plan that allowed employees to invest in company stock that they could retain after retirement.