Oscar Mayer bacon has been a staple of American refrigerators for over a century. With its distinctive red packaging and savory smoked flavor, it’s hard to imagine breakfast without this iconic bacon brand. But have you ever wondered who actually owns Oscar Mayer?
The history of Oscar Mayer is a fascinating story of an immigrant family business that grew into one of the largest processed meat companies in the world, Let’s take a closer look at the origins and evolution of Oscar Mayer over the years,
Humble Origins
The Oscar Mayer story begins in 1873 when a young German immigrant named Oscar F, Mayer arrived in Detroit at the age of 14, Mayer started working at a local meat market before moving to Chicago in 1876 to continue his apprenticeship in the meat trade
In 1883, Mayer and his brother Gottfried leased a failing Chicago meat market called Kolling Meat Market. They transformed the business by selling popular German sausages and cold cuts. Within five years, the shop was so successful that the Mayer brothers bought their own building down the block to expand.
Growth of the Mayer Brothers Meat Business
By 1900, the Mayer brothers’ meat company had over 40 employees delivering Oscar Mayer meats all over Chicago. In 1904, the company started branding some products under the name “Edelweiss”, one of the first instances of branding in the meatpacking industry.
Over the next few decades, the company expanded distribution across the Midwest, opened new facilities like a plant in Madison, Wisconsin in 1919, and rolled out innovations like vacuum-sealed packaging and the Wienermobile marketing vehicle in 1936.
The Oscar Mayer Empire Under Kraft
In 1981, after nearly a century as an independent company, Oscar Mayer was acquired by General Foods. Then in 1988, Philip Morris purchased General Foods and merged it with their recently acquired Kraft Foods. This formed the food conglomerate Kraft General Foods, with Oscar Mayer as one of its major brands.
Today, Oscar Mayer is still owned by Kraft Heinz, the massive food company formed by the 2015 merger of Kraft Foods and H.J. Heinz Company. Under Kraft Heinz, the Oscar Mayer brand generates over $2 billion in annual sales.
Still Smoky and Savory After All These Years
While the Oscar Mayer company has changed hands many times over the past 140 years, what hasn’t changed is their commitment to producing tasty smoked meats like bacon. Oscar Mayer bacon continues to be smoked over real hardwood chips, sliced and packaged thick or thin to satisfy any bacon lover.
So next time you fry up some savory Oscar Mayer bacon for breakfast remember the humble immigrant roots of this iconic American brand. With over a century of history behind it Oscar Mayer bacon has certainly earned its stripes!
History of Oscar Mayer Foods Corp.
Oscar Mayer Foods Corp. is the maker of one of the most venerable and successful food brands currently available on supermarket shelves. Sliced meats and other goods from this company are sold all over North America, as well as in some parts of South America and Asia. Oscar Mayer makes many well-known meats, such as hot dogs, bacon, and lunch combinations that come in a package. The company also tried its hand at the restaurant business in the early 1990s as a way to find more places to sell its food. Oscar Mayer, which is now part of the Kraft General Foods empire, started out as a small family business and has grown into an international food giant. It is still a big part of American culture and in American refrigerators.
Oscar F. Mayer, the companys founder, arrived in America from Bavaria in 1873 at the age of 14. Settling in Detroit, his first job was as a butcher boy in a meat market. After three years, Mayer moved to Chicago and continued his training as a meat worker by working in Armour’s stockyards. , as well as in a series of retail meat operations over the next few years. By 1880, Mayer had learned the meat business from top to bottom. He wrote home and suggested that his brother Gottfried become an apprentice sausage maker in Germany so that the family could start a business. Gottfried did what his older brother told him to do. In 1883, he and his brother opened their own store next to the failing Kolling Meat Market on the north side of Chicago. On its first day of operation, the store sold $59 worth of meat.
When their lease ran out in 1888, the Kollings refused to renew it. They wanted to go back into business by taking advantage of the store’s good name that the Mayers had built. After what happened, the Mayer brothers borrowed $10,000 and bought their own building just a few blocks away. It had space for living quarters and they opened again right away. People in the neighborhood flocked to the new market right away to buy its old-world sausages and traditional meat cuts. By this time, a third brother, Max, had joined the operation.
Oscar Mayers was well known outside of the immediate area by the turn of the century, and the business had at least 40 employees. Many salespeople brought Mayer sausages and other meats to all parts of Chicago, even to the suburbs. It was in 1904 that the company started using the “Edelweiss” logo on some of its goods, like bacon, linked sausage, and lard. Even though branding wasn’t common in the meat business at the time, the Mayers thought that a name and logo would help customers tell their meat apart from cheaper meat sold by other companies. Two years later, the company became part of the federal meat inspection program. Another Mayer, Oscars son Oscar G. Mayer, joined the team in 1909 following his graduation from Harvard. By this time, the company had about 70 employees on its payroll.
In 1911, the company was incorporated as Oscar F. Mayer & Bro. , with assets totaling $300,000. Every phase of the operation expanded at a brisk pace over the next several years. Production was decentralized into different departments, and the sales territory grew to include areas well outside of Chicago. In 1912, the company used its first car, a Ford Model T, on one of its 20 sales routes. Cardboard cartons for packaging sausages were also introduced around that time. Gottfried Mayer died in 1913, and the remaining family members continued to press forward, as sales reached $2. 69 million that year. In 1915, the company spent $2,000 on materials for a window display, which was the first time they spent a lot of money on advertising. Newspaper advertising was added two years later.
Sales at Oscar Mayer grew to $11 million by 1918. About a third of that total represented sales to the government for feeding World War I troops. In that year, the Edelweiss brand name was taken off the market and replaced with “Oscar Mayer Approved Meat Products.” The company was producing and selling 93 different meat products by this time. When the company bought a farmers cooperative meat packing plant in Madison, Wisconsin, at a bankruptcy auction in 1919, it was the start of a big plan to grow. This gave Oscar Mayer a reliable source of raw materials for the Chicago plant. Now a two-plant operation, the companys corporate name was changed that year to Oscar Mayer & Co.
Oscar Mayer continued to be a marketing innovator over the next couple of decades. In 1924, the company introduced packaged sliced bacon under the Oscar Mayer brand name. A Milwaukee branch was also opened that year. By 1928, the company had 25 different varieties of “Approved Brand” sausages on the market. That year, Oscar F. Mayer was elected to chair the board, and Oscar G. Mayer was named company president. The next year, when the company started putting yellow paper bands with the Oscar Mayer brand name on every fourth hot dog, it was its biggest marketing win. Along the way, the tag line “Meats of Good Taste” was also added to the companys brand identifiers.
By the early 1930s, Oscar Mayer had set up sales territories that went all the way to the East Coast. These included New York cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and Rochester. Over the next few years, things changed. For example, the skinless wiener was introduced, and workers at the company joined a union. In 1936, Little Oscar and his Wienermobile–a minute chef in a hot dog-shaped vehicle–made their first appearance. Over the course of several decades, they would promote Oscar Mayer by going to parades, openings, and cooking shows. 1936 also marked the introduction of the “Yellow Band” trademark on certain Oscar Mayer products.
During World War II, Oscar Mayer was again a major provider of food for the armed forces. The 1940s were also a period of technological innovation at the company. A formal research program was initiated in 1941, and the following year quality control departments were added. Beginning in 1943, the company unveiled a series of technological breakthroughs in the areas of packaging and distribution. The first of these was the “Kartridg-Pak,” which came out in 1944 and automatically stacked hot dogs in groups that looked like cartridge belts. Kartridg-Pak was so successful that it didn’t take long for a subsidiary to be set up to sell the machines to other companies in the same field. In 1946, “Sack-O-Sauce,” a separate package of sauce to be used with canned meats, was introduced. Following two years, the business launched the “Slice-Pak” line of lunch meats, which came in clear plastic packages that were vacuum-sealed and had metal bases. At the same time, the company was growing its production and geographic reach by renting and then buying the Kohrs Packing Company in Davenport, Iowa, in 1946 and then buying F G. Vogt & Sons, a Philadelphia meat processor, in 1948.
By the beginning of the 1950s, Oscar Mayers annual sales were over $150 million. The company became present on both coasts for the first time when it bought the Southern California Meat Packers plant in Los Angeles in 1951. Further technological progress and territorial growth followed. The company did a lot of research on Saran vacuum packaging around 1953. By the middle of that decade, its Slice-Pak line of products were common in grocery stores. Oscar F. Mayer died in 1955 at the age of 95. His son, Oscar G. Mayer succeeded him as chairperson, and grandson Oscar G. Mayer, Jr. was elected company president. In 1957, a new nine-story building was completed in Madison, and this became the companys corporate headquarters. Oscar Mayer was making more than 200 kinds of sausages, lunch meats, smoked and canned meats by 1958, the company’s 75th anniversary.
The early 1960s were boom years for Oscar Mayer. The company kept getting better at packaging throughout the 1960s. In 1960, Saran vacuum-seal packs for wieners and Smokie Links were introduced, and two years later, packs for bacon were added. Oscar Mayers entry into international business came in 1961, when it purchased a Venezuelan meat processor, Venezolana Empacadora. By this time, the companys U. S. distribution network included facilities in Tampa, Dallas, Kansas City, and Denver, and sales had grown to $260 million. In 1963, Oscar Mayers famous “Wiener Jingle” made its first appearance. The song, which began, “Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener. “That’s what I’d really like to be” went on to become one of the most famous and long-running ads in history.
In the 1960s, more than 30 Oscar Mayer sales distribution centers were opened across the US, with an average of $8 million spent on new buildings. 5 million a year during that period. While the company was making big investments, it bought a pork processing plant in Perry, Iowa, in 1965 and started building another one in Beardstown, Illinois, the same year. Around that time, Oscar Mayer also started buying ads on national network TV. In 1968, the company put its ads on prime time by sponsoring the TV show “Gentle Ben.” Meanwhile, another change in leadership accompanied the 1965 death of Oscar G. Mayer. Oscar G. Mayer, Jr. was elected to the chairmanship, and P. Goff Beach was named company president. Before the end of the decade, a new company called Scientific Protein Laboratories was set up to use the animal waste from Oscar Mayer’s processing operations to make chemicals and medicines.
Oscar Mayer sustained its momentum into the 1970s. In 1970, the company acquired the 100-year-old Claussen Pickle Co. , and the following year a new processing plant was opened in Nashville. In 1971, the company’s common stock was also put on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time. Around this time, Oscar Mayer began to increase its role in international business. A 25 percent interest in Prima Meat Packers, Ltd. of Tokyo was bought in 1972, and four years later, the company bought General De Matederos, a Spanish meat business that became Oscar Mayer, S.A. A. Another leadership change took place in 1973, when Beach was elected chairperson. Harold M. Mayer became vice-chairperson, and Robert M. Bolz took over the companys presidency. That year, the second of Oscar Mayers wildly popular commercial jingles–“My bologna has a first name, its O-s-c-a-r. My bologna has a second name, its M-a-y-e-r,” made its initial appearance in a television ad called “Fisherman. “.
Sales at Oscar Mayer topped the $1 billion mark for the first time in 1975. In 1977, the company started a big advertising campaign that included going back to print ads and running a number of promotions with free stuff, coupons, and other tricks. Another reshuffling of executive titles took place that year as well, in which Jerry M. Hiegel was named president, Bolz vice-chair, and Harold M. Mayer chairperson of the executive committee. Along the way, several new products were introduced, some more successfully than others. 1978s entry was “The Big One,” a quarter-pound hot dog marketed across the United States. It was 1979 when Oscar Mayer opened the first restaurant in its “Rocky Rococo” chain, which was a pizza place near Minneapolis.
Hiegel, who was now CEO, led a diversification plan that led to the company buying processed turkey leader Louis Rich, Inc. at the end of the 1970s. , and of Chefs Pantry Inc. , a food service company with mainly industrial customers. GFC bought Oscar Mayer in 1981, and the company changed its name to Oscar Mayer Foods Corp. After Philip Morris Companies, Inc. acquired both General Foods in 1985 and Kraft Inc. in 1988, Oscar Mayer became part of Kraft General Foods, Inc. , the subsidiary created by combining the two food giants. Oscar Mayer was General Foods’ best-selling brand for most of the 1980s. This was mostly due to the success of its Louis Rich business, which saw its sales double to $600 million from 1979 to 1987.
After a series of product flops, however, sales began to slow up a bit by 1988. The company even trotted out the old Wienermobile in an attempt to rev up publicity. When Oscar Mayer came out with Lunchables in 1989, a prepackaged lunch mix of meats, cheeses, and crackers, the company got out of its slump. The food industry press gave Lunchables a Sial d’Or medal, and they were so popular that other companies quickly made copies and put them on store shelves. In spite of the waves the Lunchables were making, Oscar Mayers sales remained sluggish into the 1990s. Although revenue reached $2. 5 billion in 1991, this fell short of the companys stated goal for the year. People still liked turkey products, but Americans were becoming more health-conscious and wary of fatty meat products with added preservatives. Oscar Mayer countered by introducing low-fat and low-sodium products, such as its Healthy Favorites line. Unfortunately, even turkey sales began to decline in 1992.
As the 1990s continued, Oscar Mayer continued searching for ways to stoke the American appetite for processed meat. In 1992, the company launched Hot Dog Construction Co. , a chain of fast food restaurants that were located at transit stops, turnpike stops, amusement parks, and other similar places A new subsidiary, Branded Restaurant Group, Inc. , oversaw the operations. The company came out with Oscar Mayer Big in 1993. Later that year, Robert A. Eckert was named president of Oscar Mayer, replacing John D. Bowlin, who had left to join Miller Brewing Co. as president and chief operating officer.
Oscar Mayer has been in the meat business for more than a hundred years and has always been one of the leaders in the industry when it comes to new products, packaging, and marketing. The meat industry as a whole had a lot of problems in the mid-1990s, but the company had a great track record of coming up with big ideas at the right time. Oscar Mayer meat was likely to make up a big part of American lunchboxes as long as packaged meat kept moving around.
Principal Subsidiaries: Branded Restaurant Group Inc.
- Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Kraft General Foods Inc.
- Incorporated: 1911 as Oscar F. Mayer & Bro.
- Employees: 11,000
- Sales: $2.3 billion
- SIC codes: 2013 Sausages and other prepared meat products; 2015 Poultry Slaughtering and Processing; 2035 Pickled Vegetables, Vegetable Sauces and Seasonings, and Salad Dressings; 2092 Prepared Fresh or Frozen Fish and Seafoods; 4731 Arrangement of Transportation of Freight and Cargo; 4213 Trucking, Other Than Local
Oscar Mayer: Dancing Bacon 15
When did Oscar Mayer start selling bacon?
Oscar Mayer continued to be a marketing innovator over the next couple of decades. In 1924, the company introduced packaged sliced bacon under the Oscar Mayer brand name. A Milwaukee branch was also opened that year. By 1928, the company had 25 different varieties of “Approved Brand” sausages on the market.
Who owns Oscar Mayer foods?
In 1981, Oscar Mayer was bought by General Foods Corporation, and its name was changed to Oscar Mayer Foods Corp. After Philip Morris Companies, Inc. acquired both General Foods in 1985 and Kraft Inc. in 1988, Oscar Mayer became part of Kraft General Foods, Inc., the subsidiary created by combining the two food giants.
Who owns Oscar Mayer?
For nearly a century, Oscar Mayer remained an independent company owned primarily by descendants of the Mayer brothers who started it. In 1981, Oscar Mayer stockholders elected to sell the company to General Foods.
Who makes Oscar Mayer hot dogs?
Oscar Mayer is an American meat and cold cut producer known for its hot dogs, bologna, bacon, ham, and Lunchables products. The company is a subsidiary of the Kraft Heinz Company and based in Chicago, Illinois .
Who makes Oscar Mayer sliced meat?
Company History: Oscar Mayer Foods Corp. is the maker of one of the most venerable and successful food brands currently available on supermarket shelves. The company’s sliced meats and other products are sold across North America and in parts of South America and Asia.
Could Heinz sell Oscar Mayer meats business?
REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo (Reuters) -Kraft Heinz is exploring a sale of its Oscar Mayer meats business that could fetch anything between $3 billion to $5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.