Baking,  Cooking,  Culinary History,  Food History,  Great Depression,  History,  Kitchen

Favorite Food Brands that Came Out of the Great Depression

Sometimes the hardest times bring out the best in people! For the Great Depression, lack of money for many people meant they had to get creative with how to earn some. Entrepreneurship has always been a wonderful American value and pillar of our economy. But during the Great Depression, it was at an all time high!

With very few jobs available, people learned to create their own jobs. By sharing a skill or knowledge that they had, they filled the needs of people that they saw around them. Many new business grew out of this trying time in our country. And not a few of them were food related! Almost a hundred years later, we are still enjoying many of them today!

Here are just a few of the food companies that started in the Great Depression.

  • Kraft macaroni and cheese
  • Spam
  • Bisquick
  • Toll House cookies
  • Ritz Crackers
  • Nestles chocolate chips
  • Kool-Aid
  • Krispy Kreme doughnuts
  • Heinz ketchup
  • Hostess’ Twinkies
  • Lay’s Potato chips

Kool-Aid began in 1920. "Hey, Fruit Smack!" Doesn't quite have the same ring as, "Hey, Kool-Aid!" But that was actually the original name of this popular beverage. It began as a soft drink syrup offered through Edwin E. Perkins' mail-order business in Hastings, Nebraska. Perkins' father ran a general store in town and it was there that he first encountered Jell-O gelatin. Inspired by that treat, in 1927 Perkins decided to concentrate his syrup into a powder and rename it Kool-Ade Soft Drink Mix.

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