User:Eddie891/Grandma's

GrandMa's Cookies is an American brand of cookies, owned and produced by Frito-Lay.

Product
The main cookies sold by under the GrandMa's label are intended to be sweet and chewy. After Frito-Lay's 1980 purchase, the cookie dough formula was reformulated so it would last longer than two weeks. Prior to this point, much ended up as "pig feed", according to an article in New York.

History
GrandMa's Cookies were founded in 1914 by Foster Wheeler. He named the company "Grandma's" not after an individual person but merely because he felt it would "be a good name to use for cookies and baked products." In 1945 they were purchased by Ralph Wittenberg and produced in a factory in Portland, Oregon. The factory had a mixer that could handle 1,800 lb batches of cookie dough and a 120 ft oven. That year, there were 40 different varieties of the cookies. In June 1970 the factory was destroyed in a fire. The company built a replacement plant in Beaverton, Oregon, which was scheduled to be operational by January 1971. By 1977 Bill Wittenberg was president of the company. By 1980 the company had approximately $33 million in yearly sales, and two years later there were sixteen types of cookies and snack bars being sold around the nation, but largely in the western US. The company largely sold their cookies in vending machines.

Under Frito-Lay
Grandma's Cookies were purchased by Frito-Lay in May 1980. The company embarked on a substantial expansion program, buying Grandma's production facilities in Longview, Texas, and Beaverton, and purchasing another in Tennessee. The Longview plant was set to be approximately doubled in size, but was actually closed within two years. Two additional plants were opened in Pulaski, Tennessee, and Muncy, Pennsylvania. By 1982 Frito-Lay was planning to make a bakery out of their 350,000 sqft warehouse in Dallas.

Frito-Lay announced that they would begin distributing Grandma's nationwide in a multi-phase project beginning in early 1981 and estimated that it would reach $100 million in sales. The increased distribution program was viewed as an attempt to challenge Nabisco in the cookie market. After releasing Grandma's as a trial in May 1982 in Kansas City, Frito-Lay concluded that it was a success and scheduled a release in Chicago. They planned to give out samples of the cookies and print 200 million coupons as part of the effort. The company also tried to place Grandma's products in "stand-alone display racks" located near the entrance to supermarkets. By 1984 the product had been distributed to 19.9 percent of the nation. Nabisco responded to the effort by releasing a similar cookie. Frito-Lay's effort failed.