Kraft General Foods Canada Inc. came into being in 1989 when Philip Morris Companies Inc. bought Kraft Limited and amalgamated it with General Foods Inc., which it had acquired in 1985. The history of this relatively new company is rich and proud — one that brings together the legacies of two great food companies, globally recognized for their continual innovation in new product development, food technology, manufacturing processes, marketing programs and consumer response. Canadians have known Kraft General Foods products all their lives. They grew up eating JELL-O, KRAFT DINNER, MIRACLE WHIP, and CRACKER BARREL Cheese, and drinking MAXWELL HOUSE coffee, SANKA, TANG and KOOL-AID. Brand names like these which have earned consumer loyalty over a lifetime, have literally become household words.

When James Lewis Kraft was born in 1875 in Stevensville, Ontario, near Fort Erie, one did not anticipate that he would drastically change the manufacture of cheese. The second of eleven children, he helped on his father’s dairy farm. By 1903 he had entered the wholesale cheese business in Chicago with $65.00 in capital. With a rented wagon and a horse named Paddy, Mr. Kraft bought cheeses daily from Chicago’s warehouse district and resold them to local merchants. While his business prospered, he expanded it to include manufacturing.

However, Mr. Kraft never lost track of his main objective — to make cheese a more dependable and more marketable commodity that would keep better, cook better and could be packaged without waste and sold in convenient sizes. His determination was finally rewarded when, in 1916, Kraft was granted a patent for what became known as process cheese.

In 1920, Kraft entered the Canadian market by purchasing MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese Co. Ltd. It began selling in Canada, on a national scale, process cheese in tins as well as loaves. One year later a factory was opened in downtown Montreal. The Canadian company proceeded to open operations in Britain and Germany.

During the 1920s, Mr. Kraft also hired a home economist and opened the celebrated Kraft Kitchens. Two new products that continue to be true success stories within the grocery industry were introduced during the depression: MIRACLE WHIP salad dressing was launched in 1933 as an economic alternative to mayonnaise; KRAFT DINNER macaroni and cheese followed in 1937.
 

1. Paddy and the J.L. Kraft wagon  2. "La Belle Chocolatière" is one of Kraft General Foods oldest tradmark symbols.  She first appeared in BAKER'S advertising in the late 1800s and she is still on the package of the nation's leading baking chocolate.

Like Kraft, the roots of General Foods run deep. They spring from many small businesses. Each was started by a food industry pioneer who worked with a passion to bring a better food or beverage to market. Those original risk-takers and entrepreneurs include:

Joel Cheek, who spent years developing a superior blend of coffee which made the MAXWELL HOUSE hotel in Nashville a landmark. “It is good to the last drop!” is how President Theodore Roosevelt described MAXWELL HOUSE coffee when visiting Nashville in 1907;

Inventor Charles William Post, who, in 1895, paid $68.76 for second-hand equipment that he set up in a barn and produced a coffee substitute called POSTUM. Two years later he introduced POST GRAPE-NUTS cereal, one of the world’s first pre-cooked breakfast cereals;

Food processor Orator Francis Woodward, who bought a gelatin business in 1897 for $450.00, improved the product and the package and worked hard to build a market which, ten years later, would make JELL-O jelly powder North America’s most famous dessert with annual sales of $1 million;

German coffee merchant Dr. Ludwig Roselius, who, in 1903, gave a shipment of green coffee ruined by seawater, to his research lab. The brine-soaked beans led to discovering a way to remove caffeine. Roselius introduced his new coffee in France calling it SANKA because it was “sans caffeine”;

Edwin Perkins, who had a problem with his mail-order business shipping “Fruit Smack,” a bottled syrup. Glass containers were difficult and costly to mail. So he dehydrated the drink and sold it in paper packets and renamed it KOOL-AID.

In Canada the first General Foods company was Walter Baker Limited. A sales office opened in Montreal during the 1880s and in 1911 a chocolate mill was built there producing BAKER’s products. POST cereals were sold in Canada by 1903 and processed in Windsor, Ontario, after 1908 as a branch of the Postum Company. JELL-O jelly powder was made at Fort Erie from 1906. In 1919 the Douglas Pectin Co. of Fairport, New York, took over a steel plant in Cobourg, Ontario, and made it the first pectin plant in the British Empire to manufacture CERTO.

However, not until 1929 did a company called General Foods emerge as an important new force in the food industry. It was the result of a bold series of acquisitions by the Postum Corporation, the business started by Charles William Post. General Foods Sales Company Limited was formed in Canada in 1939.

The momentum for product innovation, inspired by the founders of Kraft and General Foods, continued after World War II. Both companies grew rapidly. The frontiers of processed food manufacturing were extended to include packaged dinners and entrees, calorie-reduced and fat-free salad dressings, sugar-free, light, and cholesterol-free products that have changed and enhanced the way Canadians eat.

Since the amalgamation of both companies in 1989, Kraft General Foods Canada Inc. has continued to grow through acquisition. Today, with its head office in Toronto and operations overseen from Montreal, Kraft General Foods Canada has a workforce of 4,500 employees across the country. With over 1,000 products, it is one of Canada’s largest manufacturers and distributors of processed food products.

Just as the legacies of the founding fathers that came to make up Kraft General Foods have nourished and nurtured generations, Kraft General Foods Canada is committed more than ever to upholding their traditions with quality products representing exceptional value and continuing to meet the needs of consumers with “good food, good food ideas.”