Ralston Purina Company

Just before the turn of the century, as financial panic gripped the country, William H. Danforth, just out of St. Louis University, was advised by his father to “get into a business that fills a need for lots of people—something they’ll need all year around in good and bad times.”

In 1894, Danforth founded the Robinson-Danforth Commission Company in St. Louis, featuring a new animal feed product made of corn, oats and molasses.

The checkerboard symbol was created by Danforth in 1894. In 1896, the Robinson-Danforth Commission Company was formed, and the little feed business was going full steam.

As the usage of houses on daily life decrease, food for houses product will decrease so the founder enters the human foods market in 1898 the human foods business with “Purina” brand whole-wheat breakfast cereals.

In 1902, teaming up with Dr. Ralston, a popular health-food advocate of the period, Danforth renamed the business the Ralston Purina Company. ‘Purina’ remained the coined word for their horse feed. In the same year, Mr. Danforth used red and white checkerboard for the company dresses. The Checkerboard trademark has since been used with a consistency unique in American business.

The name Ralston became part of the company name because of an association with a Dr. Ralston who had organized a national health club (Ralston Health Club) that claimed approximately 800,000 members.

In 1932 Donald Danforth was made President of the Ralston Purina Company. Wheat Chex was introduced in 1937 followed by Rice Chex cereals, in 1950. In 1957, the company moved from the animal feed market to the domestic dog food market with the introduction of Purina Dog Chow.

During the 1990’s and into 2000, Ralston Purina sold or spun off all of its non-petcare businesses. In 2001 Ralston Purina Company merges with Nestlé subsidiary. Nestlé Purina Pet Care Company is created.
Ralston Purina Company

Pillsbury and Company

Charles Alfred Pillsbury graduated from Dartmouth College at the age of twenty-one. In 1869 he came to Minneapolis, where he bought an interest in a small flouring mill at the Falls. The purchase was viewed as a bad move at the time, since flour milling was neither stable nor lucrative and the Pillsbury had no milling experience. There were then four or five mills located there, of the old-fashioned pattern, using buhr stones for grinding grain.

Although young Pillsbury knew nothing of the flour business he quickly concerned himself with the supposed inferiority of spring wheat flour as compared to the winter wheat product.

Pillsbury's huskiness habits led him t0 a thorough investigation of the methods of the business in which he is engaged and he applied himself industriously to mastering the details of flour milling.

Pillsbury installed middlings purifiers, machines invented by Edmund La Croix, that could produce fine white flour from the district’s hard spring wheat. He also imported the roller process into the United States from Hungary.

The mill showed a $6,000 profit a year later. His was also the first American mill to use steam rollers instead of burr stones to crush the wheat. In 1870 Pillsbury leased a second mill, doubling the capacity of the firm.

In 1872 Mr. Pillsbury associated with him his father, George A. Pillsbury, his uncle, John S. Pillsbury having been with him since the beginning, and enlarged the scope of his operations. In 1872, he founded C.A. Pillsbury & Co. and began purchasing and building more mills. By 1886, the Pillsbury mills produced 10,000 barrels a day.

By 1880 the family partnership had acquired four other mills, and in 1881 they built the largest single flour mill and most advanced flour mill in the world named Pillsbury A Mill.

The mill began operation on July 5, 1881 with a 4,000 barrels-a-day capacity; two upright 55 Victor Water Wheels of 1,200 horse-power -each supplied the original power. The mill originally produced 5,000barrels of flour per day, a capacity later increased to more than 17,00 barrels. Pillsbury’s Best Flour is still sold around the world.

At a later period, his brother, the late F. C. Pillsbury, was admitted to the firm which continued as Charles A. Pillsbury & Co., until the acquisition of the milling property of this firm and that belonging to W. D. Washburn by an English syndicate, under the name of the Pillsbury-Washburn syndicate.

In 1928 Washburn-Crosby Co. becomes General Mills. General Mills bought Pillsbury in 2001 and succeeded to its interest in the joint venture.
Pillsbury and Company

Borden Incorporation

The Borden Company, originally named the New York Condensed Milk Company and later the Borden Condensed Milk Company, was founded in 1857 by Gail Borden (1801-1874), who established a milk depot on Canal Street in Manhattan and a processing plant in Wollcottsville, Connecticut. At one time, Borden was the largest U.S. producer of dairy and pasta products.

Born in New York, Borden was a bit of a renaissance man by the time he reached his 40s. He had been a publisher, a cattleman, a surveyor, a civil servant, a politician and a missionary. In the mid-1840s, he began to focus on methods to keep food from spoiling.

In 1853, Borden began working on a process to condense milk as a means of preventing spoilage. Four years later, he established his first condensery in Burrville and called his nascent business the New York Condensed Milk Company, later to become the Borden Company. Borden was the first company to develop a patent for the process of condensing milk as well as the first company to use glass milk bottles.

The first product Borden tried to sell was a dehydrated meat biscuit, and his experience with it led him to patenting and marketing condensed milk, a form of milk that needed no refrigeration.

Over the years, Borden turned into Borden Inc. with a consumer products division operating under six operating groups: dairy, grocery, snacks, specialty, consumer chemicals and bakery. In 1968, Borden created Borden, Inc. International, a mirror image of the domestic operation with just about every Borden product distributed in America also appearing overseas.
Borden Incorporation

Dole Food Company

The Dole Food Company is the world’s largest producer and marketer of fresh fruit, vegetables, flowers and packaged foods. The company’s 2011 revenues were US$7.2 billion.

In 1851, Castle & Cooke was founded in Hawaii by missionaries Samuel Northrup Castle and Amos Starr Cooke. In 1901, James Dole founded the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. Dole, who would be remembered as the ‘Pineapple King’, established his first pineapple plantation in the central plateau of the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

In 1932, Castle & Cooke purchased a 21% interest in the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. In 1972, Castle & Cooke discontinue the use the ‘Cabana’ label that had been used by Standard Fruit Company and introduced the ‘Dole’ label in its place.

From 1972 to 1992, Castle & Cooke made numerous acquisitions and divestures. The company increased its holding in shipping assets and containers. In the 1960s, Castle & Cooke acquired the remainder of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company and the Standard Fruit Company.

In 1991, Castle & Cook changed it corporate name to Dole Food Company, Inc. Commensurate with this change, the company reorganized, placing all fruit and vegetable operations under the name of Dole Food Company.

Since 2002, American David Murdock has been the sole owner of Dole; he also serves as its chief executive officer.
Dole Food Company

Del Monte Foods, Inc.

Eighteen California packers, representing about half of the fruit canners in California, formed the California Fruit Canners Association in 1899.

Seventeen years later the association incorporated under the name California Packers Association (Calpak). The association’s premier brand was Del Monte. It was not until 1967 that the Calpack name was phase out and the company used only ‘Del Monte’.

The canning association had expanded to 28 firms, including plants in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Hawaii and more than 50 marketed under the Del Monte label.

From the beginning, the company expanded its operations and packed a vest array of products, including peaches, baked beans, olives, berries, squash, sweet potatoes, peppers, cranberries, dried fruit, jams and jellies. Del Monte aggressively marketed its products.

During the 1920s, the company expanded its operations into an array of other canning business including tuna and coffee.

When the United States entered World War II, the company sent 50 percent of its canned fruits and vegetables to the military.

Through an extensive series of post-World War II acquisitions and mergers, the company became a full-scale multinational with banana plantations in the Caribbean, a tuna canning plant in Puerto Rico, tomato fields and canning plants in Mexico, pineapple operations in Thailand and Kenya, vegetables canning plants in Italy and peach packing plants in South Africa.

In 1979, Del Monte merged with RJ Reynolds Industries. During the following two decades there were several ownership changes. In 1999 Del Mote Foods became a publicly traded company. Del Monte fresh produce was then spun off, although it still continues to display the Del Monte label, as do independent firms in Canada, Africa, Europe and Asia.

In 2011 the company was acquired by an investor group led funds affiliated with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Con, L.P Vestar Capital Partners and Centerview Partners.
Del Monte Foods, Inc.

H. W Lay & Company

Herman W. Lay was a salesman for Sunshine Biscuit Company which were manufactured by the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company in Kansas City, Kansas, but during the Depression he lost his job.

In 1932 Lay was hired by Barrel Foods an Atlanta snack food firm, and began selling peanut butter sandwiches in southern Kentucky and Tennessee. His job is to sell and make deliveries for the company by his model A Ford touring car.

Lay was an aggressive business and began acquiring distributorships. As his territories expanded, his profits arise. When Barrett’s founder died in 1937, Lay bought the company, which included plants in Atlanta and Memphis, Tennessee.

Lay began manufacturing potato chips in 1938. He changed the company name onto H. W Lay Co. Inc on October 2, 1939.

During the World Way II, the sale of potato chips increased in part because of the lack of competitive snack foods that contained sugar and chocolate due to rationing.

By end of the World War II, Lay’s had become a major regional produce of snack food. After the war Lay automated his potato chip manufacturing business and diversified its products.

Popcorn, manufactured in Nashville, Tennessee, was the first product to have the ‘Lay’s’ brand name. Lay also manufactured potato chips.

In 1961 Frito-Lay Incorporated was formed by the merger of Frito Company and the H. W Lay and Company. In 1966 the company released Doritos, which became popular nationwide.

In 1965 PepsiCo, Incorporated, was formed through a merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company and Frito Lay, Incorporated.
H. W Lay & Company

Kellogg Company

Willie Keith Kellogg (1860-1951) open his company in 1906, He was a hard worker and natural business leader.

His brother Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) invented the first flaked cereal in 1894.

John Harvey and Will Kellogg continued their experiment; before long they end up with their first flakes cereal: Granose Flakes. Granose was frost marketed in 1895, and by year’s end more than 50 tons of Granose had been manufactured and sold.

In 1898 Kellogg establishing the Sanitas Food Company, with Will Kellogg installed as president and manager.

Will Kellogg recognized the potential of corn flakes as mainstream breakfast food. Constant experimenting with various recipes led to the invention in 1902 of a cereal based on flakes of corn and flavored with barley malt. The infamous Corn Flakes were born.

In February 1906 Will Kellogg set up the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company and the following month the company officially acquired the rights to Toasted Corn Flakes.

Under his leadership, the company posted profits, even when other consumer product companies suffered bad times or failed.

As a head of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company, Will Kellogg competed against forty-two cereal companies in Battle Creek and roared to the head of the pack with his innovative marketing ideas.

During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, his company helped reduce unemployment in the Battle Creek area by instituting six-hour factory shifts, thereby creating additional jobs for community residents.

Kellogg was incorporated in 1922 as the successor to Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company.

Will Kellogg served as president of the renamed Kellogg Company until 1929. By then, the company had sold more than 50 million boxes of Corn Flakes. The company continued to produce new cereals, such as Rice Krispies, Frosted Flakes Gold, and Special K.
Kellogg Company 

German Mills American Oatmeal

In 1850, German immigrant Ferdinand Schumacher opened a grocery store in Akron, Ohio. His major customers were German and Irish immigrants and they bought a lot of oats - which, at the time, most Anglo-Americans considered animal feed.

Demand for his product was high and in 1856, he set up the German Mills American Oatmeal Factory in Akron, Ohio. The factory produced 20 180-lb barrels of oatmeal daily with a water-powered stone mill.

Sales were brisk, particularly to cities with large immigrant populations, so Schumacher opened additional mills to meet the increasing demand. His preoccupation with oat eventually branded him ‘The Oatmeal King.’

A Schumacher employee, Asmus J. Errichsen, developed a method of producing the millstones and was the first significant modernization in oat milling.

In 1878 Schumacher imported porcelain rollers from England to manufacture rolled oats.

In the early 1860s, the Civil War was a shot of adrenalin for his venture: the government found oats to be relatively inexpensive, accessible and nourishing and order hundreds of barrels from him to fortify the Union troops.

Soon he became the largest oat miller in America.
German Mills American Oatmeal

Minneapolis Milling Company

Illinois congressman Robert Smith leased power rights to flour mills operating along Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River and helped found the Minneapolis Milling Company.

In 1856 Cadwallader C. Washburn (1818 – 1882), an attorney and lumber company owner of in Wisconsin purchased the Minneapolis Mill Company from Smith.

A year later Washburn cousin, Dorilus Morrison, entered into partnership with him.

The corporation chartered on February 27, 1856 had Smith as president. At the beginning company gained control of and leased the power rights of the water flowing over the St. Anthony Falls to nearby mill operation.

In 1866, then entrepreneur build his own incredibly large mill, fully persuaded that he could turn a profit there.

When John Crosby joined Washburn’s business in 1877 the company changed its name to the Washburn Crosby Company.

In 1880, after winning the gold, silver, and bronze medals at the first International Miller’s Exhibition, the Washburn Crosby Company changed the brand name of tis best flour to Gold Medal. The company went on to publish Washburn Crosby Co.’s New Cook Book in 1894 and in 1903 the Gold Medal Flour Cook Book.

By the time Washburn Crosby’s cooking demonstration were popular in the early 1920s, the company’s cookbook were out of print, yet demand hadn’t slowed for information on basic meal preparation, menu planning, grocery budgeting and cooking techniques.

On June 21, 1928 a consortium known as General Mills, Inc., was created. The assemblage was comprised of all 27 mill operations constructed or purchased by Washburn Crosby since 1866.
Minneapolis Milling Company

Cadwallader Colden Washburn and General Mills Company

Beginning in 1856, Cadwallader C. Washburn – a future Wisconsin governor (1872 – 1874) acting under his corporate designate, the Minneapolis Milling Company, gained control of and leased the power rights to the water flowing over the St. Anthony Falls to nearby mills operators.

In 1856, Washburn founded his own incredibly large mill, which began to mill four in 1866.

There Washburn, in partnership with John Crosby, built a mill along the Mississippi that came to be called ‘Washburn Folly’ because the locals found it difficult to believe that the flour from Midwestern spring wheat would ever catch on.

The company concentrated on promoting its signature product, Gold Medal flour. In 1928, the Washburn Mills Company soon to be renamed General Mills, introduced a cereal.

He introduced a wheat flake that became Wheaties in the 1920s, and is still popular today.

The cereal’s first connection with sports was not until 1933, when the slogan ‘The Breakfast of Champions’ emerged.

During World War II, General Mills emerged the good citizen as it adapted its Minneapolis facilities for the development and production of intricate torpedo directors for use by the Navy.

General Mills introduced many new cereals, including Trix (1954), Lucky Charms (1963) and Honey Nut Cheerios (1979).

In 2001, General Mills acquired the Pillsbury Company.
Cadwallader Colden Washburn and General Mills Company

Breakfast cereal in America

Ready-to-eat cereal is an American invention that grew out of the health reform moment of the late 1800s.

In 1877, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg invented a granolalike, ready to eat breakfast cereal for the Adventists who shunned the American breakfast of ham and eggs. But not until his invention of corn flakes in 1902 did cereal become a commercial success. At first, most cereals were marketed as pure, whole-grain foods.

In 1894 Kellogg created the first flaked cereal, Granose and in 1898, the corn flake.

Eventually, however, competition resulted in the addition of sugar and other food additives and in marketing campaigns directed at children, such as the inclusion of a premium or toy in the box.

Another pioneer of the breakfast cereal industry was C. W Post, who had been a patient at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Among his invention was cereal based caffeine beverage called Postum and a granular cereal called Grape-Nuts.

Post an innovator advertiser, was one of the first to used national ad campaigns, coupons, premiums and samples to make Grape-Nuts a cusses.

By late 1905, the corn flake business was booming and other cereal manufacturers had gotten into this line. In January 1906, Post Cereals introduced a new version of the corn flakes.

The establishment of the breakfast cereal industry came about the time that United States began a transition from a predominantly agricultural society to a more industrialized, urban culture.

By the 1970s and 1980s, adults were again experiencing a renewed interest in the benefits of high fiber diet and new brands entered the marketplace. Cereal previously only available in health food stores began to enter the mainstream.
Breakfast cereal in America