Quaker Oats Company

Quaker Oats Exhibition in 1913.

Quaker Oats Company is an American food corporation headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It has been owned by PepsiCo since its sale in 2001 and is recognized worldwide for its many oats that it has launched on the market.

History

Background

In the 1850s, Ferdinand Schumacher and Robert Stuart founded Oat Mills. Schumacher founded the German Mills American Oatmeal Company, in Akron, Ohio, and Stuart Mills founded North Star Mills in Ontario, Canada. In 1870, Schumacher ran his first known cereal advertisement in the Akron Beacon Journal.

In Ravenna, Ohio, on September 4, 1877, the first trademark of a breakfast cereal is given, by Henry Seymour, owner of the Quaker Mill Company.

In 1879, John Stuart and his brother Robert, joined with George Douglas to form Imperial Mill and settled in Chicago, Illinois. In 1881, Henry Crowell purchased the Quaker Mill Company, and a national advertising campaign was launched the following year to raise awareness of Quaker Oats.

In 1885, Quaker Oats introduced the cereal box, making it possible to purchase the product in moderate quantities. In 1888, the American Cereal Society was formed by the merger of seven major oat millers. Ferdinand Schumacher was named president, Henry Crowell, general manager, and John Stuart treasurer secretary.

History

Quaker Oats was officially founded in 1901 by the merger of four oat mills (these were Quaker Mill Company, Cedar Rapids, German Mills American Oatmeal Company, and Rob Lewis & Co. American Oats, along with Barley Oatmeal Corporation), all of which sold products made from oats, for example oatmeal.

The company diversified into numerous branches, including breakfast cereals, rice-based products, various food steroids and beverages, and even into unrelated fields such as toy manufacturing.

In the 1970s, he financed the making of the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, allowing the company to use various product names mentioned in the movie for its candy bars.

In 1969, Quaker acquired Fisher-Price, a children's toy company, and made it international in 1991. In 1983, it purchased Quaker Stokely-Van Camp, Inc., makers of Van Camp and Gatorade.

In August 2001, Quaker merged with PepsiCo as Pepsi wanted to add Gatorade to its beverage arsenal and thus enter the isotonic drink market. The sale was for $13.9 billion. The merger created the world's fourth largest consumer goods company. Although the top prize for PepsiCo was Gatorade, Quaker's cereal and snack food division served as a complement to the incumbent Frito-Lays in its salty snack division.

The Quaker Man

Quaker's announcement published around 1909.

Today, the company claims that "The 'Quaker Man' does not represent a real person. The image of him is that of a man dressed in Quaker attire, chosen on the premise that said faith projects the values of honesty, integrity, purity and strength & # 34;.

However, early advertising for Quaker Oats, dating from 1909, identifies "The Quaker Man" as William Penn, a 17th-century philosopher, and referred to as "the standard-bearer of the 'Quakers' and Quaker Oats". The figure resembles classic engravings of the Penn image, beginning in 1877, when he was depicted full-length, sometimes holding a scroll with the word "pure", written on it.

In 1946, graphic designer Jim Nash created a black-and-white head-and-shoulders portrait of the 'Quaker Man'. He later colored that same image in the portrait of Haddon Sundblom, which he debuted in 1957.

The monochrome logo for the Quaker Oats Company debuted in 1969. A model of Sundblom's illustration was created by Saul Bass, a graphic designer known for his motion picture title sequences and corporate logos.

The company has no formal relationship with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). As the company grew, Quaker businessmen were known for their sincerity (often seen as a testament to the Quaker faith). In The Straight Dope (a one-line newspaper question-and-answer column, published by the Chicago Reader, syndicated in thirty US and Canadian newspapers), they write: & #34;According to the good folks at Quaker Oats, 'The Quaker Man' it was the first registered trademark in the United States of a breakfast cereal. The registration took place on September 4, 1877".