Old London Foods

Old London Foods is a company that is best known for its Melba toast products, that is a subsidiary of Nonni's Food. Originally based in the Bronx and called the King Kone Corporation, the company changed its name to Old London Foods, Inc., in May 1960 to match their best-known brand of food products, having used the Old London name for nearly 25 years.^[1]

Melba toast dates back to 1897, when Nellie Melba complained to chef Auguste Escoffier that her toasted bread was too thick. He gave her bread that had been toasted extremely thin and named it "Melba toast" after her. The products were first made under the Old London brand in 1932, when the first Melba oven was built, and later variations included restaurant packs of toast and rounds.^[2]

The company was originally a manufacturer of food machinery and company founders Harry Tatosian, who invented the machines and R. J. Yohai, vice president and sales manager, decided to start making food using their machines after a trip to London, where they had installed automated baking machines for a customer. They first started baking ice cream cones and used the brand name Old London based on their recent experience in that city. Using an investment of $4,000, they created a multi-million dollar business exclusively using their own capital to expand to include melba toast and snack products.^[1]

Old London was looking for a new snack in the 1950s and had a machine that could extrude cornmeal under pressure through a narrow hole that would be cut to three-inch lengths by a blade. Baked with orange cheddar cheese and flavorings, Morrie Yohai gave them the name "Cheez Doodles".^[3] The name came to him while he sat around the table with other employees sampling different alternatives for the cheese flavoring.^[4] By 1960, the company's products were sold in 250,000 supermarkets and restaurants in the United States and their Dipsy Doodles corn chips were the second-best selling corn chip in the country behind Fritos and its snack division produced popcorn in caramel, cheese and unflavored varieties, and was the largest producer of popcorn for home consumption as of 1960.^[1] Manhattan's famed Sardi's restaurant included Old London crackers by name on the menu for its "executive weight watchers" meal.^[1] By 2010 the company's Old London and Devonsheer brands were sold in 90% of American supermarkets.^[5]

The company was renamed from King Cone Corporation to Old London Foods in May 1960 to take advantage of customer awareness of their product brand label.^[1] In 1965, the company was bought out by Borden, which also made Cracker Jack and Drake's cakes.^[3] The company was long based on East 138th Street in a six-story building in the Bronx, where it ran two shifts year-round and added a third shift during the winter season.^[1]

Old London had been owned by Corn Products International and was bought out by a group of managers backed by the private equity firm Dubilier & Company. The company was acquired by Nonni Foods, makers of flatbread products, in 2005 for $70 million. In February 2010, the company's facility in the northeast Bronx, which housed 228 employees, was shut down and production was relocated to Yadkinville, North Carolina. The lack of open space in the Bronx building mean that the toasted product had to be moved between floors for different production steps, an issue that would be eliminated with the bigger spaces available to the company in North Carolina.^[5]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Staff. "A PRODUCT NAME BRANDS PRODUCER; King Kone Corp. Becomes Old London Foods, Inc., in an Unusual Shift", The New York Times, May 29, 1960. Accessed August 3, 2010.
2. ^ The Old London Story, Old London Foods. Accessed August 3, 2010.
3. ^ ^{a b} Hevesi, Dennis. "Morrie Yohai, 90, the Man Behind Cheez Doodles, Is Dead", The New York Times, August 2, 2010. Accessed August 3, 2010.
4. ^ Barrios, Jennifer. "Morrie Yohai, 90, helped create Cheez Doodle", Newsday, August 1, 2010. Accessed August 3, 2010.
5. ^ ^{a b} Dwyer, Jim. "Toast of the Bronx Will Soon Be Toast", The New York Times, February 5, 2010. Accessed August 3, 2010.