7/7/2023 0 Comments Wally amos![]() “I stood on milk crates to ring up customers,” Shawn says. He felt that what he was doing would transcend the neighborhood.”Īmos was newly divorced, so his time at the shop was his time with his son. ![]() But a few blocks down was the A&M Records loft, where Dad had offices next to Quincy Jones. We were across the street from a strip joint. It was an unlikely place to sell cookies: “The East side of Sunset was seedy,” Shawn says. That year, Amos launched the first Famous Amos store on Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard. Hollywood tastemakers began to take notice: “I'd go to meetings with record company or movie people and bring along some cookies, and pretty soon everybody was asking for them,” Amos told The New York Times in 1975. “Cookies were a hobby to relieve stress,” says his son Shawn Amos, musician and author of Cookies & Milk. He began baking cookies using his Aunt Della’s recipe. When a new job opportunity in Los Angeles backfired, Amos grew disillusioned with show business. Amos headed the rock ’n’ roll department, where he signed Simon and Garfunkel and worked with Motown megastars The Supremes, Diana Ross, Sam Cooke and Dionne Warwick. In 1957, he returned to New York and joined the William Morris Agency, where he worked his way up from the mailroom to become the first black talent agent in the industry. Amos dropped out of high school but earned his G.E.D. He moved to New York City’s Harlem at age 12 to live with his Aunt Della. Here’s how a man who broke the color barrier in the talent industry and launched a cookie empire helped change American tastes. And the rise and fall of Wally Amos became one of its most infamous cautionary tales. Uncle Wally’s muffins can be found in all the “big box” stores - including Costco and Wal-Mart - across the country.When Wally Amos founded Famous Amos cookies in 1975, the brand became one of the most unlikely success stories in food history. When the Keebler cookie company bought the rights to Famous Amos in 1999, Wally Amos signed a different deal with them to be the “paid spokesperson” for the company, but the deal didn’t last long - and he then opened up a company called Chip & Cookie in Kailua, HI (per NBC News) and still owns a majority stake in Uncle Wally’s Muffin Co. Furthermore, he ended up changing the cookie company’s name to “Uncle Nonamé,” and it filed for bankruptcy in 1996. As it turned out, the deal he’d signed included a clause that all but forced him to give up even the rights to his own name. ![]() That same year, Amos launched a new cookie company called Wally Amos Presents - but got sued by the Famous Amos company for doing so. In 1992, The President Baking Company plopped down $61 million to purchase the company - which the outlet reports was “more than 55 times what Wally Amos sold his controlling stake for just a few years earlier.” With the sale of Famous Amos came the sale of Wally Amos’ financial future, according to. Let’s take a look at how Wally Amos recovered from selling off Famous Amos - and where you can buy things that he actually owns now!Įditorial note: Inflation prices were calculated using the inflation calculator, and are speculative estimates. Or, if you stay there long enough someone will come and rescue you.” “In quicksand, if you start flailing all about and panicking with each movement you go in deeper, but if you just stay calm and look about, chances are you’ll see a twig or something you can reach to pull yourself out. “If you sit around starting to feel sorry for yourself, and blaming everyone else for your position in life, it is like being in quicksand,” he said to the New York Times. What’s more, Amos - known for his perpetually sunny, upbeat demeanor - has no regrets about how it all went down. But despite early investments from his celebrity friends - including a soul legend - Wally Amos couldn’t keep Famous Amos afloat.Īmos was an experienced Hollywood talent broker, but he didn’t know his way around the corporate world. The Famous Amos cookie company is an American cultural icon.Įach year, millions of delicious confections made by the company founded by Wally Amos are sold in stores nationwide.
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