The Fascinating Stories of 10 Famous Food Faces

So many things go into creating the perfect brand name. After all, if you choose wisely and pick something memorable, people all over the world will recognize your company. And if you design a smart logo—oh, and make a good product; that’s kind of important—people might just develop a bit of brand loyalty to you. Pick wrong, though, and you risk your company becoming a laughingstock on the world stage. The stakes are high, and there’s a lot of money floating around out there for those who pick wisely and win that war on branding.

One of the easiest ways to come out on top in that regard, especially if you’ve got a food brand, is to name it after something (or someone!) folksy and family-oriented. And in this list today, we’ll take a walk down that naming lane. The following ten (plus a bonus!) food brands are all named after people. And every single one of these names has an interesting and enlightening story. None of these picks were made by accident, that’s for sure. And once they were picked, their companies rocketed to success. Like we’ve been saying, it’s all about choosing the perfect name and then getting a little lucky with loyal customers…

Related: 10 Famous Brands That Survived Near Bankruptcy

10 Mrs. Fields

Who doesn’t like cookies and other baked goods? If you told us you weren’t interested in being offered a cookie or baked treat, we’d look at you with suspicion. And then we’d turn right over to our BFF Debbi Fields and tell her not to give you any of her delicious treats. That’s right—the woman behind the famed Mrs. Fields cookie brand is actually a real woman who truly exists! She loved her own vibe so much that she opted to name her bakery after herself, which is a bold move. But it’s one that clearly worked!

Her name is Debbi Fields, and she was just 21 years old when she opened up her first bakery in Palo Alto, California back in 1977. She had immediate success with that bakery, and so she started opening up other locations. More success came from that, too, so she opted to move into the franchising world. But instead of just opening bakeries across the country, she decided to get into selling cookies and other goods to grocery stores and the like. Those sales went nationwide (and then worldwide), and before anybody knew it, Mrs. Fields was all-in. That’s the American dream if we’ve ever heard of it!^[1]

9 Dr Pepper

Dr Pepper has been around for quite a long time—longer than a century, in fact. Stories of the drink being concocted by amateurs abound since at least the mid-1880s. But what we know for certain is that the Dr Pepper that we have come to know and love today officially made its debut at the 1904 World’s Fair held in St. Louis, Missouri. There, it was an instant success, and its originator moved to market the drink anywhere and everywhere he could get it to reach. But what’s in the fizzy concoction’s name, anyway?

Well, the drug store owner who created the drink was a dude named Wade Morrison from the Waco, Texas area. In that town, he had fallen in love with a young woman but failed to seal the deal with marriage. Remembering the lovely young lady, and the nice family to whom she was connected, Morrison was inspired to name his drink after the girl’s father, Dr. Charles Pepper. The good doc had been a renowned medical professional in Virginia, and Morrison felt it was important to honor him. So, there you have it! (Oh, and in case you are wondering, the drink company officially dropped the period after “Dr” in the name in the mid-1950s).^[2]

8 Famous Amos

Famous Amos is a cookie so real and so famous that it may have one of the most well-known naming stories ever. A few decades ago, there was a renowned talent agent who worked in the entertainment industry in Hollywood, California named Wally Amos. But Wally wasn’t just a talent agent: he was also an incredible baker. And to (literally) sweeten the pot for prospective clients whom he wanted to woo for jobs, he would bring them cookies.

Well, Amos could really sell himself as a talent agent during his heyday, and he represented superstars at various points in time including Diana Ross & the Supremes. But his cookies were even better than his agency work. So, it didn’t take long for him to pursue his baking ambitions. He opened up his first bakery in 1975 and started selling cookies under the Famous Amos name. The treats were an instant hit, and not long after that, Wally’s work moved into supermarkets all over the world. We sure hope he kept ten percent of the proceeds from every cookie sold—as any good agent would do!^[3]

7 Mrs. Butterworth’s

Okay, so this is an unfortunately false brand name that is an outlier on this list compared to the many real, actual, living and breathing people who were chosen to helm the monikers of some popular foodstuffs. Way back in the day, a company called Pinnacle Foods was looking for the perfect fake “mom” type of character for their syrup. They wanted to invoke a feeling in their fans and customers that the syrup they were buying would be rich, gooey, warm, tasty, and give you all the comforts of down-home cookin’. Well, what better way to do that than to go with a matronly move?

Alas! Mrs. Butterworth was created. She’s not a real person, and she’s not even based on a real person. There wasn’t a “Butterworth” somewhere up the food chain, or an executive at the company with that last name who pulled it up to create the character. No, sadly, in this case, the “real” Mrs. Butterworth is herself nothing more than an apparition. She sure does look good with her figure outlining the company’s bottle, though, doesn’t she?^[4]

6 Uncle Ben

There are some conflicting stories as to who the actual inspiration was behind the rice brand Uncle Ben. To hear some people tell it, “Ben” was a maître d’ in Chicago named Frank Brown. To hear others swear up and down on the issue, you’d be told that Ben was actually a Texas farmer who was known in his small town as “Uncle Ben.” Regardless, we do know that the inspiration appears to have been a down-to-earth older African American man who looked at least somewhat similar to the Uncle Ben on the box for so many years.

Oh, and about that box: in 2020, the folks over at Mars Foods who are behind Uncle Ben’s, made a sweeping decision to change the food’s branding. Citing the then-current global protests over racial equality and police brutality, Mars opted to change “Uncle Ben’s Rice” to what they felt was a more appropriate name: “Ben’s Original Rice.” But whether or not you like the name change, we can bet you like the rice. The brand first entered the American market just after World War II and then spent the next several decades as the nation’s top-selling rice.^[5]

5 Little Debbie

Way back when in the mid-20th century, there was a man named O.D. McKee. He was an entrepreneur who founded a company named after, well, himself. At the helm of McKee Foods, he loved to be able to bring various foods and products to market, sell them to grocery stores around the United States, and make bank. One day, though, he had a revelation: he saw a particularly cute picture of his granddaughter Debbie McKee and decided she just had to be the brand image for one of his new food projects.

The picture showed little Debbie as a four-year-old wearing a straw hat and smiling ear to ear during a time of great joy. O.D. may have been a cold and calculating businessman, but he also had a big heart—and a wise eye for branding. He realized that other people would likely love the picture as much as he did. So, he took little Debbie and turned her into Little Debbie! The brand image for the company’s newly named Little Debbie snack cakes was created right then and there. And years later, little Debbie grew up. She became Debra E. McKee-Fowler, and she worked for years as an executive at the company that still to this day bears her childhood likeness. Awww!^[6]

4 Lorna Doone

The famed Lorna Doone shortbread cookie remains one of the tastiest things we can think to snack on when we feel the urge. But did you know that it is (almost certainly) named after the main character in a novel from the late 19th century? In 1869, the author R.D. Blackmore wrote a book called Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. The book itself was loosely based on history, and saw a decent level of popularity at the time and then for a good few years after it was published.

Fast forward a century or so, then, and we’ve got some shortbread cookies in need of a name. For whatever reason, the cookie company’s leaders decided that the novel’s leading lady would make for a perfect cookie salesman. And so, we’ve been given a shortbread snack backed by the creativity of a 19th-century author. Makes perfect sense. Sure. Why not?!^[7]

3 Betty Crocker

Unfortunately for those of us who love her delicious delectables more than life itself (guilty as charged!) Betty Crocker is not a real person. She’s (kind of) based on a real person—or at least a real surname—but as far as Betty’s existence goes, it was made up entirely out of thin air.

Back in 1921, the company that would come to produce Betty Crocker’s wares was looking for a way to brand its product line. They had a very popular executive at the company named William Crocker. Someone internally decided to honor his work for the company, so they took his last name for their marketing push. Then, they figured Betty was a friendly, approachable name—common among American women at the time—and combined the two. And so, Betty Crocker it became!^[8]

2 Chef Boyardee

The spelling involved with Chef Boyardee is a phonetic alteration meant to allow English speakers to more easily pronounce the brand’s name, but the human behind it was very much a real man… and a real chef! In the first half of the 20th century, a man named Ettore (Hector) Boiardi emigrated to the United States from Italy. Immediately, he got a job in the kitchen of the famed Plaza Hotel in New York City. For years, he worked as a chef in that kitchen, perfecting his talents making food for high-end customers.

Later in his life, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio. And when he got there, he opened an Italian restaurant. But while the restaurant itself was decently popular with the locals, another part of his business really blossomed: his sale of spaghetti sauce packets and dried pasta meant for at-home cooking and consumption. The business grew and grew, and soon, Boiardi re-fashioned his name on the brand’s label to become “Boyardee.” Easier to pronounce, easier to remember, and easier to become iconic!^[9]

1 Sara Lee

Sara Lee makes some of the very best packaged baked goods we’ve ever eaten. But the company started with more humble beginnings as a single bakery in Chicago. Eventually, it grew into a few stores around the Midwestern metropolis. It later evolved into a full chain of bakeries that dotted the Windy City and its suburbs. The Kitchens of Sara Lee, as it was known at the time, were most famous for producing a sweet, frozen pound cake that Chicago locals simply couldn’t get enough of. And that’s where the naming story comes into play.

See, the bakery’s founder was a man named Charles Lubin. And while Charles loved to bake delicious treats, he loved his family even more. Specifically, he adored his young daughter… Sara Lee. And when she was eight years old, he decided to pull the proverbial trigger: he’d name the company’s pound cake and other products after her, brand the goods as such, and start selling them to grocery stores nationwide. That’s exactly what happened, and Sara Lee (the brand) blew up big-time. As for Sara Lee (the girl), she eventually grew into a woman and became a noted philanthropist in her adult life.^[10]

+ BONUS: Marie Callender

What’s more impactful than a mother’s love? If you’re a man named Don Callender, the answer there is “nothing.” In the early 1940s, Don was an enterprising entrepreneur who had just opened a wholesale bakery down in Orange County, California. He started making pies for restaurants and shipping them to eateries all over Southern California. Almost immediately, his business was a hit—because there was huge demand for his pies. Soon enough, he decided to start opening his own restaurants, too. But what to name them? After all, when he was working in wholesale, he didn’t need a branded name for his pies, since they simply went out to other restaurants to be ordered off the menu and eaten.

Don got to thinking a bit about that problem, and ultimately came up with the perfect solution: he’d name his business after his mom. After all, Marie Callender was incredibly supportive of her son’s business ventures. So, he called his pies (and his restaurants) Marie Callender’s, and the rest was history. Isn’t he such a good son?^[11]