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The National Tea Company (NATCO, informally known as National) was a Midwestern United States grocery chain that operated during the 20th century.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2011) |
The National Tea Company (NATCO, informally known as National) was a Midwestern United States grocery chain that operated during the 20th century.
Founded in 1899 by Danish immigrant George S. Rasmussen along with his brother Thorvald in Chicago, Illinois, the retailer spread to about 160 stores by 1920, and annual sales approached $13 million. By the end of the '20s, National Tea had over 600 locations in the Chicago area alone and another 1,000 stores nationwide. Sales grew to about $90 million a year. [1] Many of these stores were closed or sold during the Great Depression, but National Tea remained among the 10 largest grocery chains in the United States for most of the 20th century.
In 1955, when annual sales topped $600 million and the company had nearly 20,000 employees nationwide, National Tea was purchased by George Weston Ltd., a large Canadian grocery retailer, later renamed Loblaw Companies. [2] Most National stores were in the Mississippi Valley, including in Louisiana. During the 1950s, it acquired about 500 new stores by buying up smaller chains.
Eventually, National, renamed National Supermarkets, was pared down to operations in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Louisiana. It was a major chain in the St. Louis, Indianapolis and New Orleans areas. Later Loblaw sold off some of its stores (63) to The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, in 1976. [3]
Schnucks Markets acquired National Tea in 1995 from Loblaw Companies. [4] Immediately following this purchase, Schnucks received approval from the Federal Trade Commission to sell the National Tea New Orleans division to Schwegmann Giant Super Markets of Metairie, Louisiana, which later sold them to A&P, which finally sold them to Rouse Markets in 2007. National itself had cemented the number two spot in St. Louis by acquiring several former Kroger locations and the Kroger distribution center in the market when the latter exited St. Louis in 1986. [5] Kroger and National had been battling for the number two and three spots in the St. Louis market since the 1970s, swapping rankings several times over throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Schnucks, to avoid having too much market share in St Louis, was required to sell off some of the National Store locations, which it did to James Gibson who later was indicted for fraud involving structured settlements. [6] [7]
National Supermarkets no longer has a separate existence as a retail chain.
Jewel-Osco is a supermarket chain in the Chicago metropolitan area, headquartered in Itasca, a western suburb. It currently has 188 stores across northern, central, and western Illinois; eastern Iowa; and portions of northwest Indiana. Jewel-Osco and Jewel are currently wholly owned subsidiaries of Boise-based Albertsons. The company originally started as a door-to-door coffee delivery service before it expanded into delivering non-perishable groceries and later into grocery stores, and supermarkets. Prior to its 1984 acquisition by American Stores, Jewel evolved into a large multi-state holding company that operated several supermarket chains and other non-food retail chain stores located from coast to coast and had operated under several different brand names.
Loblaw Companies Limited is a Canadian retailer encompassing corporate and franchise supermarkets operating under 22 regional and market-segment banners, as well as pharmacies, banking and apparel. Loblaw operates a private label program that includes grocery and household items, clothing, baby products, pharmaceuticals, cellular phones, general merchandise and financial services. Loblaw is the largest Canadian food retailer, and its brands include President's Choice, No Name and Joe Fresh.
Willard Gordon Galen Weston was a British-Canadian billionaire businessman and Chairman Emeritus of George Weston Limited, a Canadian food processing and distribution company. Weston and his family, with an estimated net worth of US$8.7 billion, are listed as the third wealthiest in Canada and 178th in the world by Forbes magazine.
The Kroger Company, or simply Kroger, is an American retail company that operates supermarkets and multi-department stores throughout the United States.
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The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, was an American chain of grocery stores that operated from 1859 to 2015. From 1915 through 1975, A&P was the largest grocery retailer in the United States.
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LM Acquisition Co. LLC , doing business as Lucky's Market, is a group of two separate supermarket chains in Colorado and Ohio that started in Boulder and briefly became a national chain before it shrank back to its home state. Founded in 2003 by Bo and Trish Sharon, the chain focuses primarily on organic food. From 2016 to 2019, the company was partially owned by the Kroger supermarket chain. At its peak in 2019, the company had 39 stores in ten states. The withdrawal of financial support from Kroger at the end of 2019 led to a massive company downsizing to just six surviving stores in four states and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing in January 2020. After the Sharons obtained the surviving six stores, they quickly sold off the four stores outside of Colorado to only retain two stores, one in Boulder and the other in Fort Collins, by April 2020.
Schwegmann Brothers Giant Supermarkets, commonly known as Schwegmann or colloquially Schwegmann's, is a defunct grocery store chain that served the New Orleans, Louisiana, metropolitan area until 1997. The chain developed significant innovations in grocery retailing and influenced other big box retailers that emerged in the latter 20th century and early 21st century. The founder and chief executive of the modern version of the chain was John G. Schwegmann, although his uncle and grandfather ran predecessors to the modern chain.
