Beatrice Foods Company was a major American food processing company founded in 1894. Over the years, Beatrice owned many well-known brands such as Tropicana, Dannon, Krispy Kreme, Jolly Rancher, Orville Redenbacher's, Swiss Miss, Peter Pan, Martha White, Playtex, La Choy, Samsonite and Avis Car Rental.
In 1987, its international food operations were sold to Reginald Lewis, a corporate attorney, creating TLC Beatrice International, after which the majority of its domestic (U.S.) brands and assets were acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, with the bulk of its holdings sold off. By 1990, the remaining operations were ultimately acquired by ConAgra Foods.
History
Early years
1894-1912
The Beatrice Creamery Company was founded in 1894 by George Everett Haskell and William W. Bosworth, by leasing the factory of a bankrupt firm of the same name located in Beatrice, Nebraska. At the time, they purchased butter, milk, and eggs from local farmers and graded them for resale. They promptly began separating the butter themselves at their plant, making their own butter on site and packaging and distributing it under their own label. They devised special protective packages and distributed them to grocery stores and restaurants in their own wagons and through jobbers. To overcome the shortage of cream, the partners established skimming stations to which farmers delivered their milk to have the cream, used to make butter, separated from the milk. This led to the introduction of their unique credit program of providing farmers with cream separators so they could separate the milk on the farm and retain the skim milk for animal food. This enabled farmers to pay for the separators from the proceeds of their sales of cream. The program worked so well, the company sold more than 50,000 separators in Nebraska from 1895 to 1905. On March 1, 1905, the company was incorporated as the Beatrice Creamery Company of Iowa, with capital of $3,000,000. By the early 20th century, they were shipping dairy products across the United States, and by 1910 they operated nine creameries and three ice cream plants across the Great Plains.
1913-1955
In 1913 the company moved to Chicago, the center of the American food processing industry. By the 1930s, it was a major dairy company, producing some of milk and of ice cream annually. In 1939, Beatrice Creamery Company purchased Blue Valley Creamery Company, the other Chicago-based dairy centralizer. This acquisition added at least 11 creameries from New York to South Dakota. Beatrice's 'Meadow Gold' brand was a household name in much of America by the beginning of World War II. In 1946, it changed its name to Beatrice Foods Co. Their sales doubled between 1945 and 1955, as the post-war baby boom created greater demand for milk products.
Major expansion years
Canada
From the late 1950s until the early 1970s, the company expanded into Canada and purchased a number of other food firms, leveraging its distribution network to profit from a more diverse array of food and consumer products. It became the owner of brands such as Avis Car Rental, Playtex, Shedd's, Tropicana, John Sexton & Co, Good & Plenty, and many others. Annual sales in 1984 were roughly $12 billion.
Beatrice's Canadian subsidiary, Beatrice Foods Canada, was founded in 1969 and became legally separate from its parent firm in 1978.