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Nabisco
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Nabisco (originally known as National Biscuit Company) is a brand of cookies and snacks, including brands such as Chips Ahoy!, Fig Newtons, Mallomars, Oreos, Premium Crackers, Ritz Crackers, Teddy Grahams, Triscuits, Wheat Thins, Social Tea, Nutter Butter, Peek Freans, Lorna Doone, Famous Chocolate Wafers and Chicken in a Biskit, used for the United States, United Kingdom, Venezuela and Mexico as well as other parts of South America by Kraft Foods.
All Nabisco branded cookie or cracker products are branded Christie in Canada.
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Encyclopedia
Nabisco (originally known as National Biscuit Company) is a brand of cookies and snacks, including brands such as Chips Ahoy!, Fig Newtons, Mallomars, Oreos, Premium Crackers, Ritz Crackers, Teddy Grahams, Triscuits, Wheat Thins, Social Tea, Nutter Butter, Peek Freans, Lorna Doone, Famous Chocolate Wafers and Chicken in a Biskit, used for the United States, United Kingdom, Venezuela and Mexico as well as other parts of South America by Kraft Foods.
All Nabisco branded cookie or cracker products are branded Christie in Canada. However, prior to the Post Cereals merger the cereal division kept the Nabisco name in Canada.
The proof of purchase on their products is marketed as a "brand seal".
US Nabisco-branded products are branded Kraft in some other countries.
Headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey, the company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Kraft Foods. Nabisco's plant in Chicago, a 1.6 million-square-foot production facility at 7300 S. Kedzie Ave., is one of the largest bakeries in the world, employing more than 2,000 workers and turning out some 320 million pounds of snack foods annually. Originally known as the National Biscuit Company, Nabisco opened corporate offices in the world's first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building, in the Chicago Loop in 1898.
Logo
Nabisco's colophon, a diagonal ellipse with a series of antenna-like lines protruding from the top, forms the base of its logo and can be seen imprinted on Oreo wafers in addition to Nabisco product boxes and literature. It has been claimed in company promotional material to be an early European symbol for quality; it may be derived from a medieval Italian printer's mark that represented "the triumph of the moral and good over the evil and worldly." Oreo cookies in Canada do not have the Nabisco Orb as they are branded as Christie in that country. Elsewhere, the packaging is branded with the Kraft logo.
History
Origins
Nabisco dates its founding back to 1898, a decade during which the bakery business underwent a major consolidation. Early in the decade, bakeries throughout the country were consolidated regionally, into companies such as Chicago's American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company (which was formed from 40 Midwestern bakeries in 1830), the New York Biscuit Company (consisting of seven eastern bakeries), and the United States Baking Company. In 1898, the National Biscuit Company was formed from the combination of those three; the merger resulted in a company with 114 bakeries across the United States and headquartered in New York City. The "biscuit" in the name of the company is a British English and early American English term for cracker products.
Key to the founding of Nabisco was Pittsburgh baking mogul Sylvester S Marvin. Marvin arrived in Pittsburgh in 1863 and established himself in the cracker business, founding S. S. Marvin Co. Their products embraced every description of crackers, cakes and breads. Marvin was called “The Edison of Manufacturing” for his innovations in the bakery business – by 1888 the largest in the United States – and the centerpiece to the organization of the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco). Marvin was also a member of the elite South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club of Johnstown Flood fame.
Early years
After the consolidation, the president of National Biscuit Company -- Adolphus Green of American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company, asked Frank Peters to create a package to distribute products in huge amounts. This paved its way for In-Er Seal package, whose logo is a prototype for the "Nabisco Thing". This In-Er Seal package is a system of interfolded wax paper and cardboard to "seal in the freshness" of the product. This was first used for Uneeda Biscuits.
The first use of "Nabisco" was in a cracker brand first produced by National Biscuit Company in 1901. The firm later introduced - either through development or acquisition - Fig Newtons, Nabisco Wafers (early 1900s, now sold in one form as "Biscos"; a sugar wafer originally containing a variety of flavored fillings), Anola Wafers (early 1900s, now discontinued; a chocolate wafer with chocolate filling), Barnum's Animal Crackers (1902), Lorna Doones (1912), Oreos (1912), and Famous Chocolate Wafers (1924; a thin wafer without filling). The first use of the red triangular logo was in 1952 . The name of the company was not changed to Nabisco until 1971; prior to that year, the company was often referred to as N.B.C. (unrelated to the broadcasting company; even though the logo could be said to resemble an antenna, this seems to be a coincidence). In 1924 the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) introduced a snack, put in a 5-cent sealed packet called "Peanut Sandwich Packet". They soon added a second, "Sorbetto Sandwich Packet". These packets allowed salesmen to sell to soda fountains, road stands, milk bars, lunch rooms, news stands etc. Sales increased and in 1928 the company adopted and started to use the name NAB, which immediately won the approval of the public. The term "Nabs" today is used to generically mean any type of snack crackers, most commonly in the southern United States.
During WWII National Biscuit Company manufactured K-Rations for the troops.
The Nabisco unit that produces cookies and crackers was renamed the Nabisco Biscuit Company in the 1990s. That prompted advertising columnist Stuart Elliott in The New York Times to quip that since Nabisco stood for the National Biscuit Company, the unit should be known as the National Biscuit Company Biscuit Company (a modified RAS syndrome).
Acquisitions
N.B.C. acquired the Shredded Wheat Company (maker of Triscuit and Shredded Wheat cereal) and Christie, Brown & Company of Toronto in 1928, but all of the Nabisco products in Canada still use the name "Christie". N.B.C. acquired F.H. Bennett Company (maker of Milk-Bone dog biscuits) in 1931 . When Kraft bought Nabisco, it included Christie.
In 1981 Nabisco merged with Standard Brands, maker of Planters Nuts and separately acquired Life Savers Candies. The company was then renamed Nabisco Brands, Inc. At that time, it bought Curtiss Candy Company, makers of Baby Ruth and Butterfinger, as well as acquiring the Life Savers brand from the E.R. Squibb Company.
R.J. Reynolds merger
In 1985 Nabisco was bought by R.J. Reynolds, forming RJR Nabisco. After three years of mixed results, the company became one of the hotspots in the '80s leveraged buyout mania. The company was in auction with two bidders: F. Ross Johnson, the company's president and CEO, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a private equity partnership.
The company eventually was sold to KKR in the biggest leveraged buyout in history. The entire process was described in the book Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, and a subsequent film.
Subsequent divestitures
After this, in 1988, RJR sold its Chun King division, and also Del Monte Corporation's fresh produce division, which later became Fresh Del Monte Produce.
In 1989, RJR sold the North and South American Del Monte processed food operations.
In 1990, RJR sold the Curtiss Candy division to Rowntree, now Nestle, which owns the Baby Ruth and Butterfinger brands. RJR also sold LU, Belin and other European biscuit brands to Groupe Danone, only reunited in 2007 after Nabisco's present parent, Kraft Foods, bought Danone's biscuit operations for EUR 5.3 billion.
In 1994, RJR sold its breakfast cereal business (primarily the Shredded Wheat franchise) to Kraft Foods and the international licenses to General Mills, which later on became a part of the Cereal Partners Worldwide joint venture with Nestle. In 1994 also RJR acquired KNOX Gelatin.
In 1995, RJR sold Ortega Mexican-style foods, and acquired Kraft Foods' tablespreads operations, which includes Parkay, Touch of Butter and Chiffon brands.
In 1997, RJR sold Egg Beaters egg substitutes, and Parkay, Touch of Butter, Chiffon, Fleischmann's, Move Over Butter and Blue Bonnet tablespreads to ConAgra, its College Inn broth business to Del Monte Foods and also its Venezuelan Del Monte operations.
In 1989 it sold Lu, Belin, Jacob and Saiwa to Groupe Danone.
In 1990 it sold the Baby Ruth and Butterfinger brands to Nestlé.
In 2000 Philip Morris Companies (now called the Altria Group) acquired Nabisco; that acquisition was approved by the Federal Trade Commission subject to the divestiture of products in five areas: three Jell-O and Royal brands types of products (dry-mix gelatin dessert, dry-mix pudding, no-bake desserts), intense mints (such as Altoids), and baking powder. Kraft Foods, at the time also a subsidiary of Altria Group, eventually merged with Nabisco; in 2007, Kraft Foods was spun off from Altria Group, taking its Nabisco subsidiary with it.
Nestle is licensed to make some of the ice cream/popsicle variants of Oreo, Chips Ahoy! and Kool-Aid in Canada.
In January 2008 Cream of Wheat was sold to B&G Foods.
Legal battles
In 1997, the became concerned with an ad campaign for Planters Deluxe Mixed Nuts. The initial commercial featured a man and monkey deserted on an island. They discover a crate of Planters peanuts and rejoice in the peanuts' positive health facts.
Nabisco made a detailed statement describing how their peanuts were healthier than most other snack products, going as far as comparing the nutritional facts of Planters peanuts to those of potato chips, cheddar cheese chips, and popcorn. Technically, the commercials complied with FDA regulations, and their nature of advertising was generally allowed to sustain. However, as requested by the NAD, Nabisco agreed to make fat content disclosure more conspicuous in future commercials.
External links
See also
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