John Hartford was born in
Orange, New Jersey and was the fourth child of
George Huntington Hartford (1832–1917) and Marie Josephine Ludium (1837–1915). John's father was already an executive at the
Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company which his father would then own. Mr. Hartford was also elected Mayor of Orange when John was six and served as both Mayor and Gilman's partner. At an early age, John demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit when on St. Patrick's day he parked his father's buggy along the parade route and charged people to climb up to get a better view. After completing high school, he joined A&P, working at a company warehouse. with sales of $400 million and profit of $10 million. John convinced George to decentralize management into regions but George insisted that headquarters retain control of finances, real estate, and purchasing policy, the areas he personally managed. The company introduced larger "combination stores" including space for meats, produce, and dairy as well as traditional grocery items, and launched a new drive to reduce costs. By 1930 the company's 16,000 stores reached sales of $1 billion. A&P's sales and profits increased during the early years of the Depression because of the company's ability to deliver low prices. Meanwhile, a few entrepreneurs experimented with large self-service "supermarkets" that offered even lower prices. John held back opening his first supermarket until 1936. Over the next two years, the company opened 1,100 of the larger stores. The chain continued to rebuild itself so that by 1950 A&P operated 4,000 supermarkets and 500 smaller combination stores. Sales reached $3.2 billion with an after-tax profit of $32 million. The
San Francisco Call-Bulletin wrote "John A. Hartford belonged to a little group of Americans whose energy and vision made us the most prosperous nation in the world. He pioneered in foodstuffs just as Henry Ford did in Transportation. Their philosophy was blunt and simple, just as most works of genius are simple, sell more for less."
The Columbus Georgia Ledger wrote "What Ford meant to transportation, what Edison meant to electricity, what Burbank meant to Horticulture, John Hartford meant to Food Retailing in America." The
Davenport Daily Times wrote "In the death of Mr. John there passes a Retail Napoleon. He had a Grocery Empire as Ford had an Automobile Empire, Rockefeller an Oil Empire, Carnegie a Steel Empire. We shall not see their like again." ==See also==