Did A&P abandon the art of ‘basketwatching’?

Volumes have been written about the rollercoaster ride to…and then from…greatness taken by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) from 1859-2015. 

Author Dr. Marc Levinson and others said that when brothers George Ludlum Hartford and John Augustine Hartford, were running things at A&P from the late 1900s up until 1950, they “created the most powerful franchise in food retailing.” 

“Mr. George” was put in charge of financials, while “Mr. John” ran the business operations and was dubbed the “Merchant Prince.” TIME Magazine once wrote that “going to the A&P was almost an American tribal rite.”

 A happy A&P grocer

The Wall Street Journal said the Hartford brothers “were among the 20th century’s most accomplished and visionary businessmen.” (Their father, George Huntington Hartford, had taken over at A&P when company founder George Gilman retired in 1878.) 

An essay on A&P’s history in the Reference for Business Encyclopedia provides a brief snapshot, stating: “Much of A&P’s early success was due to Mr. George’s and Mr. John’s scrupulous attention to the business, or, in Mr. John’s term, to ‘the art of basketwatching.’” 

In other words, the Hartfords observed, analyzed and responded to what customers were putting in their baskets, buggies or carts…and what they weren’t. 

In the 1930s, a Saturday Evening Post writer asked: “Who will watch the baskets after the Hartfords are gone? Neither has any children…the direct line of shrewd vigilance will be broken.” 

Ralph Burger, a loyal company man, was tapped to take the reins at A&P in 1950. He went to work for A&P in 1911 as an $11-a-week clerk but worked his way up to become corporate secretary. Burger “ran the company, if not imaginatively, then at least reasonably successfully, until his death in 1969,” according to the encyclopedist.

 

From Dr. Levinson’s perspective, A&P’s “customers were moving to the suburbs, but A&P’s executives preferred to stick with the urban markets they knew best. California was booming, but management in New York refused to expand in distant Los Angeles.”

“Discount stores were flourishing, but A&P’s leaders could not fathom why housewives might want to purchase cooking aprons or cough syrup while picking up milk and bread,” Dr. Levinson wrote. 

“By 1979, when it sold control to the German grocer Tengelmann Group, A&P was staggering,” Dr. Levinson said. “The Germans, convinced that they understood food retailing better than the Americans, made matters worse.” 

The encyclopedist’s assessment was: “A&P’s once ‘resplendent emporiums’ were now perceived as antiquated, inefficient and run-down.” 

Journalist Garland Pollard of Sarasota, Fla., creator of BrandlandUSA.com, has his own take on what went wrong at A&P. He said: “In the 1970s, A&P fell apart. Not only did the chain not invest in new stores, it ditched a logo as classic as Coke’s”…and in the same red and white colors. 

Pollard may be on to something here. From the very beginning, A&P’s ornate white monogram in a red circle made a distinctive mark.

 

“The color palette, representing passion, love and loyalty, was a very good choice for the grocery retailer, whose main aim was to give people high-quality goods and products to make their warm cozy evenings at home better and sweeter,” wrote Aleksei Titov of 1000logos.net. 

The shadowing effect that came along a little later gave the symbol some “depth of field.”

 

The A&P logo was redesigned in 1976. Basically, the letters took on a contemporary sans-serif look, and the circle was stretched horizontally, gaining the yellow and orange “sunrise” effect.

 

In Pollard’s mind, it was more of an omen of a “sunset.”