Mother's Cookies is a brand that originally had a bakery based in Oakland, California

Oakland, California

Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

, that operated from 1914 to 2008. A sister company, Archway Cookies

Archway Cookies

Archway Cookies was an American cookie manufacturer, founded in 1936 in Battle Creek, Michigan. Since December 2008, it has been a subsidiary of Lance Inc., a snack-food company...

 of Battle Creek, Michigan

Battle Creek, Michigan

Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek Rivers. It is the principal city of the Battle Creek, Michigan Metropolitan Statistical Area , which encompasses all of Calhoun county...

, was founded in 1936. Both Mother's Cookies and Archway declared bankruptcy in 2008. At its height, the company distributed cookies throughout the United States, and was one of the leading cookie makers in the country. The Kellogg Company

Kellogg Company

Kellogg Company , is a producer of cereal and convenience foods, including cookies, crackers, toaster pastries, cereal bars, fruit-flavored snacks, frozen waffles, and vegetarian foods...

 acquired the Mother's Cookies trademark and recipes in December 2008 and brought the brand back to West Coast grocery store shelves on May 14, 2009.

History

Mother's was founded in 1914 when Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

 declared that Mother's Day

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is a celebration honoring mothers and celebrating motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, yet most commonly in March, April, or May...

 would be a national holiday in the USA. The founder was N.M. Wheatley, a newspaper vendor. The company was sold to Artal NV, a Belgian company, then bought by Specialty Foods Corp., a conglomerate formed by the Bass Brothers

Bass Brothers

Bass Brothers is the professional name for the team of Mark and Jeff Bass, the Detroit producers responsible for grooming megastar Eminem in his early days and collaborating on much of his subsequent music. Before that they worked with George Clinton...

.

Archway was founded in 1936 by the Swansons, a husband-and-wife team who baked soft-batch cookies in their garage. The Swansons expanded their company nationwide in the 1940s, changing its name to Archway to avoid conflict with Swanson

Swanson

Swanson is a brand of TV dinners, broths, and canned poultry made for the North American market. The TV dinner business is currently owned by Pinnacle Foods, while the broth business is currently owned by the Campbell Soup Company...

, a maker of frozen dinners. In 1962 the founders sold the company to their vice president, George Markham, who bought most of the franchises back over the next several years. Markham in turn sold the company to two employees, who operated it from 1983 to 1996. The company was sold to Specialty Foods in 1998, reportedly for $100 million. The transaction made Specialty Foods the third largest cookie maker in the United States after Keebler and Nabisco.

The two companies then went through a succession of owners. Specialty Foods sold Mother's and Archway to an Italian firm, Parmalat Finanziaria

Parmalat

Parmalat SpA is a multinational Italian dairy and food corporation. Having become the leading global company in the production of ultra high temperature milk, the company collapsed in 2003 with a €14 billion hole in its accounts in what remains Europe's biggest bankruptcy...

 in 2000 for $250 million. As of 2002 Mother's was baking 17.5 million cookies per day. Cookie sales began to decline after 2000 due to low-fat and low carb diet trends, although sales improved when the company introduced low fat cookies, and accounted for 10% of the United States cookie market as of late 2004. Parmalat filed for bankruptcy amidst a scandal involving illegal sale of corporate bond

Corporate bond

A corporate bond is a bond issued by a corporation. It is a bond that a corporation issues to raise money in order to expand its business. The term is usually applied to longer-term debt instruments, generally with a maturity date falling at least a year after their issue date...

s. Parmalat in turn sold the companies to Catterton Partners

Catterton Partners

Catterton Partners is a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations and growth capital investments in middle-market companies...

, a private equity

Private equity

Private equity, in finance, is an asset class consisting of equity securities in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange....

 firm in Greenwich, Connecticut

Greenwich, Connecticut

Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...

, in 2005, The new operators closed the Oakland factory in 2006, laid off all 230 workers without warning, and moved baking operations to Ohio and Canada. The company suffered an accounting scandal in 2008
and in October 2008, the company became a victim of the financial crisis of 2007–2010 when the company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laid off all of its workers.

Brand and product returns

In December, 2008, Lance Inc.

Lance Inc.

Lance, Inc. is an American snack food company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.They manufacture snacks such as:*Captain's Wafers*Toastchee Crackers*Nekot cookies*Gold-N-Chees crackers*Cape Cod Potato Chips*Tom's Potato Chips*Archway Cookies...

 bought the assets of Archway, and soon reopened the former Archway factory in Ashland, Ohio

Ashland, Ohio

Ashland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Ashland County. The population was 21,249 at the 2000 census. It is the center of the Ashland Micropolitan Statistical Area...

. Also, the same month Kelloggs was approved to buy the assets of Mother's Cookies with plans to return the products to the shelves in mid-2009. In May 2009, Mother's Cookies returned to store shelves, including Kellogg's launch of a website for the product.

Products

Mother's is known for pink and white iced "Circus Animal Cookies", "Taffy Sandwich Cookies", "Peanut Butter Gauchos", and iced oatmeal raisin cookies. Archway's most popular product was Ruth's Oatmeal Cookies, based on a recipe found by one of its franchisees at a county fair

County Fair

"County Fair" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Gary Usher for the American rock band The Beach Boys. It was originally released as the second track on their 1962 album Surfin' Safari. On November 26th of that year, it was released as the B-side to The Beach Boys' third single, "Ten Little...

, which made up 40% of all sales.

Promotions

The company included collectable baseball card

Baseball card

A baseball card is a type of trading card relating to baseball, usually printed on some type of paper stock or card stock. A card will usually feature one or more baseball players or other baseball-related sports figures...

s in their packs of cookies, featuring the Pacific Coast League

Pacific Coast League

The Pacific Coast League is a minor-league baseball league operating in the Western, Midwestern and Southeastern United States. Along with the International League and the Mexican League, it is one of three leagues playing at the Triple-A level, which is one step below Major League Baseball.The...

.