Creator of Famous Amos Cookies was also literacy advocate
Wally Amos, an indefatigable entrepreneur who in 1975 took a $25,000 loan from a few friends in Hollywood to start Famous Amos, one of the first brands to push high-quality cookies in its own stores and one of the world’s best-known names in baked goods, died Tuesday at his home in Honolulu. He was 88.
His children Shawn and Sarah Amos said the cause was complications of dementia.
At a time when flavorless, preservative-packed cookies were about the only thing available to consumers not blessed with a baker in the family, Amos’s confections stood out.
Derived from a recipe he had learned from his aunt, they used real ingredients, no coloring or chemicals added, and he kept them as close to handmade as possible, even as his company exploded into national distribution through the early 1980s.
What began with a single store in Los Angeles that made $300,000 in revenue its first year became by 1981 a $12 million company (about $42 million in today’s currency), with dozens of Famous Amos stores across the country and packaged products sold in supermarkets and department stores like Bloomingdale’s.
His cookies were small — bite-size, for most mouths — and came in three varieties: chocolate chip with peanut butter, chocolate chip with pecans, and butterscotch chips with pecan. All were handmade at the store.
“You can’t compare a machine-made cookie with a handmade cookie,” Amos told MSNBC in 2007. “It’s like comparing a Rolls-Royce with a Volkswagen.”
The cookies were widely proclaimed delicious, but a big draw was Amos himself. An energetic, ever-smiling pitchman, known for his Panama hat and colorful Indian gauze shirts, he loved the hustle of building a brand, going on the road to promote it for weeks at a time. (Both his hat and one of his shirts are held by the Smithsonian Institution.)
His first store, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, became an attraction in itself. The opening day drew thousands, and he would frequently get the city to shut down the block out front for a street party, which he made sure was stocked with celebrities.
Amos, a former talent agent, treated his cookies like another client — the door to the shop’s kitchen had a star on it, just like an actor’s trailer.
Within a few years, he was a household name across much of the United States, appearing on the cover of Time magazine and as a guest on the TV sitcoms “The Jeffersons,” “Taxi” and, later, “The Office.”
But his passionate creativity was not matched by business acumen, and he struggled to keep up profits as the company expanded. He sold off equity stakes through the 1980s, and in 1988 he sold the remainder to a private equity firm, the Shansby Group, for $3 million.
He also became an advocate for childhood literacy. He worked closely with the group Literacy Volunteers of America, and in 1987 he hosted his own public-access cable TV program, “Learn to Read.”