Mother's Cookies is a food brand currently owned by Italian conglomerate

Ferrero Group Ferrero SpA (), more commonly known as Ferrero Group or simply Ferrero, is an Italian multinational company with headquarters in Alba, Italy. manufacturer of branded chocolate and confectionery products, and the second biggest chocolate produce ...

. Mother Cookies originally started as a bakery based in Oakland, California, that operated from 1914 to 2008. A sister company,

Archway Cookies Archway Cookies is an American cookie manufacturer, founded in 1936 in Battle Creek, Michigan. Since December 2008, it has been a subsidiary of Lance Inc., a snack food company, which in turn merged with Snyder's of Hanover to form Snyder's-Lanc ...

Battle Creek, Michigan Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, Michigan, Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo River, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek River, Battle Creek rivers. It is the principal city of the Battle C ...

, was founded in 1936. Both Mother's Cookies and Archway declared bankruptcy in 2008. At its height, the company distributed cookies throughout the United States, and was one of the leading cookie makers in the country. The Kellogg Company acquired the Mother's Cookies trademark and recipes in December 2008 and brought the brand back to West Coast grocery store shelves on May 14, 2009.

History

Mother's was founded in 1914 when N.M. Wheatley, a newspaper vendor, purchased the rights to a cookie recipe from a customer. A year later, Wheatley opened a one-person operation on 12th Avenue in Oakland. On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson had issued a proclamation declaring the first national Mother's DayToday in History: May 9
Library of Congress Archway was founded in 1936 by the Swansons, a husband-and-wife team who baked soft-batch cookies in their garage. The Swansons expanded their company nationwide in the 1940s, changing its name to Archway to avoid conflict with

Swanson Swanson is a brand of TV dinners, broths, and canned poultry made for the North American and Hong Kong markets. The former "Swanson Company" was founded in Omaha, Nebraska, where it developed improvements of the frozen dinner. The TV dinner bu ...

, a maker of frozen dinners. In 1962 the founders sold the company to their vice president, George Markham, who bought most of the franchises back over the next several years. Markham in turn sold the company to two employees, who operated it from 1983 to 1998. The company was sold to Specialty Foods in 1998, reportedly for $100 million. The transaction made Specialty Foods the third largest cookie maker in the United States after Keebler and Nabisco. Mother factory

The two companies then went through a succession of owners. Mother's was sold to Artal NV, a Belgian company, then bought by Specialty Foods Corp., a conglomerate formed by

Robert Bass Robert Muse Bass (born 19 March 1948) is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He was the chairman of Aerion Corporation, an American aerospace firm in Reno, Nevada. In 2018 he had a net worth of $5 billion. Bass has served on ...

, who sold Mother's Cake & Cookie Co. and Archway Cookies to

Parmalat Parmalat S.p.A. is a dairy and food corporation which is a subsidiary of French multinational company Lactalis. It was founded by Calisto Tanzi in 1961. Having become the leading global company in the production of long-life milk using ultra-h ...

S.p.A. Specialty Foods sold Mother's and Archway to an Italian firm, Parmalat Finanziaria in 2000 for $250 million. As of 2002 Mother's was baking 17.5 million cookies per day. Cookie sales began to decline after 2000 due to low-fat and

low carb Low-carbohydrate diets restrict carbohydrate consumption relative to the average diet. Foods high in carbohydrates (e.g., sugar, bread, pasta) are limited, and replaced with foods containing a higher percentage of fat and protein (e.g., meat, p ...

diet trends, although sales improved when the company introduced low fat cookies, and accounted for 10% of the United States cookie market as of late 2004. Parmalat filed for bankruptcy amidst a scandal involving illegal sale of

corporate bond A corporate bond is a bond issued by a corporation in order to raise financing for a variety of reasons such as to ongoing operations, M&A, or to expand business. The term is usually applied to longer-term debt instruments, with maturity of ...

s. Parmalat in turn sold the companies to

Catterton Partners L Catterton is a U.S.-headquartered private equity firm. Since 1989, the firm has made more than 250 investments in brands across all segments of the consumer industry. L Catterton is led by its co-Chief Executive Officers, J. Michael Chu and S ...

, a private equity firm in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 2005, The new operators closed the Oakland factory in 2006, laid off all 230 workers, and moved baking operations to Ohio and Canada. The company suffered an accounting scandal in 2008 and in October 2008, the company became a victim of the financial crisis of 2007–2010 when the company filed

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

and laid off all of its workers.

Brand and product returns

In December, 2008,

Lance Inc. Lance is an American brand of snack foods owned by the Snyder's-Lance company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. As of 2018, Snyder's-Lance is owned by Campbell's. Merger On July 22, 2010, Lance announced that it would merge with Snyder's ...

bought the assets of Archway, and soon reopened the former Archway factory in Ashland, Ohio. Also, the same month Kellogg Company was approved to buy the assets of Mother's Cookies with plans to return the products to the shelves in mid-2009. In May 2009, Mother's Cookies returned to store shelves, including Kellogg's launch of a website for the product. After the return of the Mother's Cookies product line, customers noted changes in the recipes, most notably to the Taffy cookie. In April 2019, Kellogg's announced the sale of Mother's Cookies, among other brands, to Italian confectioner Ferrero SpA, creators of Nutella.

Products

Mother's is known for pink and white iced "Circus Animal Cookies", "Taffy Sandwich Cookies" (original recipe), "Peanut Butter Gauchos", and iced

oatmeal cookies An oatmeal raisin cookie is a type of drop cookie made from an oatmeal-based dough with raisins. Its ingredients also typically include flour, sugar, eggs, salt, and spices. A descendant of the Scottish oatcake, the oatmeal raisin cookie has bec ...

. Archway's most popular product was Ruth's Oatmeal Cookies, based on a recipe found by one of its franchisees at a county fair, which made up 40% of all sales.

Promotions

The company included collectable baseball cards in their packs of cookies, featuring the

Pacific Coast League The Pacific Coast League (PCL) is a Minor League Baseball league that operates in the Western United States. Along with the International League, it is one of two leagues playing at the Triple-A (baseball), Triple-A level, which is one grade bel ...

(1952–53) and several west-coast Major League Baseball teams (1983-2002). Many of those cards were distributed by the teams themselves as promotional stadium giveaways. In the presidential election year of 1992, the company also produced collectable cards featuring the Presidents of the United States.

References

External links

* {{Kellogg's Food and drink companies established in 1914 Food and drink in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies based in Oakland, California Kellogg's brands Bakeries of California 1914 establishments in California