![]() ![]() ![]() After Tom Hale died in 1941, his son Elmer continued to run the company. Over the next few decades, Hale-Halsell gradually increased the orbit of its operations from its Oklahoma heartland to include parts of Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri. Hale-Halsell's products were distributed under the labels "Hale's Pride," "Hale's Leader," "Choctaw," and "Cowboy." During the 1920s and 1930s, the company diversified its manufacturing operations further when it began to grind and pack spices and create flavor extracts. In 1915, it renovated its McAlester headquarters to install Oklahoma's first coffee roasting plant and soon added a peanut butter factory as well. Hale-Halsell added additional branch offices in Holdenville in 1918, Hugo in 1920, Ada in 1922, and Okmulgee in 1926.Īs the company expanded geographically, Hale-Halsell also broadened its offerings. To capitalize on this new market, Hale-Halsell acquired Tulsa's Harvey Wholesale Company in 1912. Oil was discovered near Tulsa in 1909, leading to a tremendous population boom. By 1908, though, Muskogee had surpassed McAlester as the engine of Oklahoma's growth, and Hale-Halsell bought a building there to broaden its sphere of operations still further. (The company's headquarters remained in McAlester until 1969, when they moved to Tulsa.) With such a wide distribution network, Hale-Halsell's merchandise soon graced the shelves of a majority of the food retailers in the Oklahoma Territory. In 1904, Hale-Halsell purchased the Townsend Grocery Company in McAlester, Oklahoma, which soon became the hub for the company's expanding operations. The new venture, which was incorporated as the Hale-Halsell Grocery Company in 1903, quickly blossomed, and Hale began to extend his reach across the whole of the Oklahoma Territory. With seed money from his old friend Hugh Halsell, Hale opened the Durant Grocery Company in Durant, Oklahoma, in 1901. Hale thought that a grocery wholesaler with a warehouse on the Oklahoma side of the river could capture the lion's share of the market, which was growing with the advent of significant coal mining operations in Oklahoma at the dawn of the twentieth century. Local merchants had to tie up funds maintaining sufficient stocks of goods on hand in case of delays in resupply. Supplies were uncertain, however, due to the unreliability of transport across the often swollen Red River. At the time, small town merchants in frontier communities procured most of their goods from food wholesalers in west Texas. ![]() Hale was a successful hardware dealer who, in the late 1890s, identified the massive influx of settlers into Oklahoma as a potentially lucrative market for foodstuffs. Hale-Halsell was the brainchild of two west Texas entrepreneurs, Tom Hale and Hugh Halsell. ![]() The largest is the Git-n-Go chain of convenience stores, with over 120 outlets operating across five states. Over the years, the company has added a dozen subsidiaries, all of which are connected to Hale-Halsell's core competency of food supply. By following a conservative strategy of growth and acquisitions, and constantly remaining focused on the importance of high quality customer service and employee relations, Hale-Halsell has thrived amid the ever-changing landscape of the food wholesaler industry. The Hale-Halsell Company has grown from its modest roots as a food supplier to settlers in newly opened Indian Territory in Oklahoma at the turn of the twentieth century to flourish as one of the ten largest food wholesalers in the United States and one of the 400 largest privately owned companies in the country. NAIC: 445110 Supermarkets and Other Grocery (except Convenience) Stores 447110 Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores 445120 Convenience Stores 722310 Food Service Contractors 422410 Grocery and Related Product Wholesalers ![]()
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