#144 1948 · A&P (with USDA) · Retail / agriculturecostly-signal
Convicted of monopoly abuse, A&P rebuilt its reputation by giving away a better chicken instead of buying better ads
the problem
A company convicted of criminal antitrust behavior needed a public-image fix no ad campaign could credibly deliver
background
In 1945, A&P — then America's largest grocery chain and a pioneer of the high-volume, low-cost supermarket model that had put many small grocers out of business — was convicted by the U.S. Justice Department of criminal restraint of trade. No ad campaign or press release was going to credibly undo the image of a company that had just been found guilty of using its market power against smaller competitors.
Separately, postwar consumers coming out of wartime meat rationing wanted more substantial protein, and existing chicken breeds were bred mainly for eggs, not meat — a scrawny, unsatisfying product next to newly available beef and pork. No single breeder or company had an incentive to solve this industry-wide genetics problem alone, since a better breeding line only pays off if it can be verified and adopted at scale.
the move
A&P partnered with the USDA to fund the 'Chicken of Tomorrow' contest: independent breeders across 44 states submitted hatching eggs to state and then regional rounds through 1946-47, with finalists' chicks raised under controlled, identical conditions and judged purely on objective criteria — weight, feed efficiency, edible meat yield over a 12-week growth period. The national final at the University of Delaware in 1948 judged roughly 2,000 birds from 40 finalist breeders on 18 measured criteria, with no role for A&P's own preferences in picking a winner.
the payoff
Charles Vantress's red-feathered New Hampshire-Cornish hybrid won, decisively outperforming purebred entries, and Vantress's genetics — later crossed with contest runner-up lines into the Arbor Acres breed — became the direct ancestor of nearly all broiler chickens raised commercially in the world today.
what came after
The contest is credited by agricultural historians as the founding event of the modern broiler industry and the shift toward proprietary hybrid poultry genetics that farmers buy fresh each generation rather than breed themselves; A&P's antitrust conviction is a footnote today, while the chicken the contest produced is on nearly every dinner plate.
filed under
references
- [1]How the 'Chicken of Tomorrow' Contest in 1948 Created the Bird We Eat TodayNational Geographic, 2023nationalgeographic.com
- [2]Chicken of Tomorrow ContestWikipedia, 2026en.wikipedia.org