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Mother's Cookies is a food brand owned by Italian conglomerate Ferrero Group. Mother Cookies began as a
bakery A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based baked goods made in an oven such as bread, cookies, cakes, doughnuts, bagels, Pastry, pastries, and pies. Some retail bakeries are also categorized as Coffeehouse, cafés, servi ...
based in
Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...
, 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 ...
of
Battle Creek, Michigan Battle Creek is a city in northwestern Calhoun County, Michigan, United States, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo River, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek River, Battle Creek rivers. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a tota ...
, 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 Kellanova, formerly known as the Kellogg Company and commonly known as Kellogg's, is an American multinational food manufacturing company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, US. Kellanova produces and markets convenience foods and snack f ...
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 Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...
had issued a proclamation declaring the first national
Mother's Day Mother's Day is a celebration honoring the mother of the family or individual, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on different days in many parts of the world, most commonly in Mar ...
Today 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 busi ...
, 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. 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 o ...
, who sold Mother's Cake & Cookie Co. and Archway Cookies to
Parmalat Parmalat S.p.A. is an Italian 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 us ...
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, ...
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 bonds. Parmalat in turn sold the companies to Catterton Partners, 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 2008 financial crisis it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laid off all of its workers.


Brand and product returns

In December, 2008, Lance Inc. bought the assets of Archway, and soon reopened the former Archway factory in Ashland, Ohio. Also, the same month
Kellogg Company Kellanova, formerly known as the Kellogg Company and commonly known as Kellogg's, is an American multinational food manufacturing company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, US. Kellanova produces and markets convenience foods and snack f ...
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. 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 (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 that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008 Companies based in Oakland, California Kellogg's brands Bakeries of California 1914 establishments in California