It all began in 1883 when Oscar Mayer, a Bavarian immigrant, bought a run down meat market in Chicago.  The owner of Kolling Meat Market was more than happy to sell his failing business to Mayer. 

Mayer operated using his skills as a Wurstmacher, which quickly turned the failing meat market into a booming business.  Mayer's prepared house specialties like bockwurst, liverwurst, and weiswurst, all favorites to the local German-born residents.  The business grew so rapidly over the next few years, that the previous owner refused to renew Mayer's lease in 1888 and announced that he would resume control of the business himself. 

The scheme did not work out for the previous owner of the Kolling Meat Market because his heart and determination was not that of Mayer. Mayer established himself as a respected neighborhood merchant, and he was not going to allow his hard work to be taken away without a fight.  He borrowed $10,000 from a bank and friends, and built a store of his own two blocks south of his former location.  He wanted to continue serving his original customers and his new location was perfect.

 At the close of his first day at the new location he tallied $59 in sales, an impressive figure considering his prices were very reasonable, as low as 12¢ a pound. The shop was not only maintaining its current customers, but also gaining them from well beyond the immediate area.  By the early 1890's Mayer purchased a horse and wagon, and Strawberry (the horse) delivered sausage to retail shoppers and grocery stores in other Chicago neighborhoods.

 Mayer took preventative measures to ensure his former landlord did not imitate the quality of his products. He developed recognizable brand names for his sausages, bacon, and hams.  The idea of branding meats was very progressive for a small town pork packer at the turn of the century, when there were larger packinghouses selling their products anonymously.

 With shoppers asking for Mayer products by name, he began to expand into larger markets.  In 1904, he had eight wagon salesmen selling to over 280 grocery stores in Illinois and Wisconsin.  The Chicago sausage maker built a reputation for his products by running advertisements in community newspapers and sponsoring German oompah-pah bands.  These acted as selling tools for the company as the bands played at picnics and holiday parades. 

 In 1909, Mayer's son, Oscar G. Mayer, joined the firm due to the increasing growth of the business.  Oscar G. Mayer, a Harvard graduate, recognized the trend toward bigness in the meatpacking industry would eventually jeopardize the company if they did not expand the firm beyond the Great Lakes region. Thus, he developed a plan to sell Oscar Mayer products to an ever-widening geographical market, with an ultimate goal to distribute nationwide.

 In 1919, the company acquired a meat packing plant in Madison, Wisconsin, which later became Oscar Mayer's corporate headquarters.  With the production capacity at the new plant, the Mayers were able to open new markets in the Midwest, East, South, and West.

As the company grew, more money was allotted to the advertising budget.  The oompah-pah bands were phased out for more sophisticated marketing tools.  In 1929, they began to promote the product using a bright yellow Oscar Mayer paper band around every fourth wiener that came off of the production line. 

Seven years later after they started banding the wieners, "Little Oscar" was introduced.  He was a small-statured chef who attended store openings, visited children's hospitals, and made appearances in a sausage shaped vehicle known as the "Wienermobile."  "Little Oscar" would give away wiener whistles & other toys, sign autographs, and pass out samples of Oscar Mayer products.

 The draw of convenient, innovative food products propelled Oscar Mayer into a national brand.  In 1948 the company introduced the forerunner of modern self-service bacon packages, sliced bacon in a cellophane wrapper, at a time when most bacon was packaged to order at the deli counter.  The company reinvented their traditional flagship product – the sausage - with sliced cold cuts packaged in a vacuum-sealed package in 1950, and convenient, resealable packages were added in the 1960's.  Oscar Mayer realized the value of freshness and in 1971 became the first meat processor to put "use-by" dates on packaged meats. 

Oscar Mayer's innovative product development continued in the late 1980's when it recognized that kids were bored with ordinary lunches and parents were frustrated with a lack of interesting new choices.  The solution?  Lunchables lunch combinations and snacks, which transformed the brown-bag lunch into a lunchtime experience.

 Oscar Mayer retired as company president in 1928 to be succeeded by his son, but continued to serve as chairman of the board until his death in 1955. 

 It was true in the 19th and 20th centuries, and now in the 21st century – Oscar Mayer is the "brand that keeps reinventing itself".

©2003 The Ohio SBDC at Youngstown State University
The Ohio SBDC at Youngstown State University
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Oscar Mayer

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