Quaker Oats Company in history

About 1850, oatmeal milling as an industry had its first roots in Akron, Ohio, where Ferdinand Schumacher began grinding oats. At first he sold the ground oats in minute quantities—and gradually popularized the wonders of oatmeal as a food.

The Quaker Oats Company has been around for over 140 years producing many different products and cereals. It all started with The Quaker Mills Company in Ravenna, Ohio when Henry D. Seymour and William Heston registered the Quaker trademark in 1877. The same year the Quaker Man was adopted as the trademark.

After the company went bankrupt in 1881 Henry Crowell purchased the company and in the following year he launched a national magazine advertising campaign for Quaker oats, and quickly gained acceptance from the public in part because of his method of packaging the oats in a two pound paper package with cooking directions. This is understandable as the method of packaging by his rivals were in the not-so-handy 180 lb barrels. He was called a cereal tycoon at that time.

Homemakers showed a marked preference for the factory-wrapped and sealed carton. They appreciated the uniform quality, the honest quantity, and the known price which tended to drop as production of packaged cereals became better established.

It is unclear exactly how many different companies were involved in the late 1880s, but others involved in the formation of Quaker Oats, include Ferdinand Schumacher known as “The Oatmeal King” (American Oatmeal Company), John Stuart, his son Robert and George from cereal mills of Cedar Rapids. Another on was Rob Lewis & Co. American Oats and Barley Oatmeal Corporation.

In 1886 Quaker oats pioneered the retail sale of cereals in packages. These developments helped to establish oatmeal as the most popular breakfast item in the United States and as a significant ingredient in many ready to eat cereals and other food products. In August 2001, after one hundred years a publicly traded company, Quaker Oats Company merged with PepsiCo, Inc. PepsiCo was founded in 1965 through the merger of Pepsi-Cola and Frito-Lay.
Quaker Oats Company in history