History
The Food That Built America Recap for Let’s Get Crackering
This week’s episode of The Food That Built America is titled Let’s Get Crackering and talks about how one of America’s favorite snack foods came to fruition. As an aside Alicia from RHORI would LOVE this episode since we all know she ‘loves a cracker’ and always has some on hand.
In the 1800s, most foods were fresh and spoiled quickly due to the lack of preservatives….except for crackers.
However, they were sold locally in a cracker barrel, which had mold and rodents, making them unappetizing.
Around this time, a man named Henry Perky was sick and given boiled wheat to ease his stomachache, told to eat it three times a day for three days. This settled his stomach, but was difficult to eat due to its disgusting nature. He decides to take matters into his own hands and uses his railroad materials to press down on the boiled wheat…..making it into thin strings. He puts it together, bakes it and leads the way to inventing what we now know as Shredded Wheat….which would then lead to the invention of Triscuits.
Henry then travels across the country and meets with Joseph Loose, who wants to buy the patent for the shredded wheat biscuits….for a cool million dollars. Joseph then joins forces with a rival company and Nabisco is born!
Henry continues to work on his own shredded wheat business and moves to a factory in Boston in order to keep up with the demand. He decides to market it as a healthy breakfast and before long, the product is national and he can barely keep up with demand.
Henry then opens a factory in Niagara Falls and has to take out loans, leading to him fighting for control of his company. He decides to make a new product with products he already he already has on hand.
It takes a lot of trial and error….and competition from Nabisco (who already has a leg up in the cracker business)….and before long, Triscuits are on the market, with the name coming from being invented with the help of electricity.
It isn’t a hit right away, so the company works on ideas, like adding coupons in boxes to help sales, but Henry is not on board with this…so he is pushed into retirement shortly before his death.
Joseph Loose, his brother and brother-in-law break ties with Nabisco after a falling out with the company and start the Sunshine company as a form of competition….coming out with similar products.
JW and Weston Green are also in the cracker business and were known for their Dayton crackers, which were sold overseas. Once the war was over, they began to struggle. They want innovative ideas and it isn’t until Weston is eating a rarebit sandwich that they decide to come up with what we now know as Cheez-Its. They experiment with different recipes ….and names….before they have a winner.
As for the Triscuit, it is rebranded and relaunched in the 1920s as a lighter, more flavorful treat that is smaller and easier to eat….thanks to Nabisco.
Roy Tomlinson, the new Nabisco president, wants to work on his own Shredded Wheat product, so he talks to William Hamiln, who is running the Shredded Wheat Company. He instead acquires it and now owns Triscuit and Shredded Wheat.
John Wiles runs Sunshine after the deaths of the Loose brothers. He wants in on the competition, so he calls up the Greens to come up with a deal of his own to acquire the company and make Cheez-Its a national product and the companies on the map.
Now it is time to come up with a new cracker that will be the next big thing for dinner parties. Since people were coming up with toppings for crackers, they wanted something that would complement them. Enter the Hi-Ho cracker, a buttery, round cracker with a light, crispy flavor.
Nabisco already has a similar cracker on the docket, but it has not yet been released. They decide to come up with a new way to brand it, so Sydney Stern, who was working with Nabisco in marketing, comes up with a new way to present it….thanks to the name Ruiz in his hat…..and thus, the Ritz cracker was born,…luxury in cracker form….like the hotel. in short, a taste of luxury people can afford.
It is an immediate hit!
Nabisco would go on to come out with Wheat Thins and other snack crackers, with Sunshine always being on their heels in terms of competition, the latter going on to be acquired by Keebler and then Kellogg.
The companies are now worth billions.
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