Background General Foods background can be traced to the Post Cereal Company, founded by C. W. Post in 1895 in
Battle Creek, Michigan. Post was a patient at the
Battle Creek Sanitarium (run by
John Harvey Kellogg, brother of
Kellogg Company founder
Will Keith Kellogg). Post was inspired by the diet there to start his food company (and become a rival to the Kellogg brothers, who sold their own breakfast cereals). He invested $78 in his initial equipment and supplies and set up manufacturing in a barn on what was known as the 'Old Beardsley Farm'. His first product was
Postum, a "cereal beverage" alternative to coffee made from wheat and molasses. The first cereal,
Grape-Nuts, was developed in 1897, followed by Elijah's Manna in 1904, which was renamed
Post Toasties in 1908. In 1907 ''
Collier's Weekly'' published an article questioning the claim made in advertisements for Grape Nuts that it could cure
appendicitis. C. W. Post responded with advertisements questioning the mental capacity of the article's author, and ''Collier's Weekly'' sued for libel. The case was heard in 1910, and Post was fined $50,000. The decision was overturned on appeal, but advertisements for Postum products stopped making such claims.
General Foods C.W. Post died in 1914, and his daughter Marjorie Merriweather Post took over the company. The Postum Cereals company acquired other companies such as
Jell-O (gelatin dessert) in 1925,
Walter Baker & Company (chocolate) and
Hellmann's (sauces) in 1927,
Maxwell House (coffee) in 1928, and other food brands. By far the most important acquisition in 1929 was of the frozen-food company owned by
Clarence Birdseye, called General Seafood Corporation. Birdseye (December 9, 1886 - October 7, 1956) was one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of the food industry. Born in New York City, he became interested in the frozen preservation of food during the course of working as a fur trader in
Labrador between 1912 and 1916. By 1923, he had developed a commercially viable process for
quick-freezing foods using a belt mechanism, which he patented. In 1924, with backing from three investors, he formed the "General Seafoods Company" in
Gloucester, Massachusetts to produce frozen
haddock fillets packed in plain cardboard boxes. The founder's daughter, Marjorie Merriweather Post, was the first to become excited about the prospects for the frozen foods business. In 1926, she had put into port at Gloucester on her yacht,
Sea Cloud, and was served a luncheon meal which, she learned to her amazement, had been frozen six months before. Despite her enthusiasm, it took Post three years to convince Postum's management to acquire the company. Postum paid $10.75 million for a 51% interest and its partner,
Goldman Sachs, paid $12.5 million for the other 49%. Following this acquisition, Postum, Inc changed its name to General Foods Corporation. Goldman sold its share back to General Foods in 1932, apparently at a slight loss. Shortly after the acquisition, General Foods began test-marketing an expanded line of
frozen foods, but the company quickly realized that a packaging process alone would not be sufficient to market frozen products in stores. To be sold, the packages had to be kept frozen while on display, so Birdseye engineers began development of a freezer cabinet designed specifically to hold frozen foods. The cabinet, which first appeared in 1934, required a great deal of space and electricity, which were not readily available in most grocery stores of the period. For those stores that could accommodate them, the payback was immediate. Housewives quickly realized that keeping packages of frozen food in the icebox could mean fresher meals and fewer trips to the market. General Foods acquired the Perkins Product Company, the makers of
Kool-Aid, in 1953,
Burger Chef in 1968,
Oscar Mayer in 1981,
Entenmann's in 1982, Oroweat in 1984, and the Freihofer baking company in 1987. The company then sold Burger Chef to
Imasco, owner of
Hardee's, in 1981. General Foods was acquired by Philip Morris Companies (now Altria) in 1985 for $5.8 billion. In 1989, Phillip Morris merged General Foods with Kraft Foods Inc., which it had acquired in 1987, to form the Kraft General Foods division. The cereal brands of
Nabisco were acquired in 1993. In 1995 Kraft General Foods was reorganized, and the Kraft Foods name was restored. On November 15, 2007, Kraft announced it would spin off Post Cereals and merge that business with
Ralcorp Holdings. That merger was completed August 4, 2008, at which time the official name of the company became Post Foods, LLC. In 2012, the original Kraft Foods Inc. was split into grocery and snack food companies with the grocery unit retaining the Kraft Foods name and the snack brands becoming Mondelez International. The company was then subsequently merged with
Heinz Foods in 2015 to form
Kraft Heinz. ==See also==