GREAT AMERICAN TEA COMPANY - By Craig L. Barry

[Eric Tipton]

GREAT AMERICAN TEA COMPANY
By Craig L. Barry

Great American Tea Warehouse at #31-33 Vesey Street, New York, 1859. Source: Bella C. Landauer Collection, Collection of the New-York Historical Society (Public Domain).

Many American grocers in the mid-19th century began their business with tea. The Antebellum United States was predominately rural and agrarian. If food prices rose too high, farmers would simply plant and grow their own crop or do without. However, this was not true where tea was concerned as it could not be successful grown or was not widely cultivated in America and it was apparently hard to find a substitute or do without. [1] Despite the rise of coffee drinking, there was still a significant tea culture in America. This gave merchants a degree of leverage where tea was concerned. In the late 1850s, a pound of tea sold at retail for the princely sum of $1.

Two Maine-men named George Hartford and George Gilman were operating a finished leather goods shop in New York City. Although both were from Maine, paradoxically they met in Missouri, decided to work together and opened shop in New York City in 1856. In 1859 they recognized the potential for profit by buying tea wholesale @ $1.75 for five pounds right off the Clipper ships it came in on and then retailing it at a discounted price. The strategy was two-fold, first to cut out the middleman and second to make up on volume what they surrendered with their lower profit margins.

In addition, they targeted the middle class New Yorker instead of going after the more fashionable “carriage trade” made up of the city’s upper crust, which was not as price sensitive. In this they were shrewd as the middle class was surging by the late 1850s as was the demand for affordable luxury goods. They opened a warehouse at 31-33 Vesey Street, in a location that was “…filled with tea, coffee and grocery houses. The competition is so brisk so that some stores employed solicitors who stand on the street and invite passers-by to step in and purchase. For this reason goods are generally sold cheaper in Vesey Street than in any other part of the city.” [2] Competitors claimed the Great American Tea Company prices were so low because they added adulterants to their tea products, which of course they did. And in likelihood, so did all of their competitors. The Pure Food & Drug Act was not passed into law until fifty years post-bellum. It was noted that “if this could be done so successfully with tea…it could be done with other lines of goods of universal demand.” [3] This was soon to be proved correct by those merchants filling Civil War contracts.

By the early 1860s the Great American Tea Company expanded into the coffee trade, for which the US Civil War generated wide demand. Great American filled Union orders for coffee, which were later found to be adulterated with chicory. This is not shocking as it sounds since the US Government, “…was sold thousands of pounds of something called essence of coffee which often did not contain any coffee at all.” This was true. Another study of suppliers from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore found that 255 out of 376 suppliers filled orders with adulterated coffee. [4] Essence of coffee was easily adulterated being a processed drink made from mixing coffee extract (or something that looked like it) with canned condensed milk. The final product was “likened by some to axle grease.” [5] The coffee and tea business was so full of unscrupulous merchants who sold adulterated products that the Government went back to issuing raw (green) coffee beans.

Why was so much ground coffee adulterated? It was easy to do. Ground coffee was sold in paper bags which quickly went stale. Any blame about diminished flavor from adulterants could be placed there. Demand was high and coffee was always in short supply. The Philadelphia Grocer warned that “charcoal, nuts, shells, bark, saw dust and roasted grains are used…if not on the wholesale end than often by retailers…including restaurants.” [6] Whatever the case, the extent of the practice resulted in one Government supplier, John Stetler of Baltimore, being convicted of supplying adulterated coffee and sentenced as follows:

—"In this ; that the said John K. Stetler, having made a contract in writing with Captain Thomas Sullivan of the Commissary of Subsistence, US Army, to furnish subsistence supplies, to wit: one hundred thousand pounds pure, prime, roasted and ground Rio coffee, to the United States, and to deliver the same at Baltimore on or before the 12th of May, 1863, and having failed to fulfill said contract, or any part thereof, did, at Baltimore, on or about the 28th May, 1863, represent to Captain Thomas C. Sullivan, Commissary of Subsistence, U. S. Army, that he, said Stetler, had on hand a large quantity of pure, prime, roasted and ground Rio coffee, to wit: about one hundred casks thereof: and it was thereupon agreed between the said Captain Thomas C. Sullivan, acting for and on behalf of the United States, and the said John K. Stetler, that the said Stetler should immediately furnish and deliver to the Subsistence Department of the U. S. Army at Baltimore such amount of pure, prime, roasted and ground Rio Coffee, as he, the said Stetler, had on hand, as so represented by him, not exceeding one hundred casks; that the same should be pure and unadulterated —proof of which, by chemical analysis or otherwise, would be required; and that the United States would pay therefor at the price and rate agreed in said written contract above mentioned, to wit: $37.97 for every one hundred pounds; but that the said Stetler did wholly and willfully neglect and refuse to furnish or deliver the coffee so agreed to be furnished and delivered, or any pure, prime, roasted and ground Rio coffee whatever; but that he did deliver at Baltimore, on or about the 5th June, 1863, to said Captain Sullivan, about one hundred casks of adulterated and impure coffee as pure and of the quality agreed, knowing the same to be impure and adulterated, and did attempt to defraud the Government of the United States thereby; and that the said coffee so delivered was proved, by an inspection and chemical analysis thereof, to be impure and adulterated with foreign substances, and was therefore rejected by the Subsistence Department.”

“Finding: Guilty, except that the quantity to be delivered was two hundred casks, instead of the quantity stated in this specification. Sentence: And the Court does therefore sentence him, the said John K. Stetler, to be imprisoned in the Penitentiary at Albany, New York, or at such other place as the Secretary of War may direct, for a term of five years." [7]

Taken on the whole, the addition of some chicory by Great American was probably the least objectionable coffee adulterant which was in use at the time or at least no one in the enterprise was ever charged or convicted of a crime. Great American sold so much coffee they eventually bought their own coffee plantation in Brazil, where most of the coffee consumed in the mid-19th century was grown. It appears by virtue of being one of the “least-worse” grocers in the coffee and tea trade and less expensive to boot, they built a wide base of retail customers for both coffee and tea products and sales continued to grow post-bellum. Great American Tea Company was the first to sell products under their own brand name. By the end of the Civil War, they were flourishing with multiple locations in New York City and paid taxes on assets of over a million dollars. [8] By the end of the decade (1869), the enterprise changed names and was afterwards known as “The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company” (later A & P) which grew into a huge grocery store chain and was business another hundred years.

NOTES

1. See The Economist dated Dec 16, 2013, “The Coffee Insurgency.” Actually coffee gained a foothold in post-Colonial America when it became unfashionable to drink Tea due to British taxation and their monopolistic control of supply channels, think Boston Tea Party. However comparing coffee to tea is difficult purely on a volume basis because a pound of tea goes much farther than a pound of coffee.
2. Marc Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America, (New York, NY) Macmillan Publishing, 2009, p. 23.
3. Ibid, Levinson p. 30.
4. H. Leffmann (Ed), Journal of the Philadelphia College for the Study of Medicine, “Reasons for the General Use of Stimulants” (Philadelphia, PA) Blakiston Publishing, 1884, p. 118. The coffee from the Great American Tea Company upon analysis was found to contain adulterants, mostly chicory. Some other brands of coffee sold on contract to the Commissary Department were found to contain no coffee at all. As a result the Government went back to issuing coffee beans instead of ground coffee.
5. Bell Irvin Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, p. 241
6. Randall Miller, Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life in America: Civil War and Reconstruction, (Westport, CT) ABC-CLIO Publishing, 2004, p. 270.
7. United States Department of War, General Orders of the War Department # 375, October 1863, Volume II, (New York, NY) Derby and Spencer Printers, 1864, p, 643. Why the supplier Stetler was singled out here is a mystery. Adulterated ground coffee was the norm.
8. Ibid, Levinson p. 28.