Late in 1894, Haskell began churning butter at Beatrice and using their own delivery wagons to distributive creamery butter in the special protective packages that they has devised to grocery stores, restaurants and hotels.
He renamed it the Beatrice Creamery Company. In 1901 the company adopted the trademark Meadow Gold for its butter.
The company is reported to have been the first company to package butter in sealed cartons. In 1931 Beatrice was the first company to advertise its ice cream products nationally.
The company bought Blue Valley in 1939, moved to Chicago from Beatrice, Nebraska in 1913 and established its headquarters at 1526 South State Street.
In attempt to expand its product line, the company purchased La Choy, a producer of Asian Foods, in 1943.
In 1984 Beatrice Food purchased Hunt-Wesson Inc, a large food products company in California. In the same year, Beatrice launched its first ad campaign, stamping its name on every product within the company. The ads, created by Marsteller, of Chicago, Illinois, showed Beatrice’s products and then introduced the company with the tag-line, ‘Beatrice. You’ve known us all along’.
Beatrice has become a slimmer and more focused company in the early 2000s. In 1987, Lewis and TLC bought Beatrice Foods for $985 million and repositioning it as a food conglomerate with sixty-four company in thirty-one countries.
By January 1993, Beatrice Food’s annual revenue exceeds $2.5 billion.
Beatrice Foods Company
