Jason’s babblings.

Welcome back! Gather ’round Grandpa Jason for another story time. Asker, bring me my pipe and reading glasses and I’ll begin the story of Henry Rothson, the coupon pioneer.

Back in the late 1800’s, there was a man named Charles William Post, who founded Postum Cereal Co., or Post for short, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Incidentally, 11 years after Post was founded, a man named Will Keith Kellogg founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which was later renamed to Kellogg’s because the previous name wouldn’t fit on any of the envelopes they ordered. With the new competition brought on by Kellogg’s, Post needed an edge that would push people to buy his product over Kellogg’s. The idea of the coupon really helped tip the scales in Post’s favor. If people would buy Post cereal with the coupon at a discount, then they’d be more willing to buy it at full price when they realized Post was a superior cereal. Most records report that Post was the inventor of the coupon idea.

This is false. His case was simply the first case where the coupon was so widely used and successful. The real inventor of the coupon was a dentist named Henry Rothson in the 1850’s. Henry was found that his patients weren’t coming to his offices often enough, and due to poor hygiene habits in the 1800’s, their teeth were rotting and getting cavities far too often. He observed that this was due to a lack of wealth for most of his patients. He came up with the idea of giving each of his patients a slip of paper – a coupon – offering discounted services if the patient came back within 6 months for another checkup. At that time, he or she would receive another coupon, and so forth. The benefits of this ingenious system were twofold. First, his patients were keeping their teeth cleaner and healthier, which in turn made their bodies healthier. Second, this system made the cost of practicing dentistry go down drastically. The cost of cleaning and checking-up clean teeth was much less than fixing someone whose teeth were rotting out of their head. Henry’s offices raked in 150% more profit after introducing the coupon into his business practices.

Henry had a son, Jacob, who was hired by Post in 1908 as an accountant. He introduced his father’s ideas to C.W. Post, who implemented them with quite a bit of success.

Thanks for reading! Next time I’m going to discuss the origin of Santa Claus.