- [Narrator] Crunchy, chewy, crumbly.
Americans consume over 5 million cookies
every single day.
- [Adam] When we look at cookies, we're spoiled for
choice with all these different versions in the supermarket.
- [Narrator] But just over a century ago,
the industry as we know it didn't exist.
- [Jason] It doesn't seem possible
that they have not always been with us.
- [Narrator] Thanks to a series of visionaries,
in just a few decades,
cookies go from a treat for the wealthy-
- Nothing special. - Bland.
- [Narrator] To a $15 billion a year American industry.
- [Jason] The cookie took over the world.
- [Narrator] from the groundbreaking sandwich cookie.
- First one off the line.
- [Narrator] To the iconic chocolate chip,
- You have to give me the recipe.
- [Narrator] Whether they're sold in shopping malls.
- Can I offer you a chocolate chip cookie?
- [Narrator] Or in grocery stores around the world.
- [Handley] Amos was shooting to make his cookie
the biggest star that he had ever had.
- [Narrator] Each new innovation-
- It tastes pretty darn good.
- [Narrator] led to the next great American icon.
- [Jason] Cookies went from zero to a thousand.
- Cookies here.
- [Adam] You can't talk about the foods that built America
without talking about the iconic cookie.
- [Narrator] This is the history of the American cookie.
[upbeat music]
[gentle music]
[bright music]
- [Narrator] The world's first cookies are thought to have
originated in seventh century Persia as tiny cakes.
- [Dr. Yohuru] They would bake these kind of smaller cakes
to test the oven to see if it was hot enough.
- [Susan] They would put them in the oven
to see if the temperature worked,
but also if the recipe worked.
- [Dr. Yohuru] And at some point they realized
that they came out crispy
and they were quite delicious,
and they became kind of a food in their own right.
- [Susan] And they endured all the way up
into becoming what was known as the cookie.
- [Narrator] By the turn of the 20th century,
cookies are predominantly homemade
and reserved for the wealthy.
- [Beth] In America, the history of cookies really stems
from this wider category of items called biscuits.
Savory biscuits are called crackers,
and sweet biscuits are cookies.
- [Narrator] There are no national cookie brands yet.
So the story of the cookies that built America
begins in the world of crackers,
which is dominated by the nation's
first food conglomerate,
the National Biscuit Company, better known as Nabisco.
But in 1907, just 20 miles from Nabisco headquarters,
brothers Jacob and Joseph Loose
are taking aim at Nabisco's crown
with their recently formed company
called Sunshine Biscuits.
And for them, it isn't just business.
It's personal.
- Are you sure you wanna do this?
- [Narrator] Since a few years earlier, Nabisco's chairman,
Adolphus Green, absorbed the Loose brothers'
first biscuit company in an aggressive bid
to become the only name in American crackers.
- You can't be- - Sit down.
- Let's vote by a show of hands. All those in favor?
- [Adam] Adolphus Green stabbed him in the back,
and Joseph Loose was dumbstruck.
- [Narrator] Now, the Loose brothers are on a mission
to exact revenge on Adolphus Green.
- [Dr. Libby] They think they know how to run a company
better than Nabisco does.
They're gonna make it different.
They're very, very progressive.
So first thing they do is build a new recipe.
- [Narrator] Instead of launching Sunshine
with just another cracker,
the Loose brothers plan to enter the fight
with something Nabisco doesn't have.
A cookie.
They try several recipes to find one they can mass produce
into a product that is both affordable and delicious.
[upbeat music]
- Nothing special.
- Bland.
- [Rashed] The entrepreneurs have an idea.
They have a passion for something,
and they want to take the risk,
financial and personal risks to be able
to develop that idea into product.
I think it's a human instinct
that really drives everyone to be independent,
to be able to leverage their skills and aspirations.
- It's too plain.
What else we got?
- [Narrator] After multiple failed attempts,
the brothers devise a new approach,
taking advantage of a hot new trend sweeping the country.
Chocolate.
- [Dr. Libby] Chocolate originates in America.
It's from Central America.
It is delicious, but it is so expensive
that it was really only available to the elite,
and it was Hershey who creates the everyday chocolate bar
that was affordable.
So this is gonna make chocolate an American product
and help really develop that taste in this country.
- [Narrator] The Loose brothers believe
if they can incorporate milk chocolate into their recipe,
they could revolutionize the cookie in America.
[bright music]
They use cocoa to create a sweet version of a cracker.
- [Stella] They really increase the amount of cocoa powder
that's in the dough, and that changes everything
in terms of the flavor and the texture.
[cookie crunching]
- Not too exciting for sure. - No.
- [Narrator] Unsatisfied with just a sweet chocolate version
of a biscuit, the brothers draw inspiration
from a centuries old food
that has never been thought of for cookies.
The sandwich.
to create their sweet take on a meal
as old as the Middle Ages, they add a decadent layer
of vanilla cream and top it off
with a second chocolate cookie.
[dramatic music]
- There it is.
- [Narrator] And in 1908, the sandwich cookie is born.
- [Adam] It's a huge moment.
The creation is representative of the sort of tinkering
that was happening across America,
especially where you wanted to create something
that was a signature that looked different
and seemed different.
That's sort of what we strive for as an American idea.
- [Narrator] With their sights set on overtaking Nabisco
as America's most successful bakery,
the Loose brothers prepare to launch their sandwich cookie
onto the national stage.
They named their revolutionary new product Hydrox.
- [Adam] They thought, what's pure? Water.
Hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrox.
But the word Hydrox, it's not a name
that necessarily evokes, mm, delicious cookie.
Hydrox sounds like a cleaning product
or a planet in the Star Wars star system.
- We did it. - Yeah. Thank you.
- [Narrator] Running their factory at full capacity.
- We gotta get these out.
First shipment's out to Cincinnati in the morning.
Come on.
- [Narrator] The Loose brothers launch the Hydrox,
blanketing the country
with the first ever prepackaged cookie.
It's an instant hit.
- There you go, thank you. Bay four.
- [Stella] Sunshine really is able to enter the market
effectively. They did something like $12 million in profit,
so they were doing so great for the time.
- Can I get another sack over here?
- You can take that little sandwich cookie and twist it,
and you can eat the cream out if that's your fancy,
and have a glass of milk.
- [Narrator] As Sunshine's sales continue to grow,
it eats into Nabisco's profit share.
For the first time since its formation,
Nabisco's growth stalls.
- [Stella] People are saying like, hey, like,
Nabisco's kind of stagnant these days.
Should we be selling off and buying Sunshine?
- [Adolphus] Hmm.
- [Stella] And if his number one competitor has a chocolate
and vanilla sandwich cookie on the market,
Nabisco would need to have a chocolate
and vanilla sandwich cookie on the market.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] In a ruthless move, Green begins working
on a recipe for a Nabisco version of a sandwich cookie
that can compete with the Hydrox.
- [Adam] Adolphus Green, he was known for speaking ill
of competition, and it wasn't about peaceful coexistence,
it was about market domination through and through.
- [Narrator] And Green has an ace up his sleeve,
a bold plan to join forces
with one of the most dominant names in American food.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] In 1912, Adolphus Green is determined to perfect a
product that will compete with the groundbreaking Hydrox
cookie. And now, he's got a secret weapon.
- [Adam] He reached out to Milton Hershey,
who had obviously found ways
of making Dutch cocoa much more accessible
and usable in other food products,
in chocolate milk, hot chocolate, and so on.
So you could get that greater fudginess
that originally started from Hershey's cocoa.
- Sir.
First one off the line.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] Four years after the Hydrox is released,
America's next great cookie is born.
[dramatic music]
Nabisco launches the Oreo,
accompanied by an aggressive ad campaign.
Within a year, the Oreo is outselling the Hydrox,
quickly becoming the number one cookie in America.
- [Stella] If you were a millionaire or just scraping by,
everyone's fond of Oreos, so it's really managed to appeal
across generations and class boundaries and the miles,
and really established itself as an American cultural icon.
- [Narrator] For well over two decades, the Oreo remains
the undisputed number one cookie in America.
And by the 1930s, thanks in large part
to the Oreo's dominance, a vast majority of American cookies
are now made in factories
and are rarely being baked at home anymore.
But the husband and wife founders
of a new restaurant called the Toll House
believe that everything's better homemade.
- We got another order of filet mignon,
medium rare, and a lobster Thermidor.
- Ruth Wakefield managed the kitchen,
while Ken would run the front of the house.
- Thank you.
- [Narrator] One of the things the Toll House
becomes known for are Ruth's unique desserts.
- Take these to table six.
- [Narrator] Including the simplest one on the menu,
a butter pecan cookie.
- People liked them, but it was a giveaway. It was free.
- [Adam] It was a sort of unremarkable, uninspiring
accompaniment to ice cream.
Much like today when you order soup,
you get a little packet of crackers.
They're there, but they're not necessarily
the thing you wanted, you wanted soup.
- [Narrator] But soon customers are requesting
the cookies themselves.
- [Beth] Ruth had tons of success with this butter pecan
cookie. It was beloved by everybody, and she thought,
how can I riff on the success of a cookie?
How could she up it?
Could she offer a different texture to elevate them?
- She came up with the idea to create a chocolate cookie,
almost like a little chocolate cake.
So she decides to take a baker's chocolate bar,
which is unsweetened, it's got no added milk or sugar,
and she's gonna melt it
and put it in a blonde cookie batter.
- [Ruth] What's this?
- They were out of baker's chocolate.
- [Beth] There were two types of chocolate
in the American grocery store,
eating bars, like a Hershey's bar,
which had milk and sugar in it.
And there was also a baking bar, baker's chocolate,
which was unsweetened and commonly used for cooking.
- [Narrator] On a whim, Ruth decides to use
the semi-sweet chocolate bar anyway.
- [Vallery] Ruth realizes that the original plan
would have been too sweet if she used
the Nestle chocolate bar.
So she's gonna experiment with a new way
of preparing the chocolate.
- [Adam] She takes an ice pick and starts chipping away
at this massive Nestle's bar of semi-sweet chocolate.
- [Narrator] This allows Ruth to add chocolate
in smaller doses without over-sweetening the dough.
- [Beth] She invented the chocolate chip.
- [Bill] Although it seems completely obvious today,
this was probably the first time
that a piece of candy had been inserted into a cookie.
[upbeat music]
[oven dings] [upbeat music]
- [Carolyn] So the first cookie comes out of the oven
and it's polka-dotted with gooey, melted,
but still distinct pieces of chocolate.
Some people have said that she was surprised
the chocolate didn't melt,
but I think that she was smarter than that.
She knew her stuff.
- [Adam] The chocolate is not pervasive throughout the cookie,
so you get a contrast of sweet and savory.
- She was the first person ever
to have a chocolate chip cookie.
- [Vallery] What's crazy to think about is if the store
had baker's chocolate that day,
these cookies might have never been invented.
- [Narrator] Ruth Wakefield doesn't know it,
but one day over 7 billion cookies inspired by her recipe
will be eaten in the United States every single year.
- [Adam] And it will go on to be the most beloved
cookie on planet Earth.
- [Narrator] But for now, the chocolate chip cookie
is still an unknown commodity.
- [Carolyn] No restaurant served cookies at that time.
It had never been done before.
- [Brooke] Dessert at a restaurant was supposed to be
really elaborate and decadent.
Cookies were just little inexpensive treats
that you could get at any grocery store.
- [Vallery] These cookies are nothing like
what you would find in a grocery store.
- Excuse me, ma'am, you have to give me the recipe.
- Oh, of course. I'll be right back.
- [Edward] She goes on to almost in a philanthropic way,
share this recipe with anybody that wants it.
- [Carolyn] She was handing out typed recipes,
and "The Boston Globe" newspaper published the recipe.
It was kind of a grassroots popularity for that cookie.
Newspapers, recipe swap columns.
- [Narrator] As word spreads about her unique cookie recipe,
it triggers sales of Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate bar
to spike an amazing 500%,
only around Whitman, Massachusetts,
which catches the attention of Nestle's CEO, Edouard Muller.
- I would like to print your recipe
on each and every package of our semi-sweet chocolate bars.
- [Narrator] In 1939, Nestle buys the rights
to Ruth's recipe.
And within months, they launch a first-of-its-kind product
that will make it possible for chocolate chip cookies
to be made and consumed all over the world,
Nestle's Toll House Morsels.
- [Beth] This was incredibly novel.
It's very common today,
but imagine in 1940 seeing the first bag
of these chocolate morsels.
There was nothing else like these morsels on the shelf.
- [Adam] And people are still used to hearing about
how Ruth had been chipping off the chocolate from the bar.
- And the Toll House cookie
becomes the chocolate chip cookie.
- [Adam] So even though the package says semi-sweet
chocolate morsels, people called them
chocolate chip cookies, and the name stuck.
- [Narrator] By 1945, Nestle's global annual revenue
increases 125% since buying Ruth's recipe,
soaring to $225 million, roughly $4 billion today.
- [Adam] And a lot more people began really loving
chocolate chip cookies all over the country.
Then in a 1950's survey, America reveals
that its favorite cookie is no longer the Oreo,
it's the chocolate chip cookie.
- [Narrator] And Nestle's meteoric rise in America
will unwittingly provoke the company behind the Oreo
to once again reinvent how people eat cookies.
- [Beth] And that's where things get really exciting.
- [Narrator] In the late 1950s,
Nabisco's annual sales near $500 million,
thanks in great part to their top seller, the Oreo.
- [Edward] In the world of cookies,
Nabisco was a big player in the game.
They had a lot of hits at the time,
so they felt pretty comfortable in their position
as top cookie dog.
- [Narrator] But now, more than half
of all Americans surveyed declare their favorite cookie
is the chocolate chip cookie,
knocking Nabisco's Oreo out of the number one spot.
- [Beth] That is huge.
Oreo has been America's favorite cookie for years,
and here comes this chocolate chip cookie
that people are making at home
that is America's favorite cookie.
- [Narrator] And Nabisco's new CEO, Lee Bickmore,
isn't happy about it.
- [Adam] He realizes if the chocolate chip cookie has enough
appeal to dethrone the legendary, iconic Nabisco Oreo,
that they have to get into the chocolate chip cookie game.
- [Narrator] So Bickmore directs his team
to make something unprecedented,
a shelf-stable chocolate chip cookie,
which means they can't use the typical ingredients
from Ruth's recipe.
- [Adam] So they can't use eggs and butter
and all those wonderful things
that are gonna make a cookie a little more bendy and chewy,
because they are gonna turn rancid
and spoil on store shelves.
- What am I looking at here?
- This cookie was baked using our proprietary blend
and sealed in a package for 24 hours.
[dramatic music]
- [Adam] It's hard, brittle, and not the soft,
chewy chocolate chip cookie that everyone
knows, loves, and makes at home.
- You know, that tastes, um, that tastes pretty darn good.
- The thing about chocolate chip cookies is like they say
about pizza, even bad ones are still pretty good.
- [knocks] This a good time?
- Come on in.
- [Narrator] But there's a final piece of the puzzle needed
to make their product complete.
- Possible list of names.
- No.
No.
Definitely not.
[dramatic music]
Chips Ahoy.
- [Carolyn] It came from that naval boating expression, ships
ahoy, when you see a lot of ships.
And Nabisco is trying to emphasize the number
and abundance of chocolate chips.
So it's like Chips Ahoy,
we see a lot of chips in this cookie.
- Chips Ahoy. [chuckles]
- [Narrator] In 1963, their groundbreaking cookie
hits grocery stores nationwide.
- [Beth] It was the first time Americans could buy that
on a shelf ready to go.
- [Edward] And the Chips Ahoy cookie is an instant hit.
- [Narrator] Within a year of their release,
Nabisco's sales increase by $156 million,
hitting $719 million.
- [Edward] Ruth Wakefield had invented
the chocolate chip cookie,
but Nabisco really made it their own.
- [Narrator] But Nabisco's new cookie is also part
of a growing movement in America over the next decade
where mass-produced inexpensive food
dominates supermarket aisles.
- Walk into a supermarket, and there's all types
of food on the shelves from big conglomerates.
We would see the 1970s as the peak of when preservatives
and chemical dyes were in almost
everything that people were eating.
And we'd find out pretty soon that they aren't good for you.
So there was this whole sort of movement
of people rebelling against the chemistry industry
behind the food industry,
and California was leading the way.
- [Narrator] In Hollywood,-
[phone rings]
food is the last thing on one man's mind.
- Hi, Mr. Masekela. Let me see if he's available.
- [Narrator] He's left the world's largest talent agency
to start a company managing his own clients.
- He just got off a call.
- Hughie, my man.
- [Vallery] He was able to get a job in the mail room
at William Morris Agency,
which is one of the top talent agencies,
and he became the first Black talent manager.
- [Adam] He famously is credited
for discovering Simon & Garfunkel.
He represented Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye,
and my favorite singer of all time, Sam Cooke.
But he also really understands the publicity machine,
celebrity, and how to make friends and influence people.
- Oh, and you already signed with him. I see.
- [Narrator] But his new venture is struggling.
- The problem is if you're an independent agent
and you get a guy and he gets big enough,
these big agencies are gonna come in,
they're gonna try to buy him out,
and they're gonna get him over to them.
And he couldn't really overcome that.
[dramatic music]
- [Adam] So after losing his last client,
he needed a bit of a distraction.
So he remembers his Aunt Ella
used to make chocolate chip pecan cookies,
and he started doing that himself.
- [Hadley] Baking was his happy space.
So he started to bake cookies kind of to self-soothe.
- Cookies here.
[dramatic music]
- Mm.
- [Jason] A light kind of goes off, and he realizes,
what's the one thing that's making me happy?
It's making cookies.
- [Narrator] He doesn't know it, but this simple idea
will lead to the creation of a billion-dollar company,
deals with America's largest retailers,
and will turn him into a national TV star
as he kickstarts a cookie revolution.
- [Vellery] He will open the first shop dedicated
to chocolate chip cookies in the world.
- [Narrator] His name is Wally Amos,
better known as Famous Amos.
- [Narrator] In the mid 1970s, Wally Amos is transforming
himself from a talent manager into a cookie entrepreneur.
- [Vallery] I don't think he even thought twice about it.
He knew it would be that next step.
He could turn his love of baking cookies into a business.
- Wally Amos here calling for Marvin Gaye.
- So after this management business failed,
he turns to the people that know who he is, what he's about,
and famously gets a $25,000 investment
from these iconic musicians like Marvin Gaye,
Helen Reddy, and so on.
- [Narrator] Wally Amos is confident his cookies
are exactly what America needs right now.
- [Narrator] By the 1970s, America's cookie industry bakes
up billions of dollars for large corporations, like Keebler,
which has $300 million in sales in 1974,
and Nabisco, who reaches almost $2 billion
selling factory-made cookies for 75 cents a box.
But Amos wants to make something
the packaged juggernauts can't offer.
- You plan to put what here?
- [Vallery] And so he decided to open the first shop
dedicated to chocolate chip cookies in the world.
- [Hadley] Amos was trying to break new ground
by selling this homemade chocolate chip cookie
that had that mom-just-made-it flavor
instead of kind of the traditional thin wafers
that had been sold up to that time.
- [Narrator] With no experience in the food industry,
Wally Amos goes all in, gambling his reputation
and future on his homemade cookies.
Just five hours north, in Palo Alto, California,
a young housewife is trying to make a good impression
on her husband's colleagues.
- Mm. Hello, Louis, right?
- You're Randy's wife.
- Debbi. It's nice to meet you.
- These are yours?
- Debbi had a great cookie recipe by the time she was,
you know, 13 or 14, in her teenage years.
Then by the time she's 19, she's married
and she's started putting these cookies out,
you know, on trays for parties for her husband's friends,
and people loved them.
- So, what do you do?
- Oh, um, I'm, I'm just trying to get orientated.
- [scoffs] The word is oriented.
[Debbi chuckles]
If you can't learn proper English,
then you should probably just stick to baking.
- [Narrator] One belittling comment at a party
will turn her hobby into a cookie empire
worth over $450 million.
But for now, Debbi is a housewife known simply-
- Goodnight, Mrs. Fields.
- [Narrator] as Mrs. Fields.
Meanwhile, in 1975, Wally Amos is opening what is believed
to be the world's first cookie store, Famous Amos,
right in the heart of L.A.'s iconic Sunset Boulevard.
- [Bill] Famous Amos was the first of the luxury
chocolate chip cookies that cropped up
in the late '70s and early '80s.
And they came in a package that was very distinct
and different than your average Chips Ahoy package.
They were smaller, they had a much richer flavor,
and for a brief period, they were considered
like the gold standard in chocolate chip cookies.
- He treats this thing like a Hollywood premiere,
and it's a huge success, it's gangbusters,
and he sells out of everything,
but he actually spends a lot of money.
- [Adam] So though Wally Amos has an incredible ability
to market himself and to reach the masses,
he's got no real financial background,
so the cookies were fine, the business not so much.
- [Narrator] And his desire to rapidly expand
will soon force him to reinvent his entire enterprise.
Despite being only about 300 miles away,
the location Debbi Fields is eyeing
for her new cookie shop couldn't be more different.
- Doesn't seem like the best place.
- It's small, intimate, there's foot traffic right outside.
- [Narrator] Seizing an unusual opportunity,
Debbi Fields is ahead of the coming food court boom
as she tries to open her first cookie store
inside a shopping mall.
But to do so, she's forced to take a big financial risk.
- [Adam] She leverages her home and her husband's money
to get the one loan she could get
with an astronomical 21% interest rate
to build her first store in Palo Alto, California,
even though people told her it was the stupidest idea ever.
- [Narrator] But Debbi believes her store will succeed
since she's offering something completely new.
- [Adam] It was unlike any other cookie on the market.
It was a warm, chewy, soft, homemade cookie.
But at first, people were definitely skeptical.
- [Narrator] By noon on her first day,
she hasn't had a single customer.
And if she can't sell her cookies,
it could mean there's no market
for fresh baked goods sold in shopping malls.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] Unlike Famous Amos, opening day at Debbi Fields'
shop in 1977 is anything but grand.
- She starts out having absolutely no sales,
but she is driven and starts pounding the pavement.
- Can I offer you a chocolate chip cookie?
Come back and see us.
Good afternoon, can I offer you
a chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven?
- [Adam] She starts giving out samples to people,
getting them to try her iconic warm cookies,
saying, "Hey, would you buy this cookie?
Do you like this cookie?
Well, I've gotta store around the corner."
- They're even better with coffee.
Come by and see us on your break.
- [Beth] Debbi was really one of the first to go out there
with a tray and sample them for people to taste
so that people could experience them warm and fresh,
but also just to sample in general.
And that was genius, because once people
tasted those cookies, they were sold.
- Hi, Jeff. Hi, Russell.
- Hi, Mrs. Fields.
- Mrs. Fields was definitely a pioneer with starting
the snacks in a shopping center, and we see them still.
We see Cinnabon, we see Auntie Em's, we see Orange Julius,
because you're gonna have people who are walking by
who don't have access to, you know,
go home and grab a snack out of their pantry.
So Mrs. Fields opening her stores in shopping malls
was pretty genius.
- Thank you. See you tomorrow.
- [Narrator] By the end of her first year,
sales of Mrs. Fields' cookies reached $200,000,
the equivalent of over a million dollars today.
- [Beth] This was beyond her expectations,
and it really set the tone for like,
this can be a profitable business.
- [Narrator] By the early 1980s, she has over
a dozen locations in shopping malls all across the West,
and cookie giants, Keebler, Nabisco,
and Procter & Gamble, take notice.
- [Adam] It's kind of a profound compliment for Debbi Fields
that Nabisco, who's selling 400 million pounds
of cookies every year, sees Mrs. Fields as a threat.
They were making these crispy, crunchy,
store-bought cookies, but she was doing something different,
something warm, soft, and chewy,
something that people clearly loved.
So they begin to pivot.
- [Narrator] Procter & Gamble spends $30 million
developing their Duncan Hines Chocolate Chip Cookies,
followed by Nabisco's Chewy Chips Ahoy
and Keebler's Soft Batch.
- [Adam] Suddenly, cookies with names like Almost Home
end up finding their way onto the shelves,
recreating the soft texture.
And though they say imitation is the most sincere
form of flattery, it's not too flattering
when it eats into your bottom line.
- [Narrator] While Mrs. Fields struggles
to fend off the new competition,
Wally Amos has been expanding too quickly.
To stay afloat, he sells his majority stake
for $1.1 million, and now the company's new CEO,
Keith Lively, wants to transition away
from storefront cookie shops.
- [Adam] Keith Lively is a businessman, not a baker.
So to help extend the shelf life,
Keith Lively changes the recipe
and makes a quality on par with Chips Ahoy and Keebler.
But now, this product that was meant to create
a homemade feel is just another store-bought cookie.
- What is this?
- [Narrator] To increase profit margins,
Lively wants Amos's cookies
on grocery store shelves across America.
- [Vallery] Changing the recipe to make it less gourmet
was the final straw for Wally Amos,
and that's when he walked away.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] Wally Amos leaves his
$225,000 salary and quits.
With Amos out of the picture, the company that bears
his name is sold to Keebler for $61 million,
and the cookie revolution Amos had kicked off
is about to give way to a new revolution
in store-bought cookies.
- [Narrator] In 1987, now with 70 Mrs. Fields locations
nationwide, Debbi's husband, Randy Fields,
has developed an innovative computer software
that uses an early form of the internet called an intranet
to connect each of their stores to a central headquarters.
- It was such a genius system that Randy set up.
Debbi and Randy didn't have to be running around
to all these different stores.
They were able to check on the stores through this system
that not only controlled inventory,
they knew exactly what was selling every second of the day.
And that was unheard of.
- [Narrator] After its first year,
the new system helps rake in $87 million.
- It was so groundbreaking that Mrs. Fields
sold that computer system to none other than Burger King.
- [Narrator] With Debbi Fields at the helm,
and Randy as her right hand,
Mrs. Fields becomes the largest cookie store in America.
- [Adam] By 1989, Mrs. Fields, this little brand in Palo Alto,
is recording a profit of $129.7 million.
And on top of that, she expands into the UK, Australia,
Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, the Middle East.
- [Narrator] Growing to 900 stores worldwide,
Fields decides that to compete with juggernauts like Keebler
and Nabisco, she must implement a new strategy.
- [Beth] Debbi finally has to franchise, aligning herself
with the best bakers in whatever country
she's franchising in, in order to make
high quality Mrs. Fields cookies.
- Looks good.
- [Narrator] Now an international phenomenon,
in 1992, Debbi Fields sells the company
she built to an investment firm,
Famous Brands International, for $100 million.
[dramatic music]
That same year, the brand Wally Amos built in defiance
of cookie conglomerates is now owned by one.
And even though the Famous Amos Cookie
is more profitable than ever, the top brass at Keebler
are having second thoughts about losing the man
who created the brand.
So in 1999, they meet with him
to discuss a bold proposition.
[dramatic music]
- [Adam] The Keebler Corporation
decides they wanna shake things up
and bring Wally Amos back on as a spokesperson
because of his magnetic personality
and incredible recognizability.
- We'd love to have you return as the face of Famous Amos.
[Wally laughs]
- No.
- [chuckles] Why not?
- Because those are not my cookies.
- [Adam] He said he wasn't interested on coming back
if they wouldn't go back a little closer
to his original recipe,
and Keebler agreed to do just exactly that.
- All right. You got a deal.
- Good. [laughs]
- [Narrator] For an undisclosed sum, Wally Amos restores
Famous Amos's image, quality, and heritage.
- [Adam] As a credit to Wally Amos's integrity,
the company becomes insanely profitable,
raking in sales of $100 million.
- [Narrator] Though Wally Amos goes on to start
a number of new cookie ventures,
he never duplicates the success of Famous Amos.
In 2019, Famous Amos was acquired by the Ferrero Group
for $1.3 billion, and remains a staple
in over 170 countries to this day.
- [Vallery] Wally Amos is someone who broke barriers,
who realized his passion, and he never let that fire
and entrepreneurial spirit within him be snuffed out.
He opened the door for so many other
very niche bakeries today that just sell
one specific thing, like Mrs. Fields.
- [Beth] Debbi Fields gave America food stores at malls.
She should really be up there with the Ray Krocs
of the world who are hailed for being these pioneers.
Debbi Fields is a pioneer.
- [Narrator] Today, Debbi Fields remains involved
in Mrs. Fields as a consultant and board member,
with an estimated net worth of $200 million.
But her success, along with Wally Amos's,
wouldn't be possible without the visionaries
who paved the way, like the Loose brothers,
whose revolutionary chocolate sandwich cookie
kicked off a fierce rivalry that led to the Oreo,
which now accounts for 10%
of all cookie sales in grocery stores.
- Oreo continues to come out with new flavors,
and every time a new flavor of Oreo hits the universe,
they sell out in two seconds.
People go bananas.
- [Narrator] And the Oreo's dominance of prepackaged cookies
led Ruth Wakefield to create her groundbreaking
home-baked chocolate chip cookie.
- [Jason] This is one of those things that just went beyond
any possible conception of growth
and of exposure and success.
The Toll House cookie took over the world.
- [Narrator] Which triggered Nabisco to fight back
with what became America's bestselling brand
of chocolate chip cookie, Chips Ahoy.
- [Edward] At this point, nothing was gonna slow down
Chips Ahoy's growth.
- [Narrator] In just over a hundred years,
these pioneers helped prepackaged cookies
evolve from non-existent into a roughly
$40 billion a year global industry.
- [Adam] One way or another, there is a cookie for you
that appeals to your personal taste, home-baked chewy,
or hard, brittle, and jam-packed with chocolate.
And that is why undeniably,
you can't talk about the foods that built America
without talking about the iconic cookie.