50 Fun Facts About Food Brands

Chemist Fredric Baur asked that some of his ashes be buried in the tube-shaped can he designed for which snack?

Pringles honoured the wish: part of Baur's cremated remains went into an Original-flavour can in his grave, the rest into an urn buried beside it.

What does 'Nestle', the Swabian-dialect surname of Frankfurt-born Henri Nestlé, founder of the Swiss food giant, mean?

A small bird's nest is what the name means, which is why the company logo shows young birds being fed: the family coat of arms had three chicks in a nest for three founding brothers.

7 Up, created by Charles Leiper Grigg in 1928, at first claimed to contain which drug?

Lithium citrate featured in the drink's early claims; Grigg launched it a year before the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Starbucks took its name from Starbuck, the chief mate in which 1851 novel?

Moby-Dick supplied the name almost by accident: co-founder Gordon Bowker said the book had nothing to do with the coffee shop and the sound simply seemed right.

Reuben Mattus coined Häagen-Dazs in the Bronx in 1959 to sound as if his ice cream came from which country?

Denmark was picked as a tribute to its treatment of Jews during World War II; the made-up words mean nothing in Danish, which has no umlaut ä.

Gatorade was developed in 1965 by Robert Cade's team for the sweating football players of which school?

University of Florida researchers built the drink for the school's Gators to replace the water and electrolytes they lost on the field, and the team's nickname gave it its name.

Red Bull was adapted from Krating Daeng, a drink Dietrich Mateschitz found curing his jet lag in which country?

Thailand's Krating Daeng was launched by Chaleo Yoovidhya, and Mateschitz partnered with him to sell a Westernised version of the drink.

Betty Crocker, created in 1921 by flour millers Washburn-Crosby to answer customer letters, is what?

A fictional character from the start, Betty Crocker was invented to give a personal touch to product questions and later got a painted portrait for packaging and cookbooks.

Which soda, first served by pharmacist Charles Alderton at a Waco, Texas drugstore, is a year older than Coca-Cola?

Dr Pepper was first sold commercially in 1885 at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store, a year before Coca-Cola appeared in Atlanta.

Yakult, fermented with a strain named for scientist Minoru Shirota, first went on sale in 1935 in which country?

Japan is where Shirota strengthened his Lactobacillus casei strain in 1930 and helped found Yakult Honsha in 1935 to sell the drink.

Indomie, the instant noodle brand launched in 1972 and also made in Nigeria since 1995, was created in which country?

Indonesia is home to Indomie's maker Indofood, founded by tycoon Sudono Salim, who also owned the Bogasari flour mills.

'Made in Scotland from girders' was the long-running slogan of which Scottish soft drink?

Irn-Bru's girders line refers to its rusty colour, though the only metal in the recipe is a 0.002% dose of an iron additive.

The image on every Marmite jar shows a 'marmite', which in French is a large, covered what?

Cooking pot is the meaning, an earthenware or metal one; the Australian rival Vegemite in turn took its name from Marmite's.

Dutch journalist Teun van de Keuken founded Tony's Chocolonely in 2005 as a protest against what in the cocoa trade?

Slavery and child exploitation on cocoa farms were the target, and 'Chocolonely' nods to van de Keuken feeling like the only person in the industry who cared.

Aunt Jemima pancake mix, sold as the first 'ready-mix' in 1889, was rebranded in 2021 under what name?

Pearl Milling Company revived the name of the St. Joseph, Missouri mill where the mix was first developed, after PepsiCo retired the Aunt Jemima branding.

Campbell's cans went red and white in 1898 after an executive admired the football kit of which Ivy League school?

Cornell's crisp carnelian red won over executive Herberton Williams, and the can he inspired later became an Andy Warhol pop-art icon.

Facing Marmite, Vegemite was sold from 1928 to 1935 under which punning name from the slogan 'Marmite but …'?

Parwill flopped, and the spread went back to being Vegemite in 1935, the year founder Fred Walker died and Kraft Foods took over the brand.

The '-vril' in Bovril came from a life-giving substance in The Coming Race, an 1871 novel by which author?

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Vril-ya were a superior race powered by an electromagnetic fluid called Vril, which John Lawson Johnston borrowed for his beef extract.

Milo, the malt drink Nestlé launched at the 1934 Sydney Royal Easter Show, takes its name from an ancient Greek what?

Athlete Milo of Croton was legendary for his power, and chemist Thomas Mayne wanted a 'completely balanced food drink' to match.

Ovaltine, still called Ovomaltine at home, was developed by chemist Albert Wander in 1904 in which city?

Bern was the birthplace, and the name joins ovum, Latin for egg, to malt, its two original key ingredients; production moved to nearby Neuenegg in 1927.

India pulled Maggi 2 Minute Noodles from shelves in 2015 after tests found up to 17 times the permitted level of what?

Lead was the finding from regulators in Uttar Pradesh, along with unexpectedly high MSG; Nestlé had held 90% of India's instant-noodle market before the ban.

Vimto, created in Manchester in 1908 by herb and spice wholesaler John Noel Nichols, was first sold under what name?

Vim Tonic, with vim meaning vigour, was shortened to Vimto by Nichols in 1912; the drink has since been turned into sweets and an ice lolly.

Jell-O was trademarked in 1897 by Pearle Bixby Wait, a carpenter and cough-syrup maker in LeRoy, in which state?

New York's village of LeRoy is where Wait and his wife May flavoured granulated gelatin and sugar with strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon.

Momofuku Ando, who invented instant noodles in 1958 and Cup Noodles in 1971, founded which Japanese company?

Nissin still makes Cup Noodles, and Ando's story, including his wife Masako's role, became a Japanese television drama.

The milky Japanese drink Calpis is sold in North America under which name, chosen to avoid an English echo?

Calpico avoids the sound of 'piss', though the katakana name stays on the packaging; founder Kaiun Mishima was inspired by fermented mare's milk he tasted in Mongolia.

Shin Kyuk-ho named Lotte, founded in Tokyo in 1948, after Charlotte, the heroine of a novel by which author?

Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther so impressed the Korean-born founder that its heroine gave her name to a company now behind Lotteria and Lotte World.

Arnott's Tim Tam biscuits, launched in 1964, were named by Ross Arnott after a horse he saw win which 1958 race?

Kentucky Derby winner Tim Tam impressed Arnott on a world trip hunting for new product ideas, and the biscuit went on sale on 10 September 1964.

Sanitarium, the company behind Australia and New Zealand's Weet-Bix, is wholly owned by which church?

Seventh-day Adventist ownership dates to the church's health-food mission, and the flagship Weet-Bix is sold across Australia and New Zealand.

Danone, named by Isaac Carasso after his son's nickname 'petit Daniel', was founded in 1919 in which city?

Barcelona, not France, was the birthplace: Carasso was inspired by Nobel laureate Élie Metchnikoff's yoghurt research, and son Daniel took the brand to Paris in 1929.

Which tea company, owned by India's Tata since 2000, was the first to sell tea bags in the United Kingdom, in 1953?

Tetley began as Joseph Tetley & Co., tea merchants since 1837, and was bought by Tata Tea in 2000; by 1990 it was making 20 billion tea bags a year.

PG Tips adverts from 1956 starred the 'Tipps family', voiced by stars such as Peter Sellers, made up of which animals?

Chimpanzees dressed in human clothes, in the style of a chimps' tea party, fronted the brand that Brooke Bond had launched in the 1930s as Pre-Gestee.

Which tea firm, in the same shop on London's Strand since 1706, claims the world's oldest logo in continuous use?

Twinings created the logo in 1787, and its founder Thomas Twining opened Britain's first known tea room at 216 Strand, which still trades.

Kerrygold butter is owned by Ornua, an Irish dairy cooperative whose name means what in Irish?

New gold, from 'Ór Nua', replaced the plainer Irish Dairy Board name in 2015; the cooperative is Ireland's largest dairy exporter.

Huy Fong's rooster-label Sriracha was launched in Los Angeles in 1980 by David Tran, an immigrant from which country?

Vietnam-born Tran started on Spring Street in LA's Chinatown, and the green-capped bottle now carries text in five languages beside its rooster.

Lurpak butter, branded by Danish dairy farmers in 1901, takes its name and logo from the lur, an ancient what?

Brass instrument is the answer: the lur was blown in Scandinavia in antiquity, which is why the logo looks like a pair of curling trumpets.

Nescafé was developed in the 1930s to use up a coffee surplus left by the 1929 crash in which country?

Brazil's cheap beans had piled up in the warehouses of the bank Sudameris, which asked Nestlé for a solution; Max Morgenthaler's team launched the coffee in 1938.

James L. Kraft, a Canadian-born wholesaler working in Chicago, patented what in 1916?

A way to pasteurise cheese so it resisted spoiling let Kraft ship it long distances, putting him among the first to patent a processed cheese.

The Pillsbury Doughboy, who giggles when a finger pokes his belly, has what official name?

Poppin' Fresh has been poked at the end of commercials since 1965, and he even moonlighted in GEICO adverts between 2009 and 2017.

The first product Henry Heinz packed at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1869, using his mother's recipe, was what?

Horseradish, bottled from Anna Heinz's recipe, launched the Anchor Brand that Heinz and partner Clarence Noble chose for its biblical meaning of hope.

Spam sold in the Americas is canned in Dubuque, Iowa, and in Austin, nicknamed 'Spam Town USA', in which state?

Minnesota's Austin is Hormel's home, and the product was created to sell more pork shoulder, a cut that did not move well on its own.

Wonder Bread's red, yellow and blue balloons were inspired by a 1921 balloon race in which city?

Indianapolis Motor Speedway's International Balloon Race filled executive Elmer Cline with 'wonder', naming a loaf that was selling sliced nationwide by 1930.

In Canada, Green Giant sells its Le Sueur peas as 'Le Sieur', dodging the French word 'sueur', which means what?

Sweat is not a word you want on a tin of peas; Le Sueur is the town where the brand's canning company began in 1903.

Edwin Perkins made Kool-Aid in 1927 by drying his Fruit Smack concentrate to a powder in Hastings, in which state?

Nebraska's Hastings was home to Perkins, who removed the liquid from Fruit Smack simply to cut shipping costs.

Teetotal dentist Thomas Bramwell Welch pasteurised grape juice in 1869 so his Methodist church could do without what?

Communion wine offended his Wesleyan Methodist Connexion, which opposed making, selling or using liquor, so Welch's juice stood in for it at services.

Sara Lee, whose name Charles Lubin gave to a cream cheesecake and then to his Chicago bakery firm, was his what?

Daughter Sara Lee Lubin was eight at the time; her father had bought a chain of Chicago neighbourhood bakeries called Community Bake Shops in 1935 with his brother-in-law.

The dead lion and swarm of bees on Lyle's Golden Syrup tins illustrate a riddle posed by which biblical figure?

Samson found bees making honey in a lion he had killed, hence the tin's slogan 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness', chosen by Abram Lyle.

Alfred Bird devised Bird's Custard powder in Birmingham in 1837 because his wife was allergic to what?

Eggs thicken traditional custard, so Bird used cornflour instead; fellow diners liked it so much he put the recipe into production.

Hovis, coined by a London student who won £25 in an 1890 competition, comes from the Latin 'hominis vis', meaning what?

The strength of man was Herbert Grime's winning pitch, and the bar over the O in the HōVIS logo marks the abbreviation of hominis.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened an ice cream parlour in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, in a renovated what?

Gas station premises and a $12,000 stake launched Ben & Jerry's; the pair had learned the trade from a Penn State correspondence course.

In 1759 Arthur Guinness signed a lease on Dublin's St James's Gate brewery at £45 a year for how long?

9,000 years at £45 a year was the deal, though the company has since bought the site outright and once owned most of the surrounding streets.