General Foods Corporation - Post Cereal Fame - dated 1960's-70's Stock Certificate

General Stock printed by American Bank Note Company. Vignette of two female figures holding a General Foods symbol. Industrial vignette at back. Available in Green, Brown or Orange. Please specify color.

General Foods traces its roots back to the Post Cereal Company, founded in 1895 by C.W. Post in Battle Creek, Michigan. Post, a patient at the Battle Creek Sanitarium run by John Harvey Kellogg, was inspired by the sanitarium’s diet to establish his food company and become a rival to the Kellogg brothers, who also sold their own breakfast cereals. With an initial investment of $78 in equipment and supplies, Post set up manufacturing in a barn on the ‘Old Beardsley Farm’. His first product, Postum, was a “cereal beverage” alternative to coffee made from wheat and molasses. In 1897, he developed Grape-Nuts, followed by Elijah’s Manna in 1904, which was later renamed Post Toasties in 1908. C.W. Post passed away in 1914, and his daughter Marjorie Merriweather Post took over the company.

Under Marjorie Merriweather Post’s leadership, the Postum Cereals company made several notable acquisitions, including Jell-O (gelatin dessert) in 1925, Walter Baker & Company (chocolate) in 1927, Maxwell House (coffee) in 1928, and other food brands. However, the most significant acquisition of 1929 was the frozen-food company owned by Clarence Birdseye, known as the “General Seafood Corporation”. Birdseye, born in New York City on December 9, 1886, and passing away on October 7, 1956, was a pioneering entrepreneur in the food industry. During his time as a fur trader in Labrador between 1912 and 1916, Birdseye developed a commercially viable process for quick-freezing foods using a belt mechanism, which he patented in 1923. In 1924, with the support of three investors, he established the “General Seafoods Company” in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to produce frozen haddock fillets packaged in plain cardboard boxes.