28 episodes
The Food That Built America The HISTORY® Channel
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- History
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4.6 • 673 Ratings
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It takes bold visionaries risking everything to create some of the most recognizable brands on the planet. The Food That Built America, based on the hit documentary series from The HISTORY® Channel, tells the extraordinary true stories of industry titans like Henry Heinz, Milton Hershey, the Kellogg brothers and Ray Kroc, who revolutionized the food industry and transformed American life and culture in the process.
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Taco Bell
In the mid-50s, a San Bernardino man named Glen Bell is fixated on McDonald’s. His own burger stand is in shambles, and he’s trying to bounce back. When he looks around, though, he realizes Mexican food is gaining popularity, but that most Americans are afraid of anything that strays from their bland palettes. That’s when he realizes: A taco is really a burger in a shell. With a few fits and starts, Taco Bell is born.
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Pop Stars
Popcorn may very well be the oldest snack food on the planet, but for much of its modern history it was something to be consumed in movie theaters or at fairgrounds - not at home. No truly national brand existed and it was far from the convenient snack it is today. But in the 1950s, Orville Redenbacher believed science could launch popcorn forward, making him a household name. His thousands of hybridizing experiments innovated popcorn down to its genetic code, resulting in a more flavorful pop twice the size of anything the world had seen before.
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Let Them Eat Snack Cake
Nowadays, grocery stores and gas stations are filled with Little Debbie products. In the 1950s, though, snack cakes were just gaining popularity, when a Chattanooga couple took a risk, scrapping big pies in favor of debut snack cakes instead. their company, Little Debbie, now dominates 54% of the snack cake industry with over $890 million in sales.
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Cookie Fortunes
In the mid 1970s, a woman who wants to be more than just a housewife, is tired of living in her husband’s shadow. Armed with her phenomenal cookies, Debbi Fields seeks out an unlikely spot for her unlikely business - a cookie shop named Mrs. Fields in a shopping mall...run by a woman with no experience. With her husband’s credit on the line, she starts her journey to build a $450 million dollar cookie juggernaut.
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Chain Reaction
In the mid-60s, a single perfume salesman finds himself struggling to meet women to date. So, he goes to the bar to complain to the bartender about his predicament. That’s when the salesman has an idea: What if you made your own co-ed bar? What ensues is a quest to make bars coed and fun, and TGI Fridays is born, revolutionizing the idea of sit-down dining and bar culture. Now, the business has 303 locations in the United States.
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A Dish Best Served Soft
In Illinois, a father and son working in the wholesale ice cream mixing business have an idea. Convinced that ice cream tastes better fresh before it’s fully-frozen, what if they could create a machine that could dispense it while it’s still only semi-solid? Their names are John and Alex McCullough. By 1940 the McCullough’s open their first store, naming it Dairy Queen.
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Customer Reviews
It’s okay🤷♀️
It’s a pretty good podcast, but it could be better. I’m not a long time listener, the noises distract me, and I usually listen at night, so it isn’t very soothing to me.
Laura Scudder
I know that this comment is over 2 1/2 years late and it is about a relatively unimportant detail, but re. the episode “The Chips That Took Over the Snack World,” at the 12:05 mark, the speaker states that Laura Scudder’s business was in Monterey, California.
The city where Ms. Scudder built her potato chip fortune is, in fact, Monterey Park, California, which is a suburb of Los Angeles, about seven miles east of downtown L.A., and about 275 miles south of Monterey, CA. Monterey is a coastal town about 86 miles south of San Francisco.
Monterey Park doesn’t have a ton to brag about, aside from an amazing array of authentic Asian cuisines, so don’t take Laura Scudder away from us!! 😃
🥔 ➕ 🏔🤴🅿️
Taco ((woke trash)) Bell Ep
Summary of Taco Bell Ep: Bell white-washes the taco, (not the Spanish Colonizer taco , to be clear), the indigenous Aztec taco. THE END.. I read reviews about “most your episodes are about white men” … News Flash, A LOT of white men were innovators, pioneers, entrepreneurs around A LOT of industry, including food, “that built” America.
The Taco Bell Ep was my first listen, (your final upload). I came here looking for some interesting, educational, unbiased history. I got an obvious slant, attempt to appeal to a self loathing/shame thirsting audience. Disappointing