Heinz

Revenues have climbed from the thousands in 1869 through the millions, the tens and hundreds of millions, now billions. As Heinz markets have grown from local to national to global -- from one product to a dozen, made famous through the 57 Varieties slogan at the turn of the century to several thousand today -- the idea of quality, that old-fashioned virtue now born again in the most advanced theories of management, has been the Heinz mainspring.

The first product was horseradish, and the glass of its bottle was clear. There was a reason: while competitors extended their horseradish with fillers, concealed from view in green glass jars, Founder Henry John Heinz took his stand on quality and proudly displayed his product in transparent bottles. See? No leaves, no wood fiber, no turnip filler.

Henry was 25. The food processing industry was even younger, and commercial preservation in cans and bottles had yet to earn the public trust; so the typical American diet was a dreary affair. Staples as of 1869 were limited to bread, potatoes, root vegetables and meat -- usually dried, smoked or salted. Cucumbers and pickles were the salads of winter; grapefruit was a distant rumor, except in Florida; tomatoes were called "love apples," an exotic Mexican fruit. And, Henry Heinz was taking the first steps in a journey that would help to change all that, forever.

After horseradish came pickles, sauerkraut and vinegar, delivered by horse-drawn wagons to grocers in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Processing, packing and headquarters offices shared a two-story farmhouse in Sharpsburg, at the city's northern edge. But within five years, Heinz and partner L. C. Noble had moved to larger quarters, on their way to becoming one of the nation's leading producers of condiments. Heinz & Noble could count among its assets a hundred acres of garden along the Allegheny River -- 30 acres of horseradish -- along with 24 horses, a dozen wagons and a vinegar factory in St. Louis.

In the banking panic of 1875, this overextended young enterprise was forced into bankruptcy. Heinz then discovered that the grocers he had been supplying were unwilling to extend credit even to feed his family.

With brother John and cousin Frederick, he started over in 1875. In the depression brought on by the banking collapse, it was a difficult first year, but one in which a new product was introduced -- tomato ketchup. Red and green pepper sauce soon followed, then cider vinegar and apple butter, chili sauce, mincemeat, mustard, tomato soup, olives, pickled onions, pickled cauliflower, baked beans and the first sweet pickles ever brought to market. The American table was brightening, along with the Heinz ledger.

As biographer Robert C. Alberts has observed, Henry Heinz had hit on two of what he called the Important Ideas that were to shape his business from that day on: 1) That most people are willing to let someone else take over a share of their kitchen operations; and 2) That a pure article of superior quality will find a ready market through its intrinsic value -- if properly packaged and promoted. Conventional wisdom now, these were bold conceptions in their day, foreshadowing what have since become the bedrock assumptions of modern quality control and consumer marketing.

And, there were sequels: 3) To improve the product in glass or can, you must improve it while still in the ground; and 4) The world is our market.

In 1886, Heinz sailed with his family to England, including in his luggage a Gladstone bag packed with "seven varieties of our finest and newest goods." In London, he called on Fortnum & Mason, England's leading food purveyor, whose buyer tasted and promptly accepted all seven products for distribution.

Ten years later, the first overseas office opened near the Tower of London, joined in 1905 by a factory in Peckham and in 1919 by a site in Harlesden that soon became the second English plant of Heinz. Others were to follow until Heinz became a Purveyor to the Queen and most British food shoppers came to regard Heinz as a British company.

It was also in 1919 that Henry Heinz died of pneumonia at the age of 75. He was succeeded by his son, Howard, who had already taken over much of the company's operations. By this time, the younger Heinz had introduced a regime of scientific processing and quality control into a system that included 25 factories and 200 smaller facilities, ranging from pickle salting stations to bottle plants and a seed farm.

Through the Howard Heinz era, as in that of his father, all growth was internal; even overseas ventures were built from scratch. This continued to be the policy for most of the tenure of H. J. Heinz II, who became president in 1941. The first exception was the acquisition of a food processor in the Netherlands