Campbell’s Soup diversifies through acquisitions

Early acquisitions by Campbell’s Soup of Camden, N.J., have had dramatically different outcomes.

First, in 1915, the company purchased Franco-American Food Company, which was established in 1886 in Jersey City, N.J., by Alphonse Biardot. He had immigrated to the United States from France in 1880. At the time, Franco-American’s primary products were French soups and assorted gravies.

 

Franco-American had a loyal following of consumers who enjoyed canned products like Spaghetti and Meat Balls, SpaghettiOs, RavioliOs and Macaroni and Cheese, but in 2004, Campbell’s decided “to retire” the Franco-American brand. 

It folded SpaghettiOs and the gravies under the Campbell’s umbrella. Macaroni and Cheese was unceremoniously dropped from the lineup.

 

The primary celebrity spokesperson for the Franco-American brand in the late 1950s was actress June Lockhart, who promoted Macaroni and Cheese in television commercials.

 

Jimmie Rodgers, the pop singer known for “Honeycomb,” originally sang the famous “Uh-Oh! SpaghettiOs” jingle when the canned pasta rings were introduced in 1965. 

He adapted the tune from his recording of “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again” (1958). The jingle went: “The neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon...Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs!”

Singer/songwriter Barry Manilow wrote a number of top-flight advertising jingles, including “Who Can? Franco Ameri-Can” in 1974 for Franco-American Spaghetti with Meatballs. It concludes: “Spaghetti that’s long on fun, to the last one – Franco-Ameri-Can!”

 

Campbell Soup’s second acquisition saw the company purchase the V8 Vegetable Juice brand in 1948. 

The deal included V8’s manufacturing facility in Napoleon, Ohio (about 45 miles southwest of Toledo).

 

The beverage was first concocted during the Great Depression (1933) by entrepreneur William Gilbert Peacock in the basement of his home in Evanston, Ill. Peacock was hoping to invent an affordable and healthy drink that would provide people with essential nutrients from an assortment of hand-blended vegetable juices.

The story is reported by Dr. Neil Gale, editor of The Digital Research Library of Illinois. 

He said Peacock brought in Frank Constable of Chicago to help him arrive at the proper formula. Tomato juice originally accounted for about 87% of the content, but seven other vegetables were also included in the mix.

They were beets, carrots, celery, lettuce, parsley, spinach and watercress, along with spices, such as dill. The precise formula remains a carefully guarded secret.

 

The name V8 was selected by Peacock and Constable to align the product with the power of a V8 automotive engine…to get your motor running.

 

Since 1948, Campbell’s has invested heavily in the V8 product line. Some of the entertainment industry heavyweights who pitched V8 products were: Ann Sheridan, Shirley Temple, Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Lamour, Rhonda Fleming and Ronald Reagan.

 

Today, Campbell’s Napolean, Ohio, manufacturing facility, with more than 2 million square feet of floor space, produces way more than just V8 – it accounts for more than one-third of all Campbell’s soups and other products in the company’s “meals group” and two-thirds of all its “beverages.”

A giant replica of a red and white Campbell’s Tomato Soup can is situated outside the plant. It stands 33 feet tall and contains 200,000 gallons of water for the warehouse sprinkler system.

 

Local officials say it would take 2,178,645 regular-sized cans (10.75 ounces) of Campbell’s Tomato Soup to fill the tank.

The site also contains a massive 23,040-panel solar field, a city-sized wastewater treatment plant and a biodigestor that converts fruit and vegetable waste into methane gas to fuel the plant’s generators.

 

Campbell’s employs about 1,300 people at its Napoleon plant, making the company, by far, the largest employer in the region. (Napoleon’s population is 8.635.)

The community was settled along the Maumee River in 1832 and is named after French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.