Francis H. Leggett was one of the first manufacturers to bottle preserved mayonnaise. He and his younger brother Theodore opened a store in NYC on Reade St in 1861. By the 1880s they had a ten-story wholesale building on W Broadway, Franklin and Varick Streets, distributing goods mainly to grocery stores, and they created products for mass distribution from recipes previously produced in the home.
In 1902, Leggett & Co. acquired another ten-story building, continuing their growth. The following year, Richard Hellmann arrived in NYC from Germany with prior food industry experience and began working for Francis H. Leggett Co. [Grub Americana source] Initially, I felt upset, thinking Hellmann had taken Leggett’s mayonnaise-like product to create Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. However, Richard Hellmann left Leggett & Co. in 1905 when he married Margaret Vossberg and they opened a delicatessen, long before Leggett’s “Salad Dressing: the Perfect Mayonnaise” was released in 1911. Margaret Hellmann’s mayonnaise wasn’t commercially preserved, but the mayonnaise was a success, and the Hellmann couple sold jars to their customers for same-day use, as fresh mayonnaise had a short shelf life.
In 1911 Francis H. Leggett & Company introduced Premiere Salad Dressing, which reads like a mayonnaise in their promotional booklet. [Read reddit comment: Leggett’s Premiere ingredients may have been like Miracle Whip]. By 1926 they displayed on their label “Premiere Salad Dressing, A Perfect Mayonnaise.” Where did they get their recipe? Their literature says it was the result of Leggett & Co. perfecting a recipe that was in use “by the most skillful mistresses of American Cookery.”
What were Richard and Margaret Hellmann doing in 1911 when Leggett’s “mayo” was launched? Richard wasn’t feeling well so they sold most of their interest in the deli business and were traveling Europe. They certainly weren’t looking in the vats of the Leggett company for mayonnaise ideas. But the year of Leggett’s successful launch of the mayo-like salad dressing and during the weeks the Hellmanns were in Europe, Richard Hellman connected with a former colleague in the food industry who gave him the idea for packaging mayonnaise. It seems within a few weeks the deli proprietor they sold to in NY died--I haven’t found his name– and because the Hellmanns still had a financial interest, they journeyed back to their daily fresh vat of mayonnaise at the deli, with extra mayo for sale to their customers as they had before, but this time they were equipped with a new mayonnaise packaging idea from Richard’s former colleague. In September 1912 production began of the mayonnaise in the Blue Ribbon jars, and they open the factory in 1915. Timewise, they were neck-in-neck with Leggett’s 1911 launch.
This was a great time to manufacture mayonnaise. After 1910, salads were in demand–all the rage– and women were getting used to leaving their kitchen work in the hands of willing manufacturers that were forever popping up like mushrooms, if the bootstrapped types were lucky enough to cash in on the first wave of manufacturing.
Being international distributors, Francis H. Leggett & Company had a great advantage in distribution. In 1914, Leggett & Co. was on 27th St with a railway behind them next to Pier 66, and they had their own ship. They also had relationships with brokers and grocers nationwide and globally. By just giving away free samples and relying on word of mouth, Leggett’s Premiere Salad Dressing by 1921 was “the largest selling salad dressing in the world.”
And how was Hellmann’s doing? At the end of the first year in 1915 success was so great with the factory on 126th street in uptown Manhattan that they moved to a larger factory in Long Island City. In 1919, Hellmann’s was so successfully swimming in mayonnaise that they licensed a Chicago company to make it for them. Not all of it–Long Island City became “the largest mayonnaise factory in the world,” and another Hellmann factory opened in California.
I know of about ten mayonnaise companies in the early 1900s that were having success, as ready-made flavored fat was and is sure to please! But without the ready-made distribution channels that Leggett had, was it just as easy?
Anyway, all the original mayonnaise companies [more about them later] were heading towards the same place — to be purchased by larger companies, seemingly all in the late 1920s, early 1930s. But these original founding companies have a special place in history.
