Henry John Heinz was born on October 11, 1844.

The boy grew up surrounded by the

hardworking family and started gaining experience in the field of horticulture in a very young
age. Mother always spoke to Henry in German and he learned German pedantry, which remained
one of his key qualities throughout the life. When the boy turned 6 years old, he started to help
around the house and garden. At the age of nine, Henry nailed the recipes of pickles and started
selling homemade grated horseradish in the downtown of Pittsburgh. Even though many of his
peers worked as hard as Henry, he realized that it also could be a good way to build a career. The
rest of children often worked to provide financial assistance to their parents only.

When Henry turned 10, the parents granted him 3,000 square meters of land and in the age of 12,
he was the owner of 12,000 squares meters of the land, which was perfect for growing vegetables
on it. Gardening became boy’s passion – he was spending hours and days in the garden, sparing
no effort.

Sometime later, he started driving his crop to the local greengrocer who was selling vegetables
and fruits to the residents of Pittsburgh. However, gradually, with German thoroughness, Henry
expanded his own business – soon one could buy Heinz’s grated horseradish at the grocery. Its
taste was already familiar to many locals, as Henry has always used his mother’s recipes.

At the time of Henry J. Heinz childhood, fooling the customers was a regular part of any
business in the U.S. One of the local newspapers wrote, “In so-called horseradish we can find
more turnips and water soaked wood sticks than an expected product.” Therefore, in order to
show an excellent quality of his product, Henry packed it in clear glass jars. Such openness and a
great quality of the product made a good impression, thus increasing the popularity of the grated
horseradish Heinz offered.

When Henry J. Heinz had graduated from the high school, his garden has grown to such an
extent that he had to hire workers. Over 1861, when the Henry was just 17 years old, he earned a
decent amount of money for those days – $ 2,400 (if translated into today’s money, you would
get something around $ 43,000).

Henry’s mother, Anna Margaret Schmidt, always cheered and supported him in the case of
failure; she knew how to comfort her son and instill confidence in him. She taught Henry
communication skills. In addition, Anna Margaret Schmidt, being a very religious woman,
sincerely hoped that her son would become a priest – she even brought him to the neighborhood
Lutheran school. However, Henry was not interested in religious practice, because he felt the
compulsion to the figures and tables. This is the reason why he left the Lutheran school and
decided to go through business training in one of the top financial America’s colleges – Duff’s
Mercantile College. Henry J. Heinz financed his education on his own, using the money
collected from the sale of the vegetables from his garden. In college, Heinz learned how to keep
records and accounting books – later he was constantly taking notes and led a strict accounting of
income and expenses of his business.
Compare with national foods

Heinz’s marketing genius and his lifelong commitment to purity led him to see the value of
Heinz Products being considered as superior and purer than the rest of the market. “The young
businessman wanted his name to be the first and only one [...] associated with pure, healthy,
delicious mass-produced condiments.”54 As early as 1901, Heinz became one of the
first companies to hire chemists and he is credited “for coining the term ‘quality control
department.’”55 In contrast, other manufacturers’ processed foods were containing more and
more harmful ingredients56 to keep manufacturing costs low.57 For example, one “Commercial
Mushroom Ketchup” recipe consisted of beef livers and “no mushrooms at all” and contained
chemical “coal-tar dyes” in it to make the ketchup look more edible. Many types of ketchup were
even cooked in copper tubs with the result that the copper and ketchup formed “a poisonous
substance.” In fact, according to an 1896 study in California, about 90% of ketchup brands
“contained injurious ingredients” such as salicylic acid which is said to have caused deaths.58

 
As a result of these inferior ketchups flooding the market, Heinz saw the immense potential to
increase his profits and to increase the health of the nation, if he could create, sell, and
advertise a product as chemically pure. But, up to 1903, Heinz’s own ketchup also contained
salicylic acid and also benzoic acid along with coal-tar dyes. Before this time, Heinz had actually
thought that preservatives and chemicals were necessary to keep the food edible. However, after
learning these chemicals were not safe, he quickly changed his opinion. Mueller, a Heinz
executive, dramatically showed this change of heart after attending the 1904 Pure Food
Congress. He declared “that Heinz needed to discontinue using all preservatives,” as “if it were
possible to make preservative-free foods, [...] it would revolutionize the present methods
of manufacture.”59 Heinz was not only a marketing genius, but also a visionary who committed
to new technologies and processes to give his company competitive advantages.

 
And so, at the beginning of the 20th century, G. F. Mason, the chief scientist at Heinz’s food
labs, began searching for the perfect preservative for ketchup. However, it was not easy as, in his
words, “Every possible means of preserving with [...] natural agents [vinegar] were used, but
without satisfactory results.”60 He found that ketchup fermented too quickly without
preservatives and that the fermented ketchup would not sell as it did not look very appetizing
(and was full of mold and bacteria).61 Eventually, Mason was able to discover a good
preservative-free recipe and thus “revolutionize” the industry.
 
By 1906, Heinz was producing “five million bottles of preservative-free ketchup” a year. He
immediately began marketing it and “proudly printed on the neck label of the ketchup bottle that
the contents were free of benzoate of soda [a preservative].”62 This was the first of many
methods he used to promote his now preservative-free ketchup. But, as a result, many
other manufacturers claimed that the Heinz ketchup had some sort of “secret chemical
ingredient,” a false accusation.63 The current FDA historian writes, in fact, “All the [Heinz]
company did was create what eventually became known as ‘good manufacturing practices’ [...]
in a sanitary manufacturing plant.”
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