The following is an excerpt from the book Ideas that Became Big Business by Clinton Woods. Published by Founders, Inc. Baltimore, MD, 1959, 414 pages.

Buy this book: Ideas That Became Big Business

The Pepperidge Farm Story

In 1937-38, during the Great Depression, Margaret Rudkin of Fairfield, Conn. started a business. She started baking Pepperidge Farm Bread in her home kitchen, and today she is selling it in every state in the Union.

"The bread Mrs. Rudkin launched on a depression market cost twice as much as any commercial bread and it found immediate acceptance.

Says Mrs. Rudkin: "It had to be sold at that price to pay for the quality we put into it. But I reasoned that if the public really wanted a better loaf of bread, they would be willing to pay for it. They were and still are, although increased production has made it possible to market our bread at a price closer to that of commercial bread."

Actually, Mrs. Rudkin, who was born in New York City, became familiar with business when, at the age of 17, she started her business career as an employee of a bank after graduation from school. She discovered she had a flair for figures and in a few years was working as a "customer's woman" in a Wall Street brokerage business.

She gave up this budding career when she married Henry A. Rudkin and built a home with him in the Fairfield, Conn. countryside.

It was when one of her children needed special food and her family doctor suggested old-fashioned whole wheat bread containing all of the natural nutrition of the entire wheat kernel, that she "taught herself to make bread."

"I got down an old cookbook," says Mrs. Rudkin, "and looked up a recipe for homemade bread. The ingredients it called for came as a bit of a shock--especially the stone-ground flour. But I decided to make my bread just that way, even to obtaining the whole wheat from a local feed store and grinding it myself in a coffee mill. Soon I was producing bread my family enjoyed."

When Mrs. Rudkin found a miller who would stone grind her whole wheat, she was able to make bread for her friends also. It was their enthusiasm that decided her to try marketing it.

To begin with, Mr. Rudkin left some of her bread with her grocer in Fairfield. Three days later the phone began to ring--other grocers were ordering her bread. It began to look as if she we in business. In addition to increasing local business, the bread was soon selling in New York City. Mrs. Rudkin had brought some in to a quality grocer in New York who had tasted it and said: "Just like my mother used to make." Within a few months the order grew to 200 loaves a day.

In addition, orders began to come in by mail from people who had tasted her bread and wanted more. Mrs. Rudkin soon found it necessary to transfer operations from her kitchen to one of the buildings on their farm property. She resurrected a small oven and baby scales. An old Pepperidge Tree near the kitchen supplied the name "Pepperidge Farm Bread."

Because the employment was at low ebb at the time, the new business was a boon to many high-caliper people in the area. Many of these early employees advanced to responsible positions as the company grew. For example, the company's National Sales Manager sifted flour in the old days.

The bakery had not been operating in the farm building long when it had to be moved again--this time to a larger building nearby. In 1940, with sales at more than 55,000 loaves a week, the business moved to a rented building in Norwalk. In 1947 the company built its first large modern plant in Norwalk.

Today Pepperidge Farm sells its bread in every state in the Union and does a regular mail order business with customers who are located far from distribution areas or who are out of the country and can't get along without good old-fashioned American bread.

Mrs. Rudkin worked hard and long to bring the thriving business along. In the first days she made her own sales, went back for the cash and to pick up stales. In the evening she did the bookkeeping. It was months before there was any kind of maintenance, receiving, or trucking organization and she carried the burden in these areas, often being awakened at 4:30 in the morning on some shipping problem. Mr. Rudkin often checked equipment for her at 6 a.m. before leaving for his New York City office.

Both the quality of her product and its timing were the important factors in the success of the business, Mrs. Rudkin feels. Most American housewives were no longer making bread at home, and the grocery store shelves contained nothing to take its place.

There was soon a demand for a white loaf in addition to Mrs. Rudkin's whole wheat bread, and she began the production of white bread also. The recipes used for both her original whole wheat and white loaves are still used by the company. Only the highest quality ingredients are used such as 93-score butter, pure unsulphured molasses, fresh whole milk, honey, stone-ground whole wheat or slow-aged, unbleached white flour.

When in 1941, war-time ingredient shortages struck the bakery, Mrs. Rudkin had made the fateful decision not to lower the quality of her bread even though it might mean limiting production. In spite of the fact it cost the company $1,000 more a week, heavy cream was used instead of butter. This contained the same amount of butter fat. There were times when Mr. Rudkin had to comb the country via the telephone for one drum of sugar syrup and on occasion it had to be shipped from halfway across the country.

In the East, whole wheat is stone ground for Pepperidge Farm in countryside mills such as Wayside Mill at South Sudbury, Massachusetts. When building a plant at Downers Grove, Illinois, Mrs. Rudkin had a mill built in. This operates on the same principles as the old-time mills, using giant buhrstones for the grinding.

Over the years, of course, many other products have been added to the baker line such as Hovis Bread, a wheatgerm bread; old-fashioned Corn and Molasses Bread; Herb-Seasoned Stuffing, and a variety of brown-and-serve rolls.

Recently Pepperidge Farm began making quality cookies from Belgian recipes. Mrs. Rudkin found the recipes while in Europe looking for a cookie that would be entirely new on the American market. The cookies were being made in Belgium by the Delacre Bakery who have baked for the Royal House of Belgium since 1879, and an agreement was reached allowing Pepperidge Farm to use the recipes.

This year Mrs. Rudkin introduced a line of cookies that were inspired by early American recipes.

Also this year, Mrs. Rudkin entered the frozen food field for the first time with a product entirely new on the market--frozen puff pastry. European recipes and techniques are employed in preparing the dough for the pastry which is frozen, ready for baking at home. In the hot oven the pastries rise magically to several times their size, become light and flaky.

Pepperidge Farm is still a family business. Mrs. Rudkin in President; Henry A. Rudkin Sr., Chairman of the Board; Henry A. Rudkin Jr., Vice President for Sales and Advertising; William Rudkin, Vice President for Production.

Henry and Bill have both been learning the business since, as children, they ran errands and carried supplies for their mother's kitchen enterprise."

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." - Virginia Woolf

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