Dolly Parton alignment with Duncan Hines is gaining fans

Dolly Parton’s entry into the cake mix business in early 2022 – with new products marketed as an extension of the Duncan Hines brand – has a “déjà vu” ring to it with a North Carolina connection.

It was a bit of a gamble by the parent company – Conagra Brands of Chicago – to introduce a new line of “Southern-inspired dessert products, specifically cake mixes and frostings, drawn from old family recipes that were revived by Dolly Parton, the ‘Queen of Country Music.’”

As it turned out, the public loved Dolly’s “sweet, Southern-style taste”…and snatched boxes off grocers’ shelves.

The hits just kept coming for Dolly and Conagra. In 2024, they announced a rollout of other Dolly-branded food products.

New product lines started appearing left and right within the baking products aisle, among frozen foods, in refrigerated dairy cases and in the snack foods sections of supermarkets – featuring an array of products reflecting “down-home comfort cuisine.”

“I loved co-creating my Duncan Hines line with Conagra, and I’m thrilled we’re going well beyond the baking aisle with new items,” Dolly Parton told her fans.

 

Here’s a partial listing of Dolly Parton products now available: Biscuits, cookies, cornbread, muffins, pancakes, beef pot roast, chicken and dumplings, country fried steak, shrimp and grits, macaroni and cheese and chocolate pie.

 

As one of the most celebrated performers in the music and entertainment business, Dolly has remained true to her southern roots. She was born in Pittman Center, a small community on the Little Pigeon River in Sevier County in east Tennessee, and grew up in nearby Locust Ridge.

When Dolly Parton was born in 1946, Duncan Hines was traveling America’s backroads, compiling his series of annual publications known as “Adventures in Good Eating.” Each restaurant guidebook told travelers where to find the best food, best value and most sanitary conditions.

 

The idea to bring Duncan Hines into the food industry came from North Carolinian Roy Hampton Park (shown below), a native of Dobson in Surry County, who was running a public relations/advertising agency in Ithaca, N.Y., in 1949.

His major client was the Cooperative Grange League Federation Exchange, based in Ithaca, and its president, Howard Edward “H.E.” Babcock, had approached Park about “finding a trademark name under which the farmer-members of the cooperative could sell more of their food products.”

Park set his sights on Duncan Hines, whose popular restaurant guides had made his name synonymous with quality and cleanliness. Hines’ enjoyed immense popularity in American households.

Together, Duncan Hines and Roy Park formed Hines-Park Foods in 1949. Hines allowed his name to be associated with as many as 250 products, and Hines-Park was acquired in 1956 by Procter & Gamble Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. The buyout left Hines and Park with great wealth.

 

Hines returned to his hometown of Bowling Green, Ky., to retire. He died from cancer in 1959 at age 78.

The Duncan Hines stable of products began to fade away, with only the Duncan Hines line of cake mix products surviving. The Duncan Hines brand was dealt by Procter & Gamble in 1998 to Aurora Foods of St. Louis, only to be sold again in 2004 to Pinnacle Foods of Parsippany, N.J.

Conagra acquired the Duncan Hines brand in 2018.

 

After Hines-Park was folded into P&G in 1956, Roy Park stayed on as a senior executive with the parent company for several years. He resigned in 1962 to launch a new enterprise as the owner of radio and television stations as well as small- and mid-sized community newspapers.

You may have heard of Park Communications, Inc.