American tea vendors that turned into grocery stores

[mbanu]

A lot of historic American tea vendors lived second lives as grocery store chains; the most famous is probably A&P, which started out as the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, but there were a bunch of them. Jewel Tea, National Tea, Kroger's (Great Western Tea), Grand Union (Jones Brothers Tea) -- I figured they deserved their own thread.

[Victoria]

Great topic. I was unaware that so many American grocery stores began as tea shops. Would be nice to have some references.

[mbanu]

Grand Union was a big believer in purchase premiums; someone would get tickets in exchange for buying Grand Union products (initially tea, later groceries) that could then be exchanged for exclusive items. This connects Grand Union back to Hall China, as some of Hall China's teapot patterns were made as premiums for Grand Union. Here is an example of one of their "tea check" premium tickets.

[26uk]

What an interesting tidbit. Did not know that. Only connection to me is I have shopped at Kroger

[mbanu]

Wasn't sure where to put this one, but figured here was a good spot, even though by the time of this ad in 1951, Kroger had been a grocery store for quite some time. It has most of the classic American tea-service setup: clove-studded lemons, artistic teapot, but also stringed tea-bags. (What was the pot there for? Maybe it contained loose Indian tea for the folks who wanted tea with milk?) I do wish there was a way to peer inside that bag -- When William Ukers was writing in the 1930s, Americans did not like the appearance of tea-fannings, even though they appreciated the convenience of teabags. While it was never stated outright, to me this suggests that the contents of these bags really was "orange pekoe" grade loose tea of the type still made in Sri Lanka.