Jewel Tea and JTs General Store History

From Jewel Tea to JTs General Store

In 1899 Frank Skiff started the company with $700 and a horse and wagon in Chicago, Illinois. The company was originally established as the Jewel Tea Company, a home routes business delivering coffee, tea, spices, and dry goods to homemakers. The company grew and prospered until World War I, when it fell on hard times due to scarce manpower and overexpansion. After reorganization in 1920, the then Jewel Tea Company began to return to health.

The business was always built on providing value and service to the American homemaker, and it was as early as 1932 that the company recognized the needs of its employees by establishing one of the first profit sharing retirement programs in the United States.

In 1934 the company began to diversify by adding food stores and later drug and discount stores. The home routes business became known as the Jewel Home Shopping Service. As the children of the original business became retailing giants, known as Jewel Companies, Inc., the original business no longer was an important piece of the total. In 1980 Jewel decided it only wanted to operate very large businesses. So, despite the fact that the original business was profitable every year since 1920, several alternatives were considered. Because of Jewel Companies concern for the people in the original business, a plan was negotiated to sell each route to the employee who operated it and transfer the central inventory and other assets to a cooperative which would serve the newly independent route operators. In May, 1981, the management of the original business successfully fulfilled the condition of the transfer. The company changed its name to JTs General Store to avoid confusion with the formerly affiliated Jewel Companies.

In June of 1984, Jewel Companies was acquired by American Stores in an unfriendly tender offer. Although Jewel Companies no longer exists today, its philosophy of sharing both the benefits and responsibilities of the business with its people still lives in its original business, now called JTs General Store.

The Jewel retail stores were sold to Albertson's, Inc, then to SuperValu in June of 2006.

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