Mother's Cookies is a brand that originally had a bakery based in Oakland, California, that operated from 1914 to 2008.[1][2] A sister company, Archway Cookies of Battle Creek, Michigan, was founded in 1936. Both Mother's Cookies and Archway declared bankruptcy in 2008.[3] At its height, the company distributed cookies throughout the United States, and was one of the leading cookie makers in the country.[4] The Kellogg Company 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.[5][6]
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Mother's was founded in 1914 when Woodrow Wilson declared that Mother's Day would be a national holiday in the USA.[7] The founder was N.M. Wheatley, a newspaper vendor.[1] The company was sold to Artal NV, a Belgian company, then bought by Specialty Foods Corp., a conglomerate formed by the Bass Brothers.[8]
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, 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.[4] Markham in turn sold the company to two employees, who operated it from 1983 to 1996. The company was sold to Specialty Foods in 1998, reportedly for $100 million.[9][10] The transaction made Specialty Foods the third largest cookie maker in the United States[4][11] after Keebler and Nabisco.[12]
The two companies then went through a succession of owners. 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.[13] Cookie sales began to decline after 2000 due to low-fat and low carb 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.[11] Parmalat filed for bankruptcy[11] 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,[1] The new operators closed the Oakland factory in 2006, laid off all 230 workers without warning,[14] and moved baking operations to Ohio and Canada. The company suffered an accounting scandal in 2008[15] and in October 2008, the company became a victim of the financial crisis of 2007–2010 when the company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laid off all of its workers.[1]
In December, 2008, Lance Inc. bought the assets of Archway,[16] and soon reopened the former Archway factory in Ashland, Ohio.[17] Also, the same month Kelloggs 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.[18]
Mother's is known for pink and white iced "Circus Animal Cookies", "Taffy Sandwich Cookies", "Peanut Butter Gauchos", and iced oatmeal raisin cookies.[19][20] 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.[4]
The company included collectable baseball cards in their packs of cookies, featuring the Pacific Coast League.[21]
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