Henry John Heinz

‘Her children rise up and call her blessed...’ Proverbs 31:28 NKJV

At age six, Henry John Heinz began helping his mother tend the small garden behind their family home. At twelve, he was working one and a half hectares of garden, using a horse and cart for his three–times–a–week deliveries to grocery stores throughout the city of Pittsburg. He went on to found his own company and named it 57 Varieties. The Henry John Heinz Company was incorporated in 1905, and today, over one hundred years later, it sells more than thirteen hundred products worldwide, ranging from tomato sauce to baby food. But there are other things you need to know: Henry John Heinz loved Jesus and was deeply involved in the promotion of Sunday school in Pittsburg and around the world. His company was noted for pioneering safe and sanitary food preparation and for being ahead of its time in employee relations. He provided free medical benefits, swimming and gymnasium facilities, and promoted women to positions of greater responsibility, making them supervisors. He earned a reputation for enhancing the working and living conditions of his workers. In his will, Henry John Heinz said: ‘I desire to set forth at the very beginning of this will, as the most important item in it, a confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Saviour. I also desire to bear witness to the fact that throughout my life, in which there were unusual joys and sorrows, I have been wonderfully sustained by my faith in God through Jesus Christ. This legacy was left to me by my consecrated mother, a woman of strong faith, and to it I attribute any success I have attained.’