Word: acco
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...evidence that the A & P had time & again sold below cost to beat down rivals in price wars or to gain volume by switching profits from its non-retail subsidiaries to stores that lost money. Moreover, he found that A & P's buying subsidiary, Atlantic Commission Co. (Acco), so dominated the produce market that it not only bought the best produce for A & P but sold what it did not want to A & P's competitors at a profit, thus making sure that their costs would be higher...
...dollars worth of food annually [the gross at the time] at a profit of 1½? on the dollar, is an achievement one may well be proud of." He granted that many of A & P's actions, "standing alone, are devoid of wrongful character." But he found that Acco was the "rotten thread" that gave A & P's other operations "a polluted colored light...
Since then, A & P says that it has abolished Acco's double role. It has also leaned so far backward to avoid selling below cost that even its fiercest rivals now concede that they can frequently undersell A & P. In New Orleans last week, Independent Grocer John Schwegmann, who runs a thriving supermarket, said: "I started on a shoestring right down the street from the A & P supermarket and I have done all right. I consider them the fairest competition I have...