Nearly 150 years ago, The Great American Tea Company opened a store on Vesey Street in New York City and began selling tea, coffee and spices at value prices. Soon stores sprung up all around the metropolitan area and salesmen took their wares to the road in horse-drawn carriages bound for New England, the mid-west and the south. In 1870 the Company was renamed the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, in honor of the first transcontinental railroad and hopes of expanding across the continent. (From The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company website.)