The story
Founded by Henry Parsons Crowell in 1877, in Ravenna.1
Precursor miller companies
In the 1850s, Ferdinand Schumacher and Robert Stuart founded oat mills. Schumacher founded the German Mills American Oatmeal Company in Akron, Ohio, and Stuart founded the North Star Mills in Hearst, Ontario, then part of Rupert's Land. In 1870, Schumacher ran his first known cereal advertisement in the Akron Beacon Journal newspaper. In 1877, the Quaker Mill Company of Ravenna, Ohio, was founded.
According to some accounts, Quaker Mill partner Henry Seymour came up with the brand name after discovering an encyclopedia article about Quakers. He stated that the qualities describing Quakers, such as integrity, honesty, and purity, were traits that he wanted customers to associate with the company's product. According to the company, William Heston also said that he had selected the name. Quaker Mill Company held the trademark on the Quaker name. In Ravenna, Ohio, on September 4, 1877, Henry Seymour of the Quaker Mill Company applied for the first trademark for a breakfast cereal—"a figure of a man in 'Quaker garb'".
In 1879, John Stuart and his son Robert joined with George Douglas to form Imperial Mill and set up their operation in Chicago, Illinois. In 1881, Henry Parsons Crowell bought the Quaker Mill Company; the following year, he launched the first national magazine advertising campaign for breakfast cereal, introducing a cereal box that made buying in quantities other than bulk possible. He also bought the bankrupt Quaker Oat Mill Company in Ravenna and held the key positions of general manager, president, and chairman of the company from 1888 until late 1943, becoming known as the cereal tycoon. He donated more than 70% of his wealth to the Crowell Trust.
In 1888, the American Cereal Company was formed by the merger of seven major oat millers. Ferdinand Schumacher became president, Henry Crowell the general manager, and John Stuart the secretary-treasurer. In 1889, the American Cereal Company introduced the half-ounce trial size, and as a promotion, distributed one to every home in Portland, Oregon, via boys on bicycles. Later, this promotion was extended to other cities. A second promotion involved placing dinner plates within the then-regular (not round) boxes of oats.
Quaker Oats Company
In 1901, the Quaker Oats Company was founded in New Jersey with headquarters in Chicago, by the merger of four oat mills - the Quaker Mill Company in Ravenna, Ohio, which held the trademark on the Quaker name; the cereal mill in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, owned by John Stuart, his son Robert Stuart, and their partner George Douglas; the German Mills American Oatmeal Company in Akron, Ohio, owned by Schumacher; and the Rob Lewis & Co. American Oats and Barley Oatmeal Corporation. In the same year, the whole merged company was acquired by Crowell, who also bought the bankrupt Quaker Oat Mill Company, also in Ravenna.
In 1908, Quaker Oats introduced the first in a series of cookie recipes on the box. In 1911, Quaker Oats purchased the Great Western Cereal Company. The iconic cylindrical package made its first appearance in 1915. Later that year, Quaker offered the first cereal box premium to buyers. By sending in one dollar and the cutout picture of the "Quaker Man", customers received a double boiler for the cooking of oatmeal.
In the 1920s, Quaker introduced "Quaker Quick Oats", an early convenience food, and also offered a crystal radio set built in the same cylindrical canister as Quick Oats, with the same label, for US$1 plus two trademarks cut from Quaker Oats packages. In the 1930s, Quaker was one of the many companies using the Dionne Quintuplets for promotional purposes. The Quaker Oats mill in Cedar Rapids was photographed during the 1930s by Theodor Horydczak, who documented the building, operations, and factory workers at the plant.
During World War II, the company, through its subsidiary, Q. O. Ordnance Company, operated the Cornhusker Ordnance Plant (six miles west of Grand Island) as a government-owned, contractor-operated, 11,960-acre site. Construction began in March 1942, and production ended in August 1945. The plant manufactured millions of pieces of various artillery munitions.
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In 1946, artist Jim Nash was commissioned to produce a head portrait of the Quaker Man, which became the basis for Haddon Sundblom's famous version of 1957.
In 1968, a plant was built in Danville, Illinois, which now makes Pearl Milling Company pancake mixes, Oat Squares, Life Cereals, Quaker Oh's, Bumpers, Quisp, King Vitamin Natural Granola Cereals, and Chewy granola bars, as well as puffed rice for use as an ingredient for other products in other plants.
In 1969, Quaker acquired Fisher-Price, a toy company, and spun it off in 1991.
In 1971, the company financed the making of the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, based on the children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. In return, the company obtained a license to use a number of the product names mentioned in the film for candy bars. The film was considered a box-office disappointment at the time of release, and the film's original distributor, Paramount, eventually sold the rights back to Quaker Oats, which then sold the rights to Warner Bros. because the company wanted no involvement in the film business. The film became extremely popular in the 1980s via repeated television airings and home video sales.
In 1972, Quaker Oats purchased Louis Marx and Company, which had created one-quarter of all toys and trains manufactured in the mid-1950s. It sold the business after four years.
In 1982, Quaker Oats purchased US Games, a company that created games for the Atari 2600. It went out of business after one year. That same year, Quaker Oats acquired Florida-based orange juice plant Ardmore Farms, which it owned until selling it to Country Pure Foods in 1998.
In 1983, Quaker bought Stokely-Van Camp, Inc., makers of Van Camp's and Gatorade.
Quaker bought Snapple for $1.7 billion in 1994 and sold it to Triarc in 1997 for $300 million. Triarc sold it to Cadbury Schweppes for $1.45 billion in September 2000. It was spun off in May 2008 to its current owners, Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
In 1996, Quaker spun off its frozen-food business, selling it to Aurora Foods (which was bought by Pinnacle Foods in 2004).
In August 2001, Quaker Oats was acquired by PepsiCo for $14 billion, primarily for the Gatorade brand.
Starting in 1987 through the 1990s, actor Wilford Brimley appeared in television commercials for Quaker. In the commercials, he extolled the virtues and healthfulness of oat consumption, sometimes to a young child. "It's the right thing to do" was a common slogan during the commercials.
Major facility
The major Canadian production facility for Quaker Oats is located in Peterborough, Ontario. The factory was first established as the American Cereal Company in 1902 on the shores of the Otonabee River during that city's period of industrialization. At the time, the city was known as "The Electric City" due to its hydropower resources, attracting many companies to the site to take advantage of this source. The Trent–Severn Waterway also promised to provide an alternate shipping route from inland areas around the city. On December 11, 1916, the factory all but completely burned to the ground. When the smoke had settled, 23 people had died and Quaker was left with $2,000,000 in damages. Quaker went on to rebuild the facility, incorporating the few areas of the structure that were not destroyed by fire.
When PepsiCo purchased Quaker Oats in 2001, many brands were consolidated from facilities around Canada to the Peterborough location, which assumed the new QTG (Quaker Tropicana Gatorade) moniker. Local production includes Quaker Oatmeal, Quaker Chewy bars, Cap'n Crunch cereal, Pearl Milling Company instant pancake mixes and pancake syrups, Quaker Oat Bran and Corn Bran cereals, Gatorade sports drinks, the Propel fitness water subbrand, Tropicana juices, and various Frito-Lay snack products. Products are easily identified by the "manufactured by" address on the packaging. The Peterborough facility supplies the majority of Canada and exports to limited portions of the United States. The Quaker plant sells cereal production byproducts to companies that use them to create fire logs and pellets.
Until 2022, Quaker Oats had a major research and development (R&D) facility located in Barrington, Illinois. After numerous acquisitions, the site was renamed, but retained its R&D focus.
Land giveaways in cereal boxes
Starting in 1902, the company's oatmeal boxes came with a coupon redeemable for the legal deed to a tiny lot in Milford, Connecticut. The lots, sometimes as small as 10 feet by 10 feet, were carved out of a 15-acre, never-built subdivision called Liberty Park. A small number of children (or their parents), often residents living near Milford, redeemed their coupons for the free deeds and started paying the extremely small property taxes on the "oatmeal lots". The developer of the prospective subdivision hoped the landowners would hire him to build homes on the lots, although several tracts would need to be combined before building could start. The legal deeds created a large amount of paperwork for town tax collectors, who frequently could not find the property owners and received almost no tax revenue from them. In the mid-1970s, the town put an end to the oatmeal lots with a "general foreclosure" condemning nearly all of the property, which is now part of a BiC Corporation plant.
In 1955, Quaker Oats again gave away land as part of a promotion, this one tied to the Sergeant Preston of the Yukon television show in the United States. The company offered in its Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice cereal boxes genuine deeds to land in the Klondike.
2023–2024 product recalls
In 2023, concentrations of chlormequat, a pesticide known to cause reproductive and developmental issues in animals, in oat-based foods, including popular brands like Cheerios and Quaker Oats, were notably higher in 2023 compared to previous years. Quaker Oats Company issued numerous recalls of over 60 products starting from December 15 due to potential contamination with Salmonella bacteria, affecting various cereals such as Cap'n Crunch and Oatmeal Squares, as well as Gatorade protein bars and batches of Quaker Chewy granola bars and Quaker granola cereals. The latest recall, involving the Quaker Chewy Dipps Llama Rama bars, was announced on January 31, 2024.
From Wikipedia’s article on Quaker Oats Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4