Simply Politics and News

[AKvetch]

Amazing how unattributed e-mails can used be put a political spin onto something that isn't factually correct. Oh well, it is just cyberspace...yeah, exporting jobs, sure...somebody doesn't understand the food business, or history...

The Story of Heinz 57 Varieties

Cream of Tomato Soup, Baked Beans, Vegetable Salad, Chocolate Sponge Pudding, all these modern tinned delicacies seem a far cry from the roaring, lawless Wild West of a century ago.

And yet it was there, in a perilous frontier town where "Cowboys and Indians" was no child's game but a deadly reality, and that the now famous firm of Heinz was founded.

Lorenze Heinze, who was born in 1811, emigrated from his native Bavaria when he was 29 years old and settled in Pittsburg in the United States. Then he married and in 1844 his first child, Henry John, was born.

Five years later the family moved to Sharpsburg where Lorenz became a brick maker.

It was a hard life - and one of continual hard work - into which young Henry was born. Transport was of the most primitive kind and the result that every community out West had to be self-supporting as far as vegetables and farm produce were concerned. So it was that by the time young Henry was 8 years old he had to work in his father's brickyard and also work in the garden as well as attend school.

As time went on it seemed quite obvious to everyone that Henry was destined to follow in his father's footsteps and become a brick maker. He undoubtedly would have done had not his life been completely changed by a common garden plant ---- horse-radish.

The Heinz family vegetable plot was very similar to that of all their neighbours in that it had to provide the family with vegetables all the year round. The only difference was perhaps that their clump of horse-radish was bigger and better than most, a thing not really to be wondered at seeing that it was a native of Lorenz's homeland where it would have appeared regularly with meals.

As the years passed the clump of horse-radish grew so big that the combined appetites of the Heinz family, now grown to nine, could no longer cope with it.

The neighbours were therefore persuaded to buy it, and it was Henry who had to take it around, first by hand, then by wheel-barrow, then by handcart and finally by horse and cart.

Later came the idea that perhaps the neighbours would pay a little more for it if it were delivered ready ground and so this was done.

By the time Henry was 16 he had become his father's book-keeper and business assistant and had also ventured into the realms of preserving by putting ground horse-radish into bottles.

In 1869 he took a partner and founded the firm of Heinz and Noble, a company which to outsiders, must have appeared somewhat of an oddity, dealing as it did with two such dissimilar products as bricks and horse-radish.

Nevertheless, under Henry's astute guidance, it flourished and two years later he built a new house for the family and turned the old house into a food processing factory where bottled horse-radish and bottled pickles, a new line, were made.

At the same time another partner was taken into the firm and the profitable and expanding little firm which was building itself such a big reputation for clean pure food began rapidly forging ahead to--

---bankruptcy.

This occurred after the depression which followed the Civil War, the Panic of 1873,which caused wholesale bankruptcies, bread lines, soup kitchens and suicides.

For a time the firm weathered the storm, but in 1875 it was listed as one of the 5,000 "failed companies".

To Henry this was not an irreparable disaster, it was merely a spur to his ambition and so, two months later, he started again. He borrowed 3,000 dollars from his brother John and his cousin Frederick and a new firm, F & J.Heinz was launched, with Henry as its manager and guiding genius.

The new firm succeeded from the start and very soon new products, tomato ketchup, pepper sauce, vinegar, apple butter, fruit jellies and mince meat, were being marketed.

As a result of this increased production Henry was able to pay off all his creditors by 1884.

Two years later he visited Europe and, while in London, persuaded the famous firm of Fortnum & Mason to sell his goods.

This was a major triumph for Henry, for the English market for such goods was notoriously conservative, a triumph that seemed to herald the firm's future success for, from that moment it seemed that nothing could go wrong.

In 1888 Henry bought out his brother's interests, re-named the firm H.J. Heinz & Company and then bought a new site and started planning to build a new factory.

It was only a few years later that he originated the famous "57 Varieties" slogan.

In 1919, by which time his food factory was one of the largest in America, Henry died to be succeeded by his son, Howard.

Under Howard, expansion after expansion took place, branches were opened all over the world, and a factory was built in England, at Harlesden, which began production in 1925.

At first only bottled goods were produced there, pickles, sauces and condiments, but later, in 1928, it was decided to produce a canned food that had long been a favourite in the United States, Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce.

The new introduction soon proved so successful that it was followed by Spaghetti and a variety of soups.

During the Second World War the Heinz factory was, naturally, chiefly concerned with food production for the armed forces and it was during this period that Howard died, his place then being taken by his son, Henry J.Heinz II.

After the war the demand for Heinz products so increased that in 1946 a new factory was leased at Standish, a few miles from Wigan, which, as well as making the usual range of Heinz products, also started producing Strained Foods for babies.

Even with this additional factory, however, the demand still exceed production and so a new site was acquired nearby at Kitt Green.

Work began on the new £7,000.000 project in 1955 and it was opened four years later.

This new building, the largest food factory in the Commonwealth, embodied all that was most up-to-date both in construction and equipment.


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H. J. Heinz Company today is an enterprise involving more than 45,800 people in over 200 major locations worldwide, with leading brands on six continents. Heinz brand names - such as Ore-Ida, Smart Ones, Bagel Bites, Wattie's, San Marco, 9-Lives, Kibbles 'n Bits, Pounce, Farley's, Plasmon, Bio Dieterba, StarKist, John West, Petit Navire, Greenseas, Classico, Wyler's, UFC, Orlando, ABC, Honig, Hak, DeRuijter, Olivine and Pudliski - appear on more than 5,700 different products here and abroad. Heinz also uses the famous names Weight Watchers, Boston Market and Linda McCartney under license.


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