![]() That year, Wally Amos launched Wally Amos Presents hazelnut cookies. In 1992, President Baking Company bought Famous Amos for $61 million-more than 55 times what Wally Amos sold his controlling stake for just a few years earlier. Two sales later, the new owners added shelf-stable ingredients and repositioned the cookies as an affordable brand, prompting its famous founder to depart. That same spark that can drive you to take a chance prevents you from listening to others. In 1985, Amos sold a majority stake to Bass Brothers Enterprises for $1.1 million. But he made a lot of bad decisions,” his son says.Īmos continued to raise money while diluting his own equity. He was an amazing marketer and had great promotional instincts. By 1985, Famous Amos reported a $300,000 loss on sales of $10 million. It All Comes Crumbling DownĪmos struggled to keep up with the brand’s rapid growth. Fields’ Original Cookies and upmarket product lines from Duncan Hines and Nabisco began biting into Amos’s market share.ĭid you know? Chocolate chip cookies were invented in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts. Launching the first premium chocolate chip cookie led to competition, and the rise of brands like Mrs. “Food is part of pop culture, much like fashion,” Szewczyk says. Keeping the “famous” in “Famous Amos,” the entrepreneur made guest appearances on hit TV shows like “The Jeffersons” and “Taxi.” Amos held a holiday block party where celebrity guests included Andy Warhol and Muhammad Ali. “Amos elevated a product that was seen as an everyday item into a gourmet experience, says Szewczyk. Amos even appeared in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1977 to 1981. In an age of mass production, Amos set his sights on something more upscale than the local supermarket, distributing his cookies in Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. “The concept of a zero-preservative, craft-made cookie was uncommon,” says Jesse Szewczyk, author of Cookies: The New Classics. In Wally’s own words, his was “the face that launched a thousand chips.”ĭid you know? Famous Amos’s shirt and hat are on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Success came swiftly: The Famous Amos Cookie Company sold $300,000 worth of cookies its first year and was making $12 million in revenue by 1982. The grand opening was a star-studded gala attended by 1,500 people, though “Famous Amos” was the real star of the brand, appearing on packaging and merchandise in his signature straw hat and embroidered cotton shirt. The Famous Amos brand got backing from celebrity investors like Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy, who gave Amos $25,000 toward his new business. “I worked the front Dad worked the back.” They sold three kinds of cookies by the pound: chocolate chip peanut butter, chocolate chip with pecan and a butterscotch chip with pecan. “I stood on milk crates to ring up customers,” Shawn says. ![]() He felt that what he was doing would transcend the neighborhood.”Īmos was newly divorced, so his time at the shop was his time with his son. But a few blocks down was the A&M Records loft, where Dad had offices next to Quincy Jones. We were across the street from a strip joint. It was an unlikely place to sell cookies: “The East side of Sunset was seedy,” Shawn says. ![]() That year, Amos launched the first Famous Amos store on Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard. Hollywood tastemakers began to take notice: “I'd go to meetings with record company or movie people and bring along some cookies, and pretty soon everybody was asking for them,” Amos told The New York Times in 1975. “Cookies were a hobby to relieve stress,” says his son Shawn Amos, musician and author of Cookies & Milk. He began baking cookies using his Aunt Della’s recipe. When a new job opportunity in Los Angeles backfired, Amos grew disillusioned with show business. Amos headed the rock ’n’ roll department, where he signed Simon and Garfunkel and worked with Motown megastars The Supremes, Diana Ross, Sam Cooke and Dionne Warwick. In 1957, he returned to New York and joined the William Morris Agency, where he worked his way up from the mailroom to become the first black talent agent in the industry. Amos dropped out of high school but earned his G.E.D. He moved to New York City’s Harlem at age 12 to live with his Aunt Della. Here’s how a man who broke the color barrier in the talent industry and launched a cookie empire helped change American tastes. And the rise and fall of Wally Amos became one of its most infamous cautionary tales. When Wally Amos founded Famous Amos cookies in 1975, the brand became one of the most unlikely success stories in food history.
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