Mother's Cookies - History

History

Mother's was founded in 1914 when Woodrow Wilson declared that Mother's Day would be a national holiday in the USA. The founder was N.M. Wheatley, a newspaper vendor. The company was sold to Artal NV, a Belgian company, then bought by Specialty Foods Corp., a conglomerate formed by the Bass Brothers.

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. 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. The transaction made Specialty Foods the third largest cookie maker in the United States after Keebler and Nabisco.

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. 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. Parmalat filed for bankruptcy 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, The new operators closed the Oakland factory in 2006, laid off all 230 workers, and moved baking operations to Ohio and Canada. The company suffered an accounting scandal in 2008 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.