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 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 the 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. 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. In 1991, Quaker Oats spun off its Fisher-Price division. 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, who then sold the rights to
Warner Bros. because the company had 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, a company that 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 would own 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 sub-brand,
Tropicana juices, and various
Frito-Lay snack products. Products are easily identified by the
manufacturer by address on the packaging. The Peterborough facility supplies the majority of Canada and exports limited portions to 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 R&D facility located in
Barrington, Illinois. After numerous acquisitions the site was renamed, but retained its research and development 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. ==Logo==