A&P Preservation
General Category => Private Brands => Topic started by: mainehank on January 26, 2019, 02:45:14 pm
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I really miss the days of real private store brands. Up until the 1970's, chains such as A&P, Safeway, Kroger, and Winn Dixie actually manufactured most of their store brands. In the case of both A&P and Safeway, food companies claimed they were being squeezed out of vital shelf space by the store brands! These stores would have two, three, and sometimes four different name labels, depending on the quality of the product. National brand producers also complained how the chain stores would often imitate the national labels. It was expensive for the national brands because they did national advertising and customers would come into a store to not find the product, but buy the store brand because of how similar it looked to the national brand.
The last chain store to carry on this practice was Winn Dixie until it's first bankruptcy in the early 2000's. I think Kroger still bottles it own soft drinks. I know Publix had its own dairy and ice cream plants in Central Florida and outside Atlanta.
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Ah, yes. I think everyone misses those days! A&P used to have factories all over New York and New Jersey for their manufactured goods. The locations I know of are:
- Horseheads, NY (the largest "Ann Page" manufacturing plant-- at a whopping 1,500,000 square feet! Opened in 1965)
- Indianapolis, IN
- Paterson, NJ
- Toronto, ON
- Baltimore, MD
(But I'm sure there's a ton more!)
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Somewhere in my packed away treasurers I still have a color pamphlet from about 1975. It lists all the A&P brands that were in use at that time. It also shows the quality ratings of those brands. For example: canned tomatoes. The A&P brand was for first quality whole tomatoes while the Iona brand was the good brand which were for whole and pieces. I can't remember the rest of it.
When I find it, I will try to scan and download it to the sit for all to enjoy.
Also, in late 1975, I bought the A&P cookbook, published in large paperback form. Great for recipes, but also give great information on shopping and cooking with A&P branded foods. Unfortunately the book was not well published and many pages fell out and the spine is quite delicate. I tried to get another copy a month later and they were sold out.