GREAT ATLANTIC & PACIFIC TEA COMPANY, INC.

(A&P), American corporation operating one of the largest chains of supermarkets in the United States, mostly under the A&P name. Headquarters are in Montvale, N.J. The company's history traces to 1859, when George F. Gilman and George Huntington Hartford founded the Great American Tea Co. in New York City to trade in tea bought from the cargoes of the clipper ships. It became largely a mail-order operation, but in 1869 the first retail stores, under the name Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, were incorporated. By 1881 the company's stores extended as far west as St. Paul, Minn., and as far south as Richmond and Norfolk, Va. Soon coffee, spices, and extracts were added to the sales. By 1900, 200 stores were selling a variety of grocery items. Twenty-five years later there were 14,000 "economy stores," and A&P was the American food industry's largest grocery chain. In 1936 the first of A&P's supermarkets was opened; and these, fewer in number, eventually supplanted the former smaller stores. A&P further contracted over the years, giving up its Midwestern outlets in the 1970s and limiting its operations to the Eastern Seaboard. In 1986, however, it purchased Shopwell, Inc., bringing under its aegis the Dominion Stores in Canada, the Pantry Pride stores in Virginia, and the Kohl's Food Stores in Milwaukee, Wis. Besides the A&P name, various A&P stores are operated under such names as Super Fresh and Futurestore. A&P, once also owner of manufacturing plants producing an array of food and household items (primarily under Ann Page and A&P labels), withdrew from most manufacturing in the 1970s and '80s and now produces only a few dairy and bakery goods, as well as coffee (Eight O'Clock brand). In 1969, at the death of its eccentric and domineering president, Ralph Burger, A&P was the largest food chain in the United States, with more than twice the sales of its nearest competitor, Safeway. In 1973, however, Safeway's sales surpassed A&P's, and in 1978 A&P fell to third place behind Kroger; in the 1980s its ranking fell still further. Beginning in 1979, after stock prices fell dramatically, the German supermarket giant Tengelmann bought a controlling percentage of the outstanding shares.