General Mills Company

In 1856 Cadwallader Colden Washburn (1818-1882) established the Minneapolis Milling Company, which began to mill flour in 1866.

It started as ‘Washburn’s Folly’. People sneered, snickered and some even laughed right out loud as Washburn completed his first grain refinery on banks of Mississippi River.

Washburn later formed Washburn-Crosby with John Crosby, twenty years later, what became one of the nation’s leading million companies.

Minneapolis Milling Company concentrated on promoting its signature product, Gold Medal Flour.

After acquiring twenty seven other milling operations, in 1928 the Washburn Mills Company incorporated as General Mills and then introduced a cereal, Washburn’s Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes. Its named was shortened to Wheaties.

Cheerios was created in 1941 as ‘Cheerioats’ but renamed several years later. During the 1950s, General Mills began marketing its cereal to children, and sugar-coated wheat cereals became common.

In 1997 General Mills acquired the rights to Yoplait and in 1997 the company acquired the cereals division of Ralcorp Holdings, makers of Chex cereals.

In 2001 general Mills acquired the Pillsbury Company, which had begun as the mill across the river more than one hundred years earlier, to create one of the world’s largest food companies. General Mills believed that the merger could help it break into fast-growing food categories with new products to augment its tried and true, yet quite mature cereal product lines.

In 1989, General Mills established a partnership, called the Cereal Partners Worldwide, with Nestlé to distribute its cereals outside of North America.
General Mills Company

German Mills American Oatmeal Company

In 1850, Ferdinand Schumacher, a German settler, opened a grocery store in Akron, Ohio. His major customers were German and Irish immigrants, and they bought a lot of oats.

He started the cereals turnaround in 1854 with a hand grains grinder in the back area of his not so large store, which produced 20 180-Ib barrels of oatmeal daily with a water-powered stone mill. His plan was to introduce steel-cut oats to the American diet at a time when oats were considered inappropriate for anything but horses.

His German Mills American Oatmeal Company was the nation’s foremost profit-oriented gruel producer. Sales were brisk, particularly to cities with large immigrant populations so Schumacher opened additional mills to meet the increasing demand in 1883.

In 1877, Schumacher embraced the Quaker sign the foremost recorded brand for a morning meal breakfast food.

In 1878 Schumacher imported porcelain rollers from England to manufacture rolled oats.

In the early of 1860s, during the Civil War, the government found oats to be relatively inexpensive, accessible and nourishing and ordered hundreds of barrels from him to fortify the Union troops.

When the war ceased in 1865, oats were becoming an increasingly familiar commodity on American breakfast tables. German Mills American Oatmeal Company would later merge several times with other companies, with the result being the Quaker Oats Company.
German Mills American Oatmeal Company

The History of Pillsbury

Pillsbury company was established in 1871 as C. A Pillsbury & Co. John Sergeant Pillsbury came to Minnesota from New Hampshire in 1855 and from background of hardware, lumber and land went into milling.

Charles Alfred Pillsbury and his father joined in 1869 to operate milling plant and Charles used his share of the profits to start Pillsbury A Mill.

Charles organized the company that completed in 1883, the largest four mill in the world. He expanding the business by obtaining favorable freight rates and building his own grain elevators throughout the Northwest.

In 1889, a British syndicate purchased the Pillsbury mills and also of William D Washburn.

A new form Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills was organized in London, had become British owned.

In 1908, Pillsbury Four Mills Company had taken over the operations, while the British parent, Pillsbury Washburn Flour Mills ltd, had been transformed into financial.

Until 1923 the Pillsbury Washburn Flour Mills Company, finally sell out entirely to American.

In the 1960s, the Pillsbury Company was asked to develop the first space food as well as to design a system for controlling the safety of space foods.

Pillsbury became, a successful manufacturer of food products, with subsidiaries including Burger King, Haagen Dazs and Green Giant.

In 1983, Pillsbury, also in possession of Burger King fast food restaurants, bought Haagen Dazs, maker of premiums ice cream. Two years later, the company came our with Pop Secret microwave popcorn, which eventually outpaced Orville Redenbacher and other competitors.

Pillsbury was acquired by Grand Metropolitan PLC in 1989.
The History of Pillsbury