Duncan Hines

by Louis Hatchett

  Park did everything he could to win Hines’s favor. The first task he embarked on was to “find out if housewives would pay a premium price for a premium brand.” During December of 1948, with an investment of $50,000 of his own money, he “bought up quantities of canned goods from the supply sources of Boston’s famed S. S. Pierce Company,” replaced their labels with his own Duncan Hines labels and then placed them on grocery store shelves in upstate New York. “With radio and newspaper promotion to ballyhoo the event, the shelves were quickly emptied—at premium prices.”536 Park then began test-marketing several Duncan Hines packaged food products in New York, New England, Illinois and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.537 He decided “to run a test of nine staple foods” featuring the Duncan Hines label. The “results of that test were all the encouragement” he needed. His research and instincts were right. The Duncan Hines name “moved” products. As he had hoped, Hines’s name worked like magic. Interestingly, the most popular item removed from supermarket shelves was one of the prototypes Park had originally showed Hines: a box of cake mix.

  A jubilant Park could not wait to tell GLF members of his successful tests. Unfortunately, Park was now faced with another problem. Although he had sold Hines on his concept, he had yet to prove to his GLF clients “that Duncan Hines could sell food as well as recommend it.”538 And that, increasingly, seemed unlikely. While Park was trying to lure Hines into a partnership, “enthusiasm among the farmers had dwindled and leading groups had disintegrated.”539 Said Park years later, “following the test marketing we went back to our farm cooperative clients with an encouraging report—only to find that there had been a shift in their management philosophy. They had decided to stick to their knitting by providing their farmer members with farm production supplies and leave the consumer marketing of processed foods to the pros in the consumer field.”

  Park now had a choice. He could dispose of the investment he had made in developing the Duncan Hines brand and turn his attention to other advertising and public relation activities, or he could plunge ahead with what he was sure was a winning formula. He decided the latter held the more promising road. But before acting, he sought the advice from someone whose judgment he always felt secure in seeking.540 He turned to his friend, H. E. Babcock, who told him “to set up his own company and seek backing from bankers and investment brokers.” Park took his advice. He “was almost too successful in selling the idea. His backers talked of millions. It seemed to Park that he would be squeezed out” if he was not careful. “He fought back and retained firm control over his infant company, though this meant considerably less money invested than his new partners had contemplated.”541 Toward the end of December 1948 Park changed the name of his Ithaca advertising firm to Hines-Park Foods, Inc.542

  Park quickly made extensive preparations for his new company, which included plenty of advertising. Over the next three years he hired fifty advertising agencies to research, promote and advertise the line of products Hines-Park Foods unloaded onto supermarket shelves. He wanted to ensure that there would always be a vast pool of creative talent from which to draw.543 Within weeks Hines-Park began accepting “applicants from other small companies for the Duncan Hines label.” The only qualification Park insisted on was that their products maintain a consistent level of very high quality. Aware of the clauses in Hines’s contract, Park did not dare insult the food expert with an inferior product that would sully his name. If he did, he knew the partnership and his potential fortune would evaporate without a trace. The member-companies of his food label would all have to offer the very best products in their respective fields. Park would settle for nothing less. With this in mind, Hines-Park was soon approving products from all over the nation: “chicken from Washington, tomato juice from Ohio and New York, kidney beans from Ohio, coffee from Boston, pickles and relishes from North Carolina, crab apples from Michigan.”

  Originally, Park’s arrangement with his food suppliers was to have them ship their products to a Hines-Park plant for repackaging under the Duncan Hines label, but freight rates were expensive. Then he had a brainstorm: “Instead of having the products brought to the label,” why not bring “the label to the products…[?]” That operational short-cut solved the problem “of additional freight costs and the time loss in getting” his food suppliers’ goods “into the grocery stores.”544 “Under the Hines-Park system relatively small food producers” were “enabled to compete on somewhat even terms with the goliaths of the food industry.”545

  The example of the St. Mary’s Company, a packer of tomato and bean products from Sidney, Ohio demonstrates how the Hines-Park operation functioned. First, St. Mary’s applied to be a supplier for Hines-Park Foods. After extensive testing in Hines-Park’s laboratory and final approval given by Duncan Hines himself, it was licensed to carry the Duncan Hines label on selected products.546 The company paid Hines-Park a one-time “flat fee and a fixed percentage of gross sales thereafter.”547 It paid a modest royalty for the use of the Duncan Hines name, and it also agreed “to devote 2% of its gross sales to Duncan Hines advertising”; 25% of that sum was allocated to Hines-Park’s account for national advertising. St. Mary’s then packaged and marketed Duncan Hines Tomato Juice to the public. Under the Duncan Hines label, the company could only market the recipe that was prepared and refined by the Hines-Park laboratory. Failure to abide by the recipe’s exacting specifications would result in termination of the company’s contract. The company was, however, free to market its Duncan Hines product as extensively as it wished.548

  Within weeks of its opening, Hines-Park Foods was inundated with products; producers from all over the nation wanted them to sample, test and, they hoped, sponsor their wares. Space limitations prevented the company from testing all of them in Ithaca, and Park soon made arrangements for all testing to be done in Indianapolis, Indiana.549 Suppliers for Hines-Park knew better than to tamper with a Duncan Hines-approved product. They would have been foolish if they did. All franchise holders reported increased sales for products bearing the Duncan Hines label. Why tamper with success?

  Despite Park’s best efforts, the initial results were good but not good enough. In a March 1949 meeting with Hines, Park asked his famous partner to extend their six-month agreement for another six months. Hines, who had up to that time been keeping tabs on Park’s activities but not actively involving himself in them, asked him point blank if he was making any money on his venture. Park said no, he was not. Hines asked him why he had not asked for his help. “Because,” Park confessed, “I did not think I could afford you.” Hines had to sit down for this. All his suspicions about Park vanished. The young man really was sincere. Hines then told Park he would help him all he could if he would pay his expenses. All he had to do was ask.550 By September 1949 Hines-Park had licensed sixteen food packagers which were ready to distribute sixty brands of food featuring the Duncan Hines label551 with products ranging from “bread and jam to fancy peaches and pears.”552 Sales for the second six-month period went better, primarily because Duncan Hines rolled up his sleeves and went to work. Park impressed Hines with his business acumen and organizational abilities, and their friendship grew into a tight bond. Therefore, it was no surprise when on 14 October 1949, Roy Park, with Duncan Hines as his full partner, formally established Hines-Park Foods, Inc.553 Under an arrangement insisted on by Hines, the 2% royalty he received from the company’s sales went to the Duncan Hines Foundation, in which he owned no stock.554

  By the middle of 1950 Hines-Park “had thirty companies signed for 150 products, and some eighty dairies had qualified to carry” a soon-to-be-available ice cream product.555 Since the initial licensing of their company’s first products, their laboratories had tested more than 500 varieties of food; only one-fifth of them measured up to Hines’s demanding expectations. Although the company would later be known for its cake mixes, the first star in its product lineup was ice cream. In June 1950 production began on Duncan Hines Ice Cream.556 The ice cream was de
veloped by the Lehigh Valley Cooperative Farmers dairy at Allentown, Pennsylvania, the assets of which, before production began, totaled $3,000,000. The introduction of the ice cream line forced the cooperative to spend $1,250,000 in new plant equipment just to keep up with the demand. Two weeks after Lehigh Valley announced it was ready to manufacture and distribute the instantaneously famous dessert, it produced one million pint containers bearing Hines’s name. The initial sales of vanilla, chocolate and butter pecan ice cream were, according to a company spokesman, “terrific.” At forty-three cents a pint, the dairy cooperative was, financially, in seventh heaven. The ice cream’s secret, like many of the products bearing its famous logo, was its extreme richness; it was 25% heavier than other ice creams557 and contained 33% more butterfat than similar products on the market.558

  As promised, Hines kept his word to Roy Park. He rolled up his sleeves and went to work for his partner. He was, first and foremost, a salesman, and he once again demonstrated his abilities in persuasion. For most of the latter part of 1950 he and Clara went everywhere promoting Duncan Hines Ice Cream. They crisscrossed the country, making appearances in person, in newspapers, on radio, even on the new medium of television. In short, they went wherever Park asked them to show up. No town was too insignificant to promote their products. As 1950 gave way to 1951, he continued to spend the majority his time promoting the ice cream bearing his name. His travels would make many men his age dizzy and exhausted, but, surprisingly, he showed no sign of slowing down his hectic pace—or wanting to. The breadth of his travels was especially surprising since he almost never traveled by plane or train; instead, he preferred to drive.

  National advertising for the ice cream began with the July 1951 edition of Look magazine, among other publications.559 Later that month, Park announced that his company was ready to enter the cake mix market. He said his company was not going to enter the field in a test-marketing mode, as it had in the past; instead, it was going to mount a full-scale campaign to introduce what he believed was the finest cake mix on the market. He said the company would soon begin production with devil’s food, white, yellow, and spice flavors.560

  16

  THE WORLD OF DUNCAN HINES

  In September 1949 Hines and Clara took another extensive dining tour of New York City. With his guidebook’s sales office in New York becoming increasingly busy, the two made a convenient excuse to visit it and indulge themselves in that city’s extensive restaurant cuisine. As usual, they lodged in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. After visiting the sales office and its manager Frank Watts, they were off to the restaurants. When reporters learned of Hines’s arrival in their city, they cornered him for an impromptu press conference that evening. Hines, never one to turn down publicity, told the press about his day on the town:

  I went to Lindy’s, he began. “First, we had borscht. No, I don’t mean beet soup. It was pure beet juice, perfectly clear, and we put sour cream in it. Then [we ate] sturgeon. Then we had rye bread that was like a spring; when you squeezed it, it bounced back. Then a new kind of drink, not alcoholic, celery juice. Delicious! Then those things, what do you call ‘em, blintzes. I had one with sour cream and one with cherry preserves. With coffee I had a French cruller. Oh, I forgot the cheesecake. It was this thick.

  Hines spread his thumb and forefinger about six inches apart. One reporter remarked that it sounded as if he did not have a balanced meal. Hines laughed, saying, “I don’t eat it. I just taste. If I ate all that, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

  Hines was still excited about the previous day, which he was only too happy to relate. “Yesterday Mrs. Hines and I went up in Connecticut and ate at four different places. I just tasted. You know how to taste? For sweet and sour, you use the tip of your tongue. To tell what herbs are in a dish, you put it in the back of your mouth and roll it around for a while. Don’t swallow it right down like an old hound dog back there in Kentucky.”

  Hines then related that he had just been interviewed on a heavily prepared radio show. He said of the experience, with decisive finality, that he did not enjoy it. “I don’t like a script,” he said. “I tell ‘em, ‘When you’re going to ask me a question, beckon like this, and I’ll be ready to answer. If you want me to stop talking, hold up your hand.’ That’s all the script I need.”

  Another reporter, changing the subject, asked him what was New York’s best restaurant. Hines’s opinion on this was always changing. This time he said that it was the Newport at 18 East 60th Street, but then Hines shook his head and fretted that it was much too expensive for most Americans. When he discovered among his inquisitors a New York-based female reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, he quickly befriended her. “Now write this down for the people in Kentucky,” he asked her. “Say I’m happy to see that the good restaurants south of the Ohio [River] are cleaning up. And say I’ll be happy to get home and eat two-year-old ham, cornbread, beaten biscuits, pound cake, yellow-leg fried chicken, and corn pudding. And you can say what I think is the best eating-place in Kentucky; The Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg.”561

  On 15 March 1950 almost a week before his 70th birthday, Hines and Clara left Bowling Green for another lengthy trip. Their plans were to travel “to Chicago for three days, San Francisco for a week, to Los Angeles for ten days and to Phoenix for two weeks and back home the first of May.” He hoped they would get to New England on their next trip in “the later part of June” because, said Hines, “I am hungry for some of that super-duper New England food…. “562

  When Hines and Clara arrived at the Green Gables Restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona on 14 April, members of the “Duncan Hines Family” gave him a belated gift for his birthday, a new Cadillac convertible automobile. This had been their practice since the end of the war. Hines accepted neither fees nor gifts from others and the only way his “family” members could make him accept the vehicle was if they all contributed equal donations toward its purchase. The restaurant where the festivities for the nearly month-late birthday celebration took place was as colorful as Hines himself. Guests were met at the door of the Green Gables by a mounted knight-in-armor; then they were heralded by trumpeters dressed in Errol Flynn-styled Robin Hood costumes. At the apex of the evening’s jubilant repast—the presentation of the car—a small boy in a medieval costume presented Hines with a satin pillow upon which lay a certificate of ownership and a set of golden keys to the Cadillac. This was followed by a silver-plated armored knight who rolled a cart into the dining room; upon the cart rested an enormous birthday cake. When it was placed in front of the guest of honor, Hines heartily blew out the candles. The knight then presented Hines with a sword and asked him to stand so he could cut the first slice of cake. As soon as Hines placed the first carved piece upon a glass plate, a stringed ensemble commenced playing sweet melodies and continued their acoustical merriment throughout dinner while a soloist sang a plentitude of Kentucky ballads. As the orchestra played throughout the evening, the guests heartily consumed the wealth of food before them, which included “hors d’oeuvres, canapes a la russe, Miami green mock turtle soup aux quenelles, lobster cocktail supreme a la Parisienne, hearts of palms salad (flown in from Rio di Janeiro), Green Gables dressing-garlic toast, Golden Wisconsin pheasant (flown in from Wisconsin), sauce bigarde, potato souffle, cauliflower a la Aubrel, Vesuvian dream, demitasse cognac” and many other exquisite delicacies. On each dinner menu were the words, “Happy Birthday and Hats Off to You, Duncan Hines. Sincere best wishes to one, who, more than any other, has placed greater opportunity for gracious living before the nation’s motoring, dining and vacationing public. We, your family and your thousands of followers throughout America who have benefited by your untiring efforts, extend our appreciation.”563

  For most of the latter part of 1950 Hines and Clara went everywhere promoting Duncan Hines Ice Cream. They crisscrossed the country for their company, making personal appearances wherever they were needed. They didn’t mind. Their travels gave them an excuse to visit some
new restaurants throughout the country, as well as call on old favorites. To cite just a few of the places they visited that year, on 10 September 1950 Hines and Clara ate a tasty meal at the Doll House at 1518 South Main Street in Salt Lake City, Utah. Eleven days later (21 September), they dined at the Airport Restaurant in Wichita, Kansas. Also on that same hot September day they visited an establishment known as “The Farm” where they posed for photographers in front of an enormous display of Duncan Hines Ice Cream. Upon arising in Wichita the next morning (22 September), Hines and Clara continued their promotional duties. Hines gave the local newspaper an interview. Later, just before heading off for another engagement, the couple posed once again for Wichita photographers while eating from cartons of Duncan Hines ice cream.

  Early the next month (3 October), while on a publicity tour for Duncan Hines Ice Cream in Flint, Michigan, they found themselves at the doorstep of Cromer’s Restaurant at 500 North Saginaw, where they sampled the sour cream cabbage slaw, hot cloverleaf rolls and other popular favorites for which the restaurant was known. Eleven days later (14 October), after a New England promotional tour, the couple were in Whitman, Massachusetts, visiting yet again the Toll House and his good friends, Ruth and Kenneth Wakefield. Less than two weeks later (26 October), they were seated at a table in the Swiss Chalet restaurant at Chicago’s Bismarck Hotel, where they dined on onion cake, among other things, with his other special friends, the proprietors of the Lowell Inn, Arthur and Nelle Palmer.564 They did not always travel to see others; sometimes others traveled to see them. A few months later (29 January 1951), they were honored with a visit to Bowling Green by movie and radio personalities Gene Autry and Smiley Burnett.565