Andrew F. Smith

Kraft Foods

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About

In 1903, James L. Kraft noticed that grocers traveled daily to the cheese market to buy cheese for their stores. Recognizing an opportunity, he started a wholesale cheese distribution business in Chicago that brought the cheese to the grocers. His four brothers joined him in 1909, and they incorporated the fledgling business as J. L. Kraft and Brothers Company.

Kraft used innovative and aggressive advertising to promote its line of thirty-one varieties of cheese. Kraft was one of the first food companies to use color advertisements in national magazines. In 1914, the company opened its first cheese factory. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Kraft Foods had evolved into the largest food company in the United States.