golden butter crackers - pepperidge farm

She drew on her knowledge and experience to write The Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cookbook in 1963, which was the first cookbook ever to make the New York Times Best Seller list. In 1961, she sold the business to the Campbell Soup Company for $28 million and became the first woman to serve on its board of directors. Under her management, Pepperidge Farm continued to expand into other products, including frozen pastry items and, later, the Goldfish snack cracker from Switzerland.

She bought the rights to produce and sell them, and the Distinctive Cookies line was born. On a trip to Europe in the 1950s, Rudkin discovered fancy chocolate cookies that she believed would be popular in the United States. In 1947, Rudkin opened a modern commercial bakery in Norwalk, Connecticut, and soon after added plants in Illinois and Pennsylvania. Rationing during World War II forced her to cut back production due to the restricted availability of quality ingredients. Rudkin moved the growing business out of her kitchen and into her garage, and then into a factory in 1940. Rudkin's husband Henry, a Wall Street broker, began taking loaves of bread with him to New York to be sold in specialty stores. Her first commercial sale was to her local grocer in Fairfield, Conn., Mercurio’s Market. Her son's doctor recommended the bread to his other patients and encouraged her to sell it to the public. Margaret Rudkin began baking bread in 1937 for her youngest son, Mark, who had asthma and was allergic to most commercially processed foods. On January 18, 2023, the company announced plans to close their Norwalk headquarters, consolidating jobs held there to Campbell Soup Company headquarters in Camden, New Jersey. Pepperidge Farm is an American commercial bakery founded in 1937 by Margaret Rudkin, who named the brand after her family's 123-acre farm property in Fairfield, Connecticut, which had been named for the pepperidge tree.Ī subsidiary of the Campbell Soup Company since 1961, it is based in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Golden butter crackers - pepperidge farm