1932 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

The word bagel is used for the first time by some accounts—a variation on the Yiddish word beygl that has been spelled beigel since 1919 (see Lender's, 1927). The hard glazed roll will grow to outsell doughnuts in the United States.

Frito corn chips are introduced by San Antonio, Texas, ice cream salesman C. Elmer Doolin, who has gone into a local café for a sandwich, been served a side dish of tortilla chips created by the café's Mexican owner, borrowed $100 from his mother, Daisy Dean, to buy the recipe, and gone into business with her and his brother Earl, using a converted potato ricer to cut tortilla dough into strips and selling the chips out of his Model T Ford. Earl develops a machine to force out the dough under pressure, and the Doolins will license local companies to make Fritos using machinery purchased at cost with Doolin-trained personnel, taking a royalty on each package sold (see Frito-Lay, 1961).

Skippy Peanut Butter is introduced by Rosefield Packing Co. of Alamada, Calif., whose Joseph L. Rosefield has canceled his exclusive licensing agreement with the makers of Peter Pan Peanut Butter following a dispute (see 1928). He markets his own brand, possibly named after the comic strip, and beginning in 1934 will introduce the first smooth-based peanut butter containing chunks of roasted peanuts. Rosefield will patent a new type of cold-processed hydrogenated peanut oil in 1950, and by 1954 Rosefield Packing will have nearly 25 percent of the U.S. peanut butter market.

Mars, Inc. introduces 3 Musketeers, charging a nickel for three candy bars in one (see 1930). Included are a fluffy vanilla nougat, a fluffy chocolate nougat, and a fluffy strawberry nougat, each covered in milk chocolate (the product will later be changed to make it one chocolate-covered chocolate nougat). Frank Mars squabbles with his only son, Forrest E., 28, who has a degree in industrial engineering from Yale and thinks he knows more than his father about how to run the company; Frank grants Forrest foreign rights to manufacture Milky Way, and the son goes to England, where he will manufacture Milky Way in a factory at Slough, outside London, and market it as the Mars Bar and Snickers under the name Marathon (see 1934; M&Ms, 1941).

Big Bear Super Market opens at Elizabeth, N.J., and is the first large cut-rate self-service grocery store (see King Kullen, 1930). Local entrepreneurs Robert M. Otis and Roy O. Dawson have put up a total of $1,000 to take over an empty car factory on the outskirts of town; their Big Bear the Price Crusher store has 50,000 square feet of pine tables displaying meats, fruit, vegetables, packaged foods, radios, automobile accessories, and paints, and after 1 year they have made a profit of $166,000 selling Quaker Oats oatmeal at 3¢ per box, pork chops at 10¢/lb. Traditional grocers persuade local newspapers to refuse Big Bear advertising and push through a state law against selling at or below cost, but Big Bear is quickly imitated by Great Tiger, Bull Market, Great Leopard, and others as the supermarket revolution gathers force.

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