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Food is the biggest industry in the U.S., but with all the $80 billion in sales it generates, the more than 1,000,000 it employs and the 373,000 retail stores it serves, the industry has changed itself completely to lead, cheer and consolidate the revolution. Canned goods are still the old and tested convenience foods, but such startling gains have been made by mixes, frozen food and instant drinks that one in every three of the time-and labor-saving products was unheard of only ten years ago.
Tested Ingredients. No company has done more to revolutionize U.S. cooking than General Foods Corp., the world's biggest food processor. It sparked the revolution with its line of Birds Eye frozen foods, still the biggest-selling brand. Last year it put its 250 products (including different flavors and varieties) into 4.5 billion packages that the housewife took home for $1.1 billion. On pantry shelves and in refrigerators from Maine to Florida, its products are household words —Jell-O, Maxwell House coffee. Post cereals, Swans Down cake mix, Sanka, Minute Rice, Gaines dog food, etc.
Running this cook's colossus is a job for a man with tried and tested ingredients. The man: Charles Greenough Mortimer, 59, the solidly packaged (5 ft. 10 in., 195 lbs.) chairman and chief executive officer of General Foods. The ingredients: a mind as restless as a bubbling stew, a big pinch of Madison Avenue savvy, a full measure of shrewd selling experience. All this is mixed with an insatiable curiosity about the U.S. woman—what food she buys, what she would like to buy, and how it can be made easier to serve.
"Have you ever looked at Fannie Farmer's Cook Book," asks Mortimer, "to see what was mapped out for a young bride who wanted to serve fish? 'To clean fish: Remove scales that have not been taken off. This is done by drawing a knife over fish, beginning at tail and working towards head. Incline knife slightly towards you to prevent scales from flying . . . Wipe fish thoroughly inside and out with a cloth wrung out of cold water, removing any clotted blood which may be found adhering to the backbone. To skin fish: with sharp knife remove skin along the back and cut off a narrow strip of skin the entire length of back. Loosen skin on one side from bony part of gills ... if fish is soft, work slowly and carefully . . .' And so on through all the other gruesome procedures before the housewife could start to burn her fingers in the hot grease or fill her kitchen with clouds of fish-laden smoke.
"What does it say on a package of frozen fish sticks? 'Heat and serve.' "
Tomato to Wonton. In tribute to the ease of "heat and serve,'' hungry Americans last year ate more than $500 million worth of frozen prepared dishes, mostly in convenient, built-in containers that went from oven to table to trash can. The number of frozen-food packers has grown from 750 in 1949 to 1,100; the dollar value of frozen foods has jumped more than 2,700% to $2.7 billion. Almost one in every three cups of coffee is now made with instant coffee. Postwar sales of prepared baby foods have grown some 230% to a quarter-billion-dollar industry, and sales of cake mixes and other prepared mixes have more than doubled to $253 million.