#83 1948 · A&P (with USDA) · Retail / agriculture
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.
what everyone would do
Run a reputation-repair ad campaign, apologize publicly, or fund some visible corporate-goodwill initiative -- the standard playbook for a company trying to recover from a criminal conviction, all of which are exactly the kind of self-interested messaging a public primed to distrust the company would discount immediately.
what they saw
A company just convicted of abusing its market power can't credibly claim trustworthiness through its own words, no matter how the message is framed -- but it can hand over an entire competition to independent judges and outside breeders, put nothing of its own on the line except funding, and let the results speak with an authority no ad copy could buy.
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.
why it works
Because A&P had no say in the judging criteria or the outcome, the contest produced a genuinely useful public good -- a meatier chicken breed -- whose value existed completely independent of whether anyone believed A&P's motives were sincere; the trust signal wasn't the claim 'we care about consumers,' it was the objectively verifiable existence of a better chicken that any skeptic could evaluate on the plate. Funding a competition judged on hard, measurable criteria (weight, feed efficiency, meat yield) rather than A&P's own preference meant the outcome couldn't be gamed to flatter the sponsor, which is precisely what made it credible as something other than more self-serving PR.
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.
where it breaks
The approach only works when there's a genuine, verifiable public good the company can fund without controlling the outcome -- a competition whose judging criteria are vague, subjective, or quietly steerable toward the sponsor's interest reads as the same self-serving PR it was meant to replace. It also requires the underlying problem to be one an open competition can actually solve (a technical or measurable challenge with independent entrants), which doesn't generalize to reputation problems rooted in an ongoing practice the company hasn't actually stopped -- funding a contest doesn't repair trust if the abusive behavior that caused the distrust is still happening.
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.
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
- [3]Today We're Eating the Winners of the 1948 Chicken of Tomorrow ContestModern Farmer, 2014modernfarmer.com