Mr Beanz: 57 facts about the amazing founder of the Heinz food empire, on the 100th anniversary of his death
Henry John Heinz, the American manufacturer whose highly successful prepackaged foods company became famous for its slogan “57 Varieties”, died 100 years ago today, on May 14, 1919.
Dubbed the Pickle King, Heinz first went into business exactly 150 years ago, in 1869. He is one of the 50 pioneering capitalists featured in our new book on the world’s greatest tycoons - available now in print format here for £8.99 or £4.99 as an ebook. In honour of his incredible achievements - and his memorable advertising slogan - here are 57 memorable facts about his life:
Henry Heinz was born on October 11, 1844, the first of six children born to parents who had emigrated from Germany a few years earlier and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He grew up helping his mother in her garden. By the age of nine, he had begun making pickles from her recipes and started selling homemade grated horseradish.
At the time, tinned or bottled horseradish was often bulked out with other ingredients such as turnips and even water-soaked wood sticks; in order to show the quality of his product, Heinz packed it in clear glass jars.
Heinz’s mother had hoped that her son would become a priest – but even before graduating from college, Henry showed exceptional entrepreneurial flair.
One of his various early ventures was in the ice business. Ice was then selling at five cents a pound, and was in good demand in pre-fridge days. Unluckily, two factors intervened - over-production and over-competition. A severe winter produced an enormous amount of ice, and everybody cut it and tried to sell it. Ice dropped to one cent a pound, and the profits of the business melted.
It fell to Heinz to drive four horses and an empty ice wagon back to Sharpsburg, some 80 miles from Pittsburgh. His hatred of waste was so ingrained that half way along, he went to a merchant and said: "I have no money, but I have an empty wagon that I'm driving through to Sharpsburg. If you will furnish goods to carry, I will sell them at my destination and account for the proceeds." The shopkeeper took a chance on him and gave him butter, eggs and oats, which Heinz sold. He delivered the money back to the shopkeeper, and enjoyed a profit of $25 on the trip.
Later, he started working at the brickyard owned by his father, and was quickly running it almost single-handedly and improving its profits.
Heinz, however, was sure that there was a growing market for canned or bottled food, and started his first company in 1869, in partnership with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, providing restaurants and cafés with sauerkraut, grated horseradish, pickles, and other products.
The firm’s first factory was in the basement of a former Heinz family home and they hired two German women and a boy to make and pack the products.
Heinz and Noble decided on an anchor for their logo - it being something solid and reliable that their customers could depend on.
At its height, Heinz & Noble (by then joined by Noble’s brother as another partner) employed 170 people, producing 50,000 barrels of vinegar a year, 15,000 barrels of pickles and 300 barrels of sauerkraut.
Despite initially doing very well and turning a tidy profit, the company went under during a severe nationwide economic and financial downturn in 1875. Heinz was declared bankrupt and arrested for fraud.
The Pittsburgh Leader newspaper greeted the firm’s demise with the mocking headline, “Trio in a Pickle”.
Heinz, then 31, suffered severe depression at the failure and did not get out of bed for several weeks. He later recalled Christmas 1875 as being the worst one in his life because he could not afford to buy presents for his children.
His family was greatly affected, too: their furniture was sold off to pay debts; his father was admitted to a sanitorium (his brick business had also failed); his brother Peter turned to drink; and his wife suffered from depression.
Inspired and bankrolled by his mother, Heinz tried again in 1876, setting up the Heinz Food Company with his brother, John, and a cousin. As a bankrupt, Heinz was not allowed to own any part of the company, but he ran it.
Heinz was determined not only to succeed, but also to repay every cent of the debts from his first company’s failure. He opened an account book, which he entitled M.O. Book of Henry J. Heinz; the M.O. stood for Moral Obligations. In it, he listed every creditor and the amount each was owed.
He worked so hard to that end - 16 hour days were normal - that he wrote in his diary: “I am wearing brain and body out.”
He initially tried making mustard, but in early 1876, using one of his mother’s recipes, mastered the production of tomato ketchup, which would become the company’s best-selling product.
Ketchup in the 1870s was a luxury item - selling for between $1 and $3 a pint bottle, which was several days wages for most Americans.
Many producers of ketchup at that time used unsafe levels of preservatives, particularly sodium benzoate. Heinz was convinced that consumers did not want chemicals in their ketchup, so he developed a recipe that used ripe, red tomatoes - which have more of a natural preservative called pectin - and increased the amount of vinegar to reduce the risk of spoilage.
Around 20-25 tomatoes were needed in each bottle of Heinz ketchup.
Ketchup was followed by products such as sauces made of red and green peppers, chilli, apple cider and dips, olives, pickled onions and cauliflower, baked beans and pickles.
Heinz decided that the company should have its own land and control the entire cycle of production, starting with the growing of seedlings and ending with the delivery of canned vegetables, in order to ensure the best quality.
Many years after he had finally repaid all the creditors of his failed business, a friend told him that one of the creditors was now himself in financial trouble. The man had been particularly hostile to Heinz, and had indulged in bitter personal abuse; despite this, Heinz paid off his former creditor’s debts. The man later bumped into Heinz on a street shortly afterwards, held out his hand and said: "The man whom I treated as an enemy has proved to be my friend and saved me in my trouble."
In 1896, while on a train in New York, Heinz saw a sign advertising 21 styles of shoes, which he thought was clever. Although Heinz was manufacturing more than 60 products at the time, he said he chose "57" because 5 was his lucky number and 7 was his wife's. The slogan “57 Varieties” has been used in Heinz’s advertising ever since.
By 1919, Heinz had more than 6,000 employees and 25 factories. The company was noted for its fair treatment of workers and for pioneering sanitary food preparation. Employees received free medical care; gyms, swimming pools, and gardens; and libraries, free concerts, and lectures.
All female workers were given fresh aprons and bonnets, and those who peeled cucumbers were given a free manicure once a week.
For many years, Heinz’s approach to his workers was summed up by a placard that hung on the wall of his offices: “Find your Man, Train your Man, Inspire your Man, and you will keep your Man.”
Many of Heinz’s relatives also worked in the company, but were obliged to perform as well as anyone else. He once fired his brother and co-founder, John, for consistent lateness and slow working.
Before the advent of cars, Heinz decreed that all the horses and wagons that transported the company’s goods must be the same - the carts enamelled white with green trimmings, and the horses black. He insisted on good horses, too. One day, a dealer sent him word that he had a fine four-hundred-dollar horse for just two hundred dollars; Heinz sent back the message that when the dealer had a four-hundred-dollar horse for four hundred dollars, he would be glad to see it.
When a group of financiers proposed buying Heinz’s burgeoning business, saying that he should "cash in", get a good big price and enjoy the leisure to which he was entitled, he answered: "I do not care for your money, neither do I or my family wish to go out of business. We are not looking for ease or rest or freedom from responsibility. I love this business. Your talk of more money and less responsibility means nothing to me. To stop work is death - mentally and physically. This business is run, not for my family or a few families, but for what we call the Heinz family - the people who make our goods and sell them. The Heinz policy is to work for a better business rather than a bigger business; to make, if possible, a better product, and to make better people as we go along. We are working for success, and not for money. The money part will take care of itself."
Today, more than 650 million bottles of Heinz Tomato Ketchup are sold around the world in more than 140 countries; 1.5 million cans/tubs of Heinz Beans are sold every day in the UK.
In 1869, Heinz married Sarah (“Sallie”) Sloan Young, a first-generation American from a Scotch-Irish family. They had four children: Clarence, Clifford, Howard, and Irene.
Heinz was devoutly religious. His mother said to him in his youth: "Henry, I have only one piece of advice to give you about your religion. Do not make it so narrow that it will be unattractive to others, and do not make it so broad that you leave yourself no foundation on which to stand."
When he went to England, his visited the graves of religious leaders like John Bunyan, Isaac Watts and John Wesley. When he went to a chapel that Wesley founded, he later wrote: "I felt I was upon holy ground."
At the beginning of his will, Heinz wrote: "I desire to set forth, at the very beginning of this Will, as the most important item in it, a confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Saviour."
He once said, “As I did not become a priest, I had to find another way to do some good to mankind.”
From earliest manhood, he believed that Sunday School was a major force for good. "To my mind, the Sunday School is the world's greatest living force for character building and good citizenship. It has paid me the largest dividends of any investment I ever made. I bear testimony that in my own life the Sunday School has been an influence and an inspiration second only to that of a consecrated mother."
Through his father's family, Heinz was a second cousin to Frederick Trump, who emigrated to the United States in 1885, and who was the paternal grandfather of Donald Trump, the US president.
In the winter of 1886, Heinz visited London, and wearing a top hat, went to Fortnum & Mason to demonstrate his products. It almost took his breath away when the merchant, without comment, quietly replied: "I believe, Mr Heinz, we’ll buy all of them.” England became the first overseas market to sell the Heinz brand.
He loved to travel - it was “his university”, one biographer said. He visited Europe almost every year between 1890 and the outbreak of of World War One. He twice went to China and Japan, the Holy Land once, and Egypt several times. "I am a part of all I have met," he said.
Heinz spent many holidays in Germany, mostly at the fashionable Bavarian spa resort of Bad Kissingen. In July 1914, Heinz was forbidden to leave his hotel room there when the First World War started, and he was forced to flee the country through Holland. Back in America, the Heinz family stopped speaking German and cut all the connections with the country.
In 1894, the greatest tragedy of Henry’s life occurred - the death of his dearly beloved wife, Sallie, at the age of 51, from pneumonia. He never married again.
In later years, he took to collecting art and antiques, particularly historical watches. His most-prized purchase was the watch that Admiral Nelson carried in the battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805, the day when, after setting the signal, "England expects every man to do his duty", he died on his flagship.
Heinz salesmen in the 1930s were expected to be at least 6ft tall, impeccably dressed and particularly eloquent at promoting the firm’s products. They also needed to be strong: the equipment they carried, which included chrome vacuum flasks, pickle forks and cans and bottles of produce, weighed about 30lbs.
Heinz died from pneumonia at the age of 74, on May 14, 1919, 50 years after he began his business. His employees raised money to put up a monument, which is still to be found in the main building of the company in Pittsburgh.
An old labourer at the Heinz factory, who stood unobtrusively near the door of the crowded auditorium during the employees' memorial meeting, said when it was over: "Well, they told no lies about him. He was an honest man, and he was my best friend."
After his death, his son Howard took over the management of the business. He built on his father’s successes, introducing the production of baby food and instant soups during the depression of the 1930s, both of which proved extremely popular.
In 1941, Henry John Heinz II, a grandson of its founder, headed the company. He oversaw a broad expansion of the business by building factories worldwide, including in Portugal, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Italy.
Today, about 32,000 people work at Heinz factories worldwide. The company’s revenue was $11.64 billion in 2012.
In the mid 1950s, “Heinz 57” varieties were advertised on Britain’s new commercial television channel, ITV. The jingle went: “Heinz 57, Heinz 57. You've a family to feed. Heinz have everything you need. Ready when you are, yes indeed. That's Heinz 57!”
As part of its marketing in the 1960s, Heinz also ran competitions to give away 57 Mini-Minor cars, 57 caravans, and 57 holidays.
In 1967, another slogan, perhaps more memorable than the last one, was created after sales of Heinz beans achieved a significant milestone: “A million housewives every day/ pick up a tin of beans and say:/'Beanz Meanz Heinz.'”
In 2013, US financial titan Warren Buffett's investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, along with 3G Capital, bought Heinz for $28bn (£18bn), in the food industry's largest ever acquisition.
Two years later, Heinz merged with another of the world’s biggest food groups, Kraft, in a deal backed by Buffett and 3G.
Perhaps Heinz was better left unadulterated: in February this year the group revealed it had taken a $15 billion (€13.4 billion) writedown because of a slump in the value of some of its biggest brands, and cut its dividend by a third. The company’s share price fell almost 28 per cent.
You can read more about the remarkable life of Henry Heinz and other pioneers of business as part of our collection of original obituaries of 50 Tycoons.