John Sexton & Company, also known as Sexton Quality Foods, was a broad line national wholesale grocer that serviced the restaurant, hotel and institutional trade from regional warehouses and truck fleets located in major metropolitan areas of the United States. Sexton Quality Foods eventually became US Foodservice in 1997. The company was established in Chicago in 1883 by John Sexton.
Beginnings John Peter Sexton was born June 29, 1858, in Dundas, Ontario, Canada to Michael and Ellen (Connors) Sexton. (Michael and Ellen had emigrated from County Clare, Ireland and married in Dundas on May 11, 1854, with Cornelius Sexton and Elizabeth Connors witnesses.)
John Sexton worked in a general store in Niagara Falls, Ontario 1874–1877. He immigrated to Chicago in 1877 at 18 and began working for various wholesale grocers in Chicago as a clerk and city salesman. During this time, he realized that there was an opportunity to specialize in selling quality teas, coffees and spices.
John Sexton married Anna Louise Bartleman (born May 22, 1866, Chicago) on August 11, 1886, in Chicago. (Anna Louise's parents, Christian and Theresa (Albrecht) Bartleman had emigrated from Saxe-Coburg Gotha, Germany in the mid-1850s.) The couple had five children: Thomas George (born February 21, 1889, Chicago), Franklin (born 2/16/1891), Sherman J. (born 9/12/1892), Helen (Egan) (b.?) and Ethel (Marten) (born 1896). The family home was at 2238 North Dayton Street in Chicago. All three sons and both sons-in-law worked for the company in various roles.
History
John Sexton & Co. established In 1883, at the age of 25, John Sexton invested his entire life savings of $400 and formed a corporation with George A. Hitchcock, the Hitchcock & Sexton Company, which opened a small office at 5 Wabash in downtown Chicago. Within a year, Hitchcock & Sexton moved to 20 State Street (near State and Lake now 200 N. State Street) which was owned by John DeKoven.
As business increased, Hitchcock & Sexton opened three more retail stores in the Chicago area, including one in Joliet. This made Hitchcock & Sexton one of the first retail coffee and tea chain proprietors in the United States. In 1886, Hitchcock sold Sexton his interest in the business and renamed the company John Sexton & Co. To help run the business, John Sexton recruited his sisters Mary (Barton); Sarah (O'Leary); Brigid "Bea" (Mulligan), who later married widower Francis Upton; and his younger brother James J. Sexton to move to Chicago from Dundas, Ontario. The sisters each ran one of his retail stores and lived above it with their families. In addition to family, John Sexton relied on recruiting high-quality employees by offering attractive wages, sales commissions and fair dealing.
As word spread of Sexton's quality products, fair dealings and unconditional guarantee, restaurant and hotel customers came to the Sexton retail stores to buy spices, tea and coffee. Sexton also added dried and canned goods to his stores. In addition, he began to call on the Chicago restaurants and hotels directly. He hired salesmen and delivery drivers to service on the wholesale accounts, and purchased horses and wagons to make deliveries. By 1888, Sexton decided to close his four retail stores and focus solely on his Chicago wholesale customers. He expanded the State Street store by renting the rest of the building.
In 1890, Sexton established an institutional department to call on hospitals, colleges, schools, railroad dining cars and religious organizations around the country. These customers required consistent quality products that were available in sufficient quantity all year long. Sexton developed an extensive product line as well as a distribution network based in Chicago. To call on the institutional market throughout the country, he recruited commission-based salesmen in the major urban markets of Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C..
In addition to the major urban markets, Sexton recruited regional commission-based salesmen to call on customers who required quality groceries in large quantity to feed their clients or work force, but were far from major metropolitan areas. Regional salesmen called on lumbermen, ranchers, miners and grain farmers who had large work forces to feed. These salesmen would also call on hotels, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools and orphanages. To further establish the Sexton brand, he advertised in specific hospital and institutional dietician publications. The most effective marketing was at professional trade conventions where Sexton Quality Foods would sponsor a tasting booth featuring its products. Institutional customers could sample products and Sexton salesmen could develop contacts and sales leads. This proved enormously successful since no other grocery company at the time was effectively servicing this huge market. The 1893 Chicago's World Fair provided a chance to showcase Sexton's ability to deliver quality food in large quantity to meet the demand of the huge influx of tourist into Chicago.
In 1898, John Sexton & Co. was incorporated. The company directors were John Sexton, president; Dan E. Upton (cousin), vice president, Harold R. White, secretary; and William M. O'Leary (nephew), treasurer.
As John Sexton & Co. grew, the Sexton name became synonymous with quality products, fair dealings, uniform consistent food quality and unconditional guarantee. A bronze plaque hung in the building lobby read "All who come here to buy or sell fairly are always welcome."
Some of the original brand names used by Sexton included Calumet, LaSalle, Pride of the West, Pyramid and Edelweiss. An innovation pioneered by John Sexton & Co. was the 1 gallon #10 can. The #10 can was sanitary, economical and revolutionized restaurant kitchen storage since it was easy to lift, easy to open, stacked well and did not require refrigeration. The #10 can is still the industry standard.
At the end of 1907, John Sexton & Co. had 125 employees in Chicago, a large Chicago customer base serviced by a city sales force, a national customer base serviced by a regional sales force, and a strong rural mail order trade. Sexton had outgrown the State Street location, so moved the company four blocks west to the corner of Lake and Franklin Streets (236 W. Lake Street). In 1908, Sexton Quality Foods leased the entire six-story building for a term of 10 years that expired April 1918. Prior to moving in, electric service and elevators were installed. A side note in Chicago real estate history, in 1885, J.B. Clow & Sons, a cast-iron pipe manufacturer entered into a 99-year ground lease with landowner John Peacock at a rate of $3,000 per year with 4% annual increases. That same year, J.B. Clow & Sons constructed a six-story office building. In 1908, J.B. Clow & Sons relocated to a larger building at Harrison and the River and leased the building to John Sexton & Co. By 1909, John Peacock's widow sold the ground to George L. Thatcher for $173,000. John Sexton & Co. organized the building into sales, warehouse, manufacturing and laboratory. At the new location, Sexton expanded into the manufacture of pickles, relishes, spices and preserves. Company horses were stabled at a livery one mile west of the building.
Modernization
By 1912, Sexton had outgrown the Lake and Franklin location. In 1913, Sexton purchased a parcel of land on the north side of the Chicago River on the corner of Illinois and Orleans Streets. The majority of Sexton's customers at that time were not in Chicago. Access to the railroads was critical to growing the business. Institutional customers throughout the country would order groceries by the railcar from Sexton Quality Foods, and Sexton wanted his new building to be able to receive and dispatch rail shipments directly. In 1913, construction of a , six-story, fire sprinkler-protected, multi-use building designed by architect Alfred S. Alschuler was started.
In 1915, Sexton moved into the new building that housed the corporate offices, sales offices, country division, dry goods warehouse, food laboratory, refrigeration plant, and the Sexton Quality Foods manufacturing division, the Sunshine Kitchens, which produced private label sauces, soups and specialty products exclusively sold under the John Sexton & Co. banner. The first floor was divided into railcar receiving, railcar shipping, country parcel shipping, city delivery and city receiving. The building was large enough to unload three railcars simultaneously.
By 1921, Sexton had established distribution warehouses in San Francisco, Dallas and Omaha. This was done partly to improve customer service by reducing the time between order and delivery. In addition, a majority of canned fruits, jellies and preserves were grown and packed on the west coast. Considerable freight expense could be saved by dividing the products according to regional demand. These warehouses would later become important branches for Sexton Quality Foods.
In 1924, John Sexton decided to modernize the company's city delivery fleet by purchasing 26 electric trucks from The Commercial Truck Company of America in Philadelphia, and purchasing six gasoline-powered, 1.5 ton, six-wheeled trucks manufactured by Diamond T of Chicago. The modernization retired 50 horses, 35 grocery wagons and saved $12,000 in the first year. Each CT electric truck averaged per delivery day, and were extremely reliable, easy to drive and well adapted for city deliveries. However, in cold weather, their batteries were less efficient and the hard rubber tires had poor traction on snow-covered streets. The result was a diminished range for the electric trucks. The electric trucks were in service until the late 1930s and were gradually phased out as the Chicago area expanded into the suburbs, the delivery route mileage increased, the roads got better and commercial truck reliability improved. The six Diamond T Trucks were used for suburban Chicago deliveries and averaged each per delivery day in 1924.
In 1897, Sexton Quality Foods began publishing a mail order catalog, targeted to rural customers, and selling food and farm supplies. Orders were shipped from Chicago via rail to regional terminals where railway express would make the final delivery to the customer. Sexton Quality Foods' catalog business was an important division for years. It was ultimately led by Sexton's second oldest son, Franklin, who later led the coffee and tea division and became the company treasurer. Known as the "Country Division", the majority of the products sold were coffee, spices, flour, canned fruits and canned vegetables. However, paint, motor oil, nails, roof tar and canvas were also sold. The Sexton Country Division flourished until automobiles became affordable and rural automobile ownership increased. Rural customers were then more likely to drive to town to make frequent smaller purchases rather than place large orders from Chicago. The last country division catalog was published in the late 1930s.
National expansion In 1928, at age 70, John Sexton stepped down as president of Sexton Quality Foods but remained its chairman. He asked his sons, Thomas, Franklin, and Sherman, who should lead the company. All agreed that Sherman was the best choice, and he became president of the company in 1928. Franklin remained the treasurer and Thomas remained vice president of merchandising. In 1930, at age 71, John Sexton died while on vacation in Los Angeles. After his death, the ownership of the company was divided between John Sexton's wife Annie Louise (33%) and their children Thomas (13.3%), Franklin (13.3%), Sherman (13.3%), Helen (13.3%) and Ethel (13.3%).