Career
Early businesses
Heinz began packing foodstuffs on a small scale at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1869.There he founded Heinz Noble & Company with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, and began marketing horseradish. The company went bankrupt in 1875, but the following year Heinz founded another company, F & J Heinz, with his brother John Heinz and a cousin Frederick Heinz. One of this company's first products was tomato ketchup.
H. J. Heinz Company
The company continued to grow, and in 1888 Heinz bought out his other two partners and reorganized the company as the H. J. Heinz Company, the name it carries to the present day. Its famous slogan, "57 varieties", was introduced by Heinz in 1896. The reason this number was chosen is because there were originally 57 varieties of Heinz products, but now there are more.
H. J. Heinz was incorporated in 1905, and Heinz served as its first president, remaining in the position for the rest of his life. Under his tutelage, the company was noted for fair treatment of workers and for pioneering safe and sanitary food preparation. He provided his employees with free medical care; recreation facilities such as gyms, swimming pools, and gardens; and educational opportunities such as libraries, free concerts, and lectures. Heinz led a successful lobbying effort in favor of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. During World War I, he worked with the Food Administration.
He was a director in many financial institutions and was chairman of a committee to devise means to protect Pittsburgh from floods.
At the time of Heinz's death in Pittsburgh at the age of 74, the H. J. Heinz Company had over twenty food processing plants, and also included seed farms and container factories. Heinz was the grandfather of H. J. Heinz II, great-grandfather of U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania in the United States and great-great grandfather of Henry John Heinz IV, Andre Thierstein Heinz and Christopher Drake Heinz.
