Henry John Heinz (1844-1919)

Henry John Heinz founded and built up one of the largest food products corporations in the word, and in doing so created one of the greatest brand names of all time.

Henry John Heinz was born in Pittsburgh on 11 October 1844m but grew up in nearly Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania. Young Henry John Heinz began his food marketing career with a garden plot at his western Pennsylvania home. He was selling his produce at the age of eight and in his teens hired several subordinates to help him cultivate and distribute his products.

After some business college training, he worked at his father’s brickyard, but returned to food production in 1869.

 By the time he was in his early twenties Heinz was running a small but highly profitable business and beginning to specialize in the growing and production of horseradish.

Heinz expanded quickly into other products such as vinegar, pickles and sauerkraut and branched out as far afield as Chicago and St Louis. Heinz struggled through the depression of the 1870s, but the company he formed with a brother and a cousin had become quite healthy by the end of the decade.

The new firm invested in new food production equipment, in particular for the newly invented processes of preserving food in tinned metal containers. He reorganized it into the H. J Heinz Co. in the late 1880s. Heinz was one of the first to realize the vast potential of the newly invented process for preserving food in tinned metal containers and in 1881 made further investments in this technology.
Henry John Heinz (1844-1919)