The JELL-O Gallery

Le Roy, New York

HISTORY

To return to the early days, on November 5, 1923 the Jell-O Company, Inc. was organized and took over the entire assets of the Genesee Pure Foods Company with no change in management or control. The purpose of this change was to protect the value of Jell-O as a trade name by closely identifying it with the business. The intent was to keep it from becoming a common noun. The officers in 1925 just before it joined with Postum were: Ernest L. Woodward, James Gordon Gilfillan, Charles W. Metcalf, Frank L. LaBounty, Donald Woodward, and Miss Beatrice Curtiss.

Succeeding years saw Jell-O change from a hand-packaged business to a highly mechanized factory, and become one of LeRoy's most important industries. The search for new products and unique advertising and merchandising break-throughs developed a phenominal record. On December 31, 1925 the Jell-O Company, Inc. was sold to the Postum Cereal Company, Inc. by exchange of stock, thereby becoming the first subsidiary of a large merger that would eventually become General Foods Corporation. And so the little Jell-O package which was born in LeRoy in 1897 grew from childhood to adulthood. Jell-O left its hometown to make its way in the wide wide world in 1964. Today Jell-O is manufactured by Kraft/General Foods in Dover Delaware.

JELL-O Trivia

Bill Cosby has been a spokesperson for Jell-O since 1974.

January 6, 1925, Jell-O is issued a patent for a sugarless gelatin dessert known as D-Zerta.

March 17, 1993, technicians at St. Jerome hospital in Batavia test a bowl of lime Jell-O with an EEG machine and confirm the earlier testing by Dr. Adrian Upton that a bowl of wiggly Jell-O has brain waves identical to those of adult men and women.

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®

JELL-O ® is a registered trademark of Kraft Foods Holdings, Inc.

Reprint from Genesee Pure Food Company Letterhead