General Foods

Encyclopedia : G : GE : GEN : General Foods

General Foods Corporation was a company established under that name by Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1929. It was previously known as Postum Cereal Company. General Foods, formerly shorthand for the General Foods Corporation, is now a brand of Kraft Foods.

Timeline of selected events

1953 - General Foods acquired Perkins Products Company, maker of Kool-Aid.
1957 - The company introduced Tang, which became available nationally two years later.
1964 - General Foods introduced Maxim, the first American brand of freeze-dried coffee.
1968 - General Foods makes its ill-advised purchase of the Burger Chef fast-food chain.
1969 - General Foods buys Rax Restaurants.
1971 - General Foods acquired the maker of Gevalia.
1978 - General Foods sells Rax Restaurants to Rac.
1981 - General Foods acquired Oscar Mayer & Company.
1985 - General Foods was acquired by Philip Morris for $5.6 billion, the largest non-oil acquisition ever; four years later (1989), after the even larger acquisition of Kraft Foods, Philip Morris combines the two into a company called Kraft General Foods.
1995 - Kraft General Foods became Kraft Foods, and General Foods became a brand.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.