The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company
| The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Limited partnership |
| founding | 1859 |
| resolution | 2015 |
| Seat |
Montvale , New Jersey ,
|
| management | Christian WE Haub |
| Number of employees | approx. 48,000 (2008) |
| Branch | Grocery retail |
| Website | www.aptea.com |
A & P , written out in full The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company , was a food business , the supermarket chains in the United States and Canada for operation. The seat was in Montvale , New Jersey .
Emergence
In 1859, George Huntington Hartford and George Gilman founded The Great American Tea Company in New York City to trade tea delivered by cargo ships . The sale was initially carried out via a mail order business , the first stationary retail stores opened in the 1860s. In 1870 the company name was changed to The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company . In the next few years the business expanded further, in 1881 there were A&P shops to the west in Saint Paul, Minnesota and to the south in Norfolk, Virginia . Soon coffee , spices and baking flavors were also on offer. In 1900 the company was registered as a corporation with now almost 200 shops . 25 years later, A&P was the largest grocery chain in the USA with around 14,000 “economy stores”; The first stores opened in Canada in the 1930s . At the height of its development around 1935, A&P had about 16,000 stores with total sales of about $ 1 billion. The market power that A&P exercised primarily over its suppliers was ultimately restricted by law.
In 1936 the first of the A&P supermarkets opened, which has since slowly supplanted the smaller shops.
A&P from the 1970s
After the death of the eccentric managing director Ralph Berger in 1969, A&P gave up its sales outlets in the Midwest and now concentrated solely on the east coast . At the time, A&P was the largest grocery chain in the United States, with more than twice as much sales as its largest competitor, Safeway . In 1973, A&P fell behind Safeway and in 1978 was only third behind Kroger .
When the share price fell dramatically at the end of the 1970s, the German Tengelmann group joined A&P and a short time later acquired the majority of the shares. In the 1980s, the company took over a number of smaller grocery chains such as Kohl's Food Stores (1983, sold 2003) in Wisconsin , Shopwell and Waldbaum's (1986) in New York, and Farmer Jack (1989) in Michigan . Many of the chains continued to operate under the old names and other stores such as Super Fresh and The Food Emporium as well as Dominion in Canada were added.
Since the sale of the Canadian subsidiary in 2005, A&P has only had around 435 stores in the USA. Most recently, it had about 48,000 employees with annual sales of about $ 8 billion.
After a loss of 143 million US dollars in the previous year, the 2009/2010 financial year closed with a loss of 857 million US dollars. Therefore, on December 12, 2010, Chapter 11 bankruptcy had to be filed . This process was completed in the first quarter of 2012. At the same time, the Tengelmann Group's majority stake in A&P ended. On July 19, 2015, A&P again filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. On November 25, 2015, the supermarkets were closed.
A&P in Germany
The German supermarket chain Kaiser's Tengelmann sold discount products under the brand "A&P - Attraktiv und Preiswert". For this purpose, the (then) logo of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company was used unchanged until the end of the 2000s, since then in a slightly modified form. Starting in 2015, the products were gradually switched to the discount brand "Every Day" from the purchasing company Markant AG .
Own brands
For a time, A&P produced a wide range of food products and housewares in its own factories , which were primarily sold under the Ann Page and A&P labels . After largely withdrawn from manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s, a number of foods were again sold under private brands such as America's Choice and Master Choice . The coffee brand Eight O'Clock Coffee , which has been part of the company since the beginning , was sold in 2003.
swell
- ↑ Handelsblatt - Edition of December 14, 2010
