I quoted the Famous Amos origins story from Wikipedia.
What made his cookie recipe special? I’d guess it’s a modified Toll House cookie. I think nearly all chocolate chip cookie recipes start with the original.
There are Famous Amos copycat recipes online.
Did Amos ever reveal his original recipe? I’ve read he was very upset with the cost cutting changes made after he sold the company.
I remember the cookies were unusually small. Basically one bite. I bought them in the early 1990’s. They were already mass produced and sold in grocery stores.
The whole “Celebrities love them!” was probably enough to ensure local success in the Sunset district in Los Angeles. After that it’s all in his business sense to enable successful growth, and as you say, self-promotion to make it grow.
I was in college in LA just a few miles from his store in those early days. His store was a known destination. My recollection is the early ones were typical Toll House, but small and with lots of chocolate chips.
ETA: I’ve now read the rest of the Famous Amos - Wikipedia article (OP: an actual cite is always a useful convenience to your readers).
The reality is they had a sort of flash in the pan. He opened during the waning Carter years and had a solid result in his 2nd year of operation. That’s good and that’s all him.
The next years, corresponding roughly to the Reagan-era boom, experienced 10x growth over 8 years, so ~12% a year. But some of that is inflation. That’s solid, but about what one would expect from transitioning from a single store to a multi-store format in a giant metropolis during good economic times.
Then the wheels fell off. And he ineffectually floundered trying to save the business without giving it up. He eventually sold the carcass for far less than it would have been worth at the peak.
But despite the brand’s ubiquity today, this is not an example of “plucky little guy pursues his dream to riches.” He certainly did well enough for himself out of the whole thing. But nothing compared to what it could have been in luckier or more competent hands.
Now it’s just one more brand name familiar to the public just because for everyone under 70 it’s always been a brand name. And now that brand is bought and sold between food conglomerates like the commodity it is.
I’ve wondered if Amos used anything special in the early cookie recipe. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with a chocolate chip cookie made with top quality ingredients.
The story reminded me of Harland Sanders original blend of spices in KFC. Except his success took many more years of struggle.
I should have linked Wikipedia last night. It was pretty late. I’ll make a point to link in the future.
Funny, I had thought of the same ‘original vs. mass-produced version’ comparison, only I remember reading somewhere that Colonel Sanders complained about the gravy on the mashed potatoes after he sold the franchise, calling the new gravy ‘wallpaper paste’.
If I invented a time machine it wouldn’t be to try to change the past at all, I’d just like to try an authentic Colonel Sander’s chicken dinner, with some original Famous Amos cookies for dessert
I imagine the original cookies were tender and chocolatey. The current iteration has an industrial taste and texture that comes off being remarkably similar to Nabisco’s (a subsidiary of Mondelez International!) Chips Ahoy cookies.
Agreed. I’d also spend a night in a 1960 Howard Johnson’s. Back when they were special.
Little Rock had one that was already run-down and dangerous when I attended college in 1980. It lost the franchise name a couple years later and was a generic motel.
I remember my parents taking me to a Howard Johnson’s once or twice to get ice cream when I was a little kid, which was one of the things they were known for. This would have been in the 70s, so maybe a few years before their decline and fall.
For me it was HoJo’s fried clams in the early-mid 1960s. I don’t know why they had clams and seemingly no other mass-market chain did. Nor do I know when or why I first tried them.
But somehow they struck me as awesome and my desire for more got indulged on many road trips. The fact HoJo’s was ubiquitous then like McD’s is now certainly helped. At least out West where I grew up. You didn’t have to go out of your way to find them; one would appear soon enough over the horizon.
I’ve been in the food business (mostly retail) for more than twenty years and I’ve never heard or seen Famous Amos in any discussion in that time. I’m sure several of my employers carried it in their stores, but it’s just a very minor brand owned by a big food company.
I remember it being something of a cult favorite in the 1980s. It was a premium cookie, even compared with “brand name” Keebler and Nabisco products, never mind the basic store brand and Hydrox ones that was all we could afford.
It started with a shop and you’d get them fresh which is going to be way better than mass produced in a package at the supermarket. The package version was probably way better than whatever crap the super mass produced like Nabisco put out.
As others said, he was a sparkling personality and that caught fire.
Boutique cookies like his and Mrs Field’s became trendy. Kind of like mini cupcakes a few years ago.
I’ve found that if you leave a bag of Famous Amos open in the summer, even inside, the cookies will absorb the humidity and turn from rock-like pebbles to soft, luscious pillows. Try it, you’ll like it, to use another ad oldie.
Working for a distributor of Famous Amos cookies circa 1980, I found them to be mostly better than big name brands, but not better than homemade. They were also pretty pricey, were a guaranteed sale, and loads of them went out of date on the shelf so my company ate the loss. I have no idea how much, if any, of that loss was absorbed by Famous Amos, but the distributorship deal was quashed rather quickly. I think this was when they were first mass produced but before Amos sold the company.
I never tried clam strips at a HoJo but there are 2 places in the countryside near me that offer them. One is a Dairy Twist with about 15 different fried foods. The other is a drive in with car hops. We eat them nearly every week in season.
That most likely depends on where you are. Summers for me are hot and arid. There’s not a lot of mosture in the air to make anything soft, luscious pillows. Well, hardly anything.
