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As a country, we have left Campbell. Then, last year, a bowl of tomatoes and a grilled cheese sami began to sound very comforting. Is this the beginning of a new chapter for Philadelphia's most popular soup?
This is the world of Campbell Soup. Photo illustration by Andre Rucker
Campbell soup is hot water. This long-established company was born across the Philadelphia River in Camden City and was originally scheduled to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2019. The problem is, there is nothing to celebrate. Its stock price has fallen 29% in two years. The highly touted CEO Denise Morrison-one of only 24 female leaders of a Fortune 500 company at the time-retired suddenly (or was forced to resign, depending on who you asked ). Young consumers avoid good chicken noodles and vegetable beef, and instead prefer pho and ramen noodles in a bowl. Efforts to diversify the company by entering fresh food have been bombarded. The quarterly report that led to Morrison's departure showed that Campbell's debt burden increased by $393 million, which tripled to $9.6 billion. The company recently announced a "strategic reorganization" and a major review of its entire product line, which the New York Times described as a "profound identity crisis."
Mm. Mm. not good.
But never be afraid. Founded in 1869 by a small supplier of produce and preserves in New Jersey, the company is about to be rescued by the least likely redeemer: a global pandemic will flood consumers with grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell tomato soup. After all, This is not the first time a world event has left the company in trouble. You can even say that Campbell Soup often falls into the soup and then scoops it out again.
About Joseph Campbell, the founder of Campbell, the first thing to know is that he has nothing to do with the company named after him. After he and his early partner, a tinsmith named Abraham Anderson, who was obsessed with the new fashion of canned food preservation, won a medal for the quality of the goods at the Centennial International Fair in Philadelphia in 1876, Campbell bought Acquired shares of Anderson and acquired three new partners. The most important of these is Arthur Dorrance, a wealthy businessman whose family has been in the United States for hundreds of years. Their new venture, Joseph Campbell & Company, continues to focus on canned food, and consumption of canned food has increased after the Civil War. (There is a large canning industry in the north that is lacking in the south. Federal soldiers began to appreciate the deliciousness and convenience of food scooped out of cans instead of picking them from fields and farms.) Dorrance took his nephew John T. Dorrance A chemist trained at MIT and Europe, he will reimagine this business by promoting what is now considered the most common food: concentrated soup, launched by Campbell in 1897.
Chemist/advertising genius John T. Dorrance.
John T. was not the first to concentrate food-a man named Gail Borden was terrified by the story of the Donner Party’s turn to cannibalism. He invented canned condensed milk in 1853 to prevent this from happening further. Class of accidents. Nor is Dorrance the first to drink canned soup: Franco-American and Hudgens have already provided half pints, pints, and quarts of canned soup to the United States. But Dolans did find that the transportation and sale of the soup was expensive because of the water it contained. He realized that with less water to prepare it, the transportation cost would drop. Joseph Campbell died in 1900. In the same year, his company's soup won the Bronze Award for Product Excellence at the Paris Exhibition-the medal remains on the can. The company is now at the helm of Uncle Arthur and soon became profitable, selling its five original varieties—tomato, broth, vegetables, chicken, and oxtail—for 10 cents per can, which is less than a third of what competitors charge. one. (Several different color prototypes of the label, including black and white and orange and black, were considered by the company’s treasurer before the Cornell football team was used by the Cornell football team’s red and white jerseys against the University of Pennsylvania. Attracted by its refreshing appearance, this combination is recommended.)
The label for Campbell's first concentrated soup in 1897.
It turns out that more important than his chemical genius is the marketing genius of John T. Dorrance. This becomes obvious when you realize that he must have a desire for a product that did not exist before-canned soup. The American doesn't eat soup like he encountered in Europe—as a separate first course at dinner or accompanied by baguettes and delicious Emmenthaler as le déjeuner. Our native housewives are not used to simmering soup pots on the stove. The United States is a land of meat and potatoes.
In order to familiarize the public with his products, Dolans turned to a new form of advertising: placards installed on city trams. A local car ID card printer tried to revitalize the business and asked his wife, Grace Wiederseim, to try to create some characters to illustrate these soup ads. (She later remarried and was called Grace Drayton.) The ones she came up with—the Campbell children—will appear in the company's advertisements for most of the next century. By 1905, Campbell's sold 20 million cans of soup a year.
Campbell Kids has played the leading role in company advertising for most of a century.
The advertisements of a century ago are different from the advertisements of today. They... are more domineering. More freely. They promised more, more. In the era before vaccines, infectious diseases such as influenza, yellow fever, measles, and mumps still often caused millions of deaths, so health is very important. The chubby Campbell Kids with red cheeks proudly claim that it is the soup that makes them healthy and strong. Campbell's advertisement praised the company's highly "corrosive" production facilities-more sanitary than your own kitchen, madam! They tout the nutritional benefits of the soup ("helps to regulate the bodybuilding process of the entire system") and ease of preparation. As American women gradually surpassed traditional gender roles—required to serve in factories during the war and work hard to adapt to the larger world of business employment—Campbell shamelessly used their guilt and assured them that, with Tang’s help, they Still able to do his duty as a good wife and mother. ("And there is only one maid! How do you manage so well?" In a 1912 company advertisement, a well-dressed lunch guest asked her mistress.) "This is where his genius lies," Drexel Rosemary Trout, Director of the University’s Culinary Arts Program and the Food Science Program, said John T. Dorrance. "He can do it so efficiently."
"Campbell's ads not only try to persuade women to buy their products," Catherine Parkin wrote, "but also buy their views on how women should work and live."
At least part of Campbell Kids’ propaganda is realistic: when people actually eat locally, canned soup helps diversify the American diet—because they have to. "Think about it, canned food is amazing," Trout pointed out. "People can get nutrient-rich foods that are very easy to get throughout the year, and this kind of food can last a long time." She said that "consider localization" may be popular now, but there are restrictions: "You can't drink coffee, you can't Eat chocolate, not pineapple." She is a loyal supporter of Campbell. Campbell has long been associated with Drexel's culinary arts project, placing co-students in its test kitchen and regularly hiring alumni.
There is another connection between Drexel and Campbell that cannot be ignored: Dorcas Riley of Drexel University in 1947 invented the mung bean casserole, which is the staple of the 66-year-old holiday table. Reilly worked in Campbell’s test kitchen after leaving school for 8 years, when she first mixed cooked green beans with creamy mushroom soup and topped with crispy canned fried onions. Campbell's says that this dish is now served in 20 million American homes every Thanksgiving.
Within five years of launching concentrated soup, John T. Dorrance has expanded its product line to 21 types, adding asparagus, beef, broth, celery, chicken broth, clam chowder, clam chowder, julienne, veggie turtle, papaya, Lamb, peas, Pepper Pot, Printanier, Tomato Okra and Vermicelli Tomato to the original five. He is a loyal supporter of high-quality ingredients and chooses his varieties with an eye on delicate European flavors. In 1915, he bought his uncle Arthur and became the sole owner of Joseph Campbell's company.
Dorrance's next advertising area is women's magazines. In 1911, Philadelphia’s own Curtis Publishing Company (its journals include the popular Women’s Family Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post) hired a former teacher to determine which products advertised on their pages actually It is bought and used by consumers-this is one of the best-selling products in the world. The first attempt at market research. The teacher persuaded dozens of local subscribers to let him go through their trash, which is why he found Campbell Soup so popular. More importantly, this popularity is different in each category, which prompted Dolans to expand his advertising coverage. By 1920, he spent $1 million annually on advertising. He also worked with magazine editors to showcase his products in the recipes they provided to enthusiastic readers, encouraging them to make fascinating dishes like Spaghetti à la Campbell by using soup as a cornerstone (spaghetti was considered an exotic at the time) Food) to expand their cooking skills Italian immigrants like) and tomato soup cake. He published recipe booklets and menu books. He eventually acquired a rival French American company. He funded a lot of tomato breeding research. He launched a new product, Pork & Beans, to keep his Camden factory buzzing during the soup stew days every week. As the name was changed to Campbell Soup Company in 1921, this soup is still the backbone of the company. By the time John Dorrance died in 1930, he was worth approximately $115 million, making him the third richest person in the United States.
In short, his life is a victory for capitalism. However, not everyone is a whole-hearted capitalist. In the chapter about Campbell in the book "American Kitchen Culture" published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2000, food historian Katherine J. Parkin wrote about the company : Threat: Not using Campbell Soup will cause some type of failure. Their ads try to take advantage of women’s doubts and anxiety. "These doubts and anxieties will only increase with the intensification of social turmoil and greater changes in gender roles brought about by the 1950s and 1960s. The male Campbell kid is a sporty kid — boxing, soldiering, flying airplanes — and His female opponents looked at him with admiring eyes, dried clothes, and served him meals. As Parkin pointed out, “Campbell’s soup ads use traditional gender ideals to persuade girls and women to not only buy their products, but also Buy their views on how women should work and live. At the same time, however, the advertisement emphasized how energy-consuming cooking and how liberating canned soups are, promising that they "can save you time for other things."
In the end, even a sea of Campbell tomatoes is not enough to stop the tide of history. The decades after World War II proved to be the heyday of canned soup, with 1 million Campbell's recipes printed-including the magical methods of cooking with concentrated soup and using soup. (Campbell's Cream of Mushroom was so ubiquitous in Minnesota church cookbooks that it was called the "Lutheran glue.") But in the 1970s, soup began to struggle. In the earlier era, housewives who liked a plate of dishes and casseroles were giving way to a new generation who preferred light, fresh foods (such as grilled dishes and salads). Campbell's experiments with fruit soup (!), frozen soup, and salad dressing made from soup yielded nothing. Andy Warhol's idol adoration of the familiar red and white cans—although he insisted that he liked Campbell Soup and ate it every day when he was young—makes these products weird and even a little ridiculous in the new cuisine era . The United States is accepting food from other cultures-at the same time, strangely, the local return to the yen, as reflected in the farmer's market and CSA. The company’s 21 product lines have long been overhauled and diversified-today, Campbell Soup’s website lists more than 70 red and white canned soups, including chicken wontons, 98% non-fat mushroom cream and cream Cremini & Shiitake Mushroom (more Needless to say other series, such as the soup that former Eagles QB Donovan McNabb and his mother drank). A company that has grown on the basis of backward nostalgia-whose TV ads tend to be Lassie, The Donna Reed Show and The Mickey Mouse Club-suddenly encountered Gloria Steinem and ERA.
Campbell's is already expanding. In 1955 it acquired CA Swanson & Sons, the inventor of the TV dinner party, and in 1961 it acquired Pepperidge Farm Bakery. Now it has added more companies to its portfolio, including Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., Mrs. Paul's frozen seafood and Vlasic kimchi, and expanded its overseas operations. Catering to the trend of foreign food, the company launched a new cookbook "International Chef", using its soup for Middle Eastern Bamian, Eastern European chikhirtma and German rinderrouladen.
Boxes of soup waiting to be shipped out in 1910.
The dominance handed over to the company by Century has brought another challenge: the families who once happily fried the ham roast and the perfect tuna casserole suddenly paid more attention to health. The big trouble with concentrated soups is sodium, and research is increasingly linking sodium to heart disease and high blood pressure. With other major food manufacturers, including Kraft and Heinz, Campbell Soup signed the National Salt Reduction Initiative in 2010, promising to reformulate 60% of the canned soup production line to reduce salt content by as much as 45%.
Unfortunately, Rosemary Trout points out that salt is one of the reasons that concentrated soups work well in sauces and casseroles: “You end up with a very concentrated salt solution. This enhances the taste.” CEO Dennis · Denise Morrison blamed the further decline in sales on low-sodium soup-in 2011, a paper in the Journal of Hypertension questioned the link between sodium and heart disease Later, she announced a reorganization: the company is back in salt.
In the last decades of the 20th century, changing consumer tastes were not the only problem Campbell faced. The company has been using New Jersey’s agricultural wealth—a harvest of ripe red tomatoes and sparkling green peppers—to produce its products. But the supply chain is being reconfigured, and now the harvest in California and the Midwest can be cheaper. According to Daniel Sidorick's 2009 book "Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Twentieth Century Pursuit of Cheap Production", the same can be said for labor. Under the Dorrance family, Campbell was anti-communist and anti-union. It relies on immigrant labor and employs a large number of newcomers to the United States—Italians, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans—this has caused complaints from Camden’s veterans that it is "destroying the city." (Plus the ça change...) Managers will isolate black and female workers into low-paying jobs, and ruthlessly squeeze every cent of their employees' production. Finally, in 1990, Campbell Soup closed its last Camden plant and moved to other parts of the country (the company headquarters still exists), which prompted the older generations to complain about their abandonment.
"People are familiar with Campbell's restaurant," said Rosemary Trout of the Culinary Arts Program at Drexel University. "I guess we are all looking for some comfort."
According to Sidorick, closing the Camden plant is just another extension of John Dorrance's corporate philosophy of keeping production costs low. However, in other respects, Campbell's ideas may be very far-sighted. Ten years ago, it became interested in the possibility of Keurig soup. Its 2015 "Born for Real, Real Life" advertising campaign featured two gay fathers as the protagonists and caused a sensation. (One million mothers, an advocacy organization that fights "indecent", naturally called for a boycott, accusing the company of "normalizing crime.") In 2016, it became the first large food company to support federal legislation. To provide transparency about the existence of genetically modified organisms or genetically modified organisms, a public health lawyer called a "watershed moment" for groups that oppose the use of genetically modified organisms. In the same year, it promised to remove all artificial ingredients from its products, including high-fructose corn syrup, and launched Well Yes soup in non-BPA-lined cans. It has been named "Best Corporate Citizen" by "Corporate Responsibility" magazine many times. In 2019, Campbell Soup was one of only 20 U.S. companies—and one of only two U.S. food companies—to appear on the corporate knight list of the 100 most sustainable companies in the world.
These good behaviors do not seem to have much impact on the company's bottom line. In the same year, Campbell Soup announced that it would sell Garden Fresh Gourmet, a salsa maker acquired in 2015 for US$232 million, and its refrigerated soup factory built for US$80 million, at a price as low as US$60 million. Ouch. Since 2016, the company had to write off $1.4 billion of a $2.14 billion business acquired under the leadership of Denise Morrison. Her sudden departure sparked off the descendants of John Dorrance—many of whom had names such as Strawbridge and Wister, names familiar to any long-term Philadelphians—and Daniel S. Lobb of the third point hedge fund. (Daniel S. Loeb) between the ugly struggle for control of the board of directors. (One of Third Point’s recommendations: modernize those red and white cans.) In a quarter, revenue fell by 50%. A headline in the Wall Street Journal declared "family discord," "a threat to the Campbell dynasty."
In the end, Dan Loeb and John Dorrance's successor reached a detente. The third point is that he won two seats on the (slightly enlarged) board of directors and has a say in the selection of the new CEO. He is Mark Klaus, a veteran of Kraft, Pinnacle and Mondelez International. Campbell's sold Bolthouse Farms, the last Campbell Fresh acquisition supported by Morrison, which was acquired in 2012 for US$1.55 billion and in June 2019 for US$510 million.
Then, somewhere in the Bat Cave near Wuhan, a sudden change occurred.
I have been a serious stan of Campbell soup longer than I remember. I grew up on a 1950s meatloaf with Campbell's tomatoes on it-and I still did it, damn it. Without a mung bean casserole, Sinston Thanksgiving would not be complete. (This is not entirely correct. For a year, I tried a scratch-free version without soup. It was terrible.) I passed my taste of Campbell's vegetables to my son and made a new one with milk instead of water The creamy delicious bowl is kind. For the past four years, I have been in the kitchen the night before Christmas Eve, stubbornly rolling 12 pounds of ground beef into my long-dead mother’s delicious Swedish cuisine (ha! Seems!) meatballs and topping them on 12 jars of cream mushrooms and immortal love.
However, James Regan doesn't really want to talk about the past.
James is amiable and handsome, and it was not until recently that I wrote to him and asked for his help that he was appointed as Campbell's head of external communications. I want to talk to Clouse, the president of the company, or Chris Foley, the president of the food and beverage department. I think 40 years of all these canned butter mushrooms every Christmas should give me access. At first, James seemed willing. However, the more we talked and exchanged emails, the less willing he was. "We really want to pay attention to the recent history and the future of the company," he wrote.
But what interests me most about Campbell-the reason this company deserves my letter-is how it somehow survived so many changes in the spirit of the times. How it is like Janus, the double-faced god, manages to look forward even if you can swear that it is looking back. John T. Dorrance shamelessly took advantage of the insecurities of housewives in the Jazz era and should have left his company directly forgotten. The casserole train that he rode for so long before jumping off should also be eaten. On the contrary, it seems to have been repeatedly rescued by some "mechanical soup"-the Great Depression, the World War, and the full entry of women into the labor market-Campbell's children have become comeback children time and time again.
This is what I want to talk to Campbell’s boss. Instead, James provided Golden Fortunato, and strangely, he graduated from the same university the same year as me. We hit it off. But her job at Campbell is vice president of community affairs; she is also the head of the Campbell Soup Foundation, which was established in 1958 and has been performing well ever since. Kim told me about the company’s just-concluded 10-year healthy community plan to address the obesity rate in Camden County and a new five-year plan to improve school nutrition. She called the company the "economic engine" of Camden City. She discussed a partnership program with Food Trust to help corner shops in Camden provide fresh produce and consumer education. She shared that her favorite Campbell variety as a child was vegetarian vegetables. She even—finally! — Acknowledge that the pandemic is good for business. "We have a new family," she said, adding that millennials are "a generation that doesn't have that much cooking. Now, with the pandemic, you have a lot of people cooking. Many of our soups can be used as Ingredients." Yes! This is what I want the people from Campbell to say. This is what James keeps sending me in the annual report: Campbell Soup's US soup sales in fiscal year 2020 increased by 15.3%-twice the increase of any other "edible products" of the company. During a four-week period in the spring of 2020, Campbell's sales increased by 59.3% year-on-year.
Camden school children in one of the company's nutrition programs.
When people are scared, they want to drink soup.
You can understand why Kim and James don't want to dwell on this. It makes the soup look a bit like a gun — its sales have skyrocketed with the dawn of COVID — or it may be ivermectin, a horse repellent that vaccine-resistant people keep swallowing. James would prefer to talk about the performance of the company's recently acquired Snyder's-Lance, Inc., which produces (coincidentally) my family’s favorite pretzels, not to mention the small packets of biscuit sandwiches. It was as if he wanted to twist both of Janus' heads firmly in front. But the pandemic is just a disaster that Campbell has experienced recently.
What really reminded me of all this was a PR photo I saw in September, which was accompanied by a press release about the just-opened food bank at Neumann University in Delco, "to ease the food for students Unsafe conditions". In the photo, social work professor Rina Keller and school counselor Mary Beth Davis are standing in front of a veritable wall of... Campbell soup cans. There are chicken noodles. Mushroom cream. Homemade chicken noodles. Butter Chicken...
Really? I think. I read that young people no longer eat cereal, because washing dishes is too troublesome!
good. Everyone started making all the sourdough bread.
Then I remembered what Rosemary Trout of Drexel told me about the dark days of COVID: "People are familiar with Campbell. I guess we are all looking for some comfort."
"Campbell's intends to use the momentum generated by its new fans and continue to move forward," said James Regan, Campbell's Director of External Communications.
Out of curiosity, I decided to ask my junior magazine colleagues if they have Campbell Soup in their cupboards. These are young people, please note that when I asked them what Smashburgers are or why someone wants one, they snickered at me. When we were still working in the office, they ate a takeaway lunch that I was not familiar with-lard , Meatloaf, gado-gado-every day. The younger generation is very indifferent to the baby boomers and believes that we condone climate change and hide millions of dollars secretly in our huge houses. Frankly, they want all of us to die.
"Two creamy mushrooms," said Victor Gen X.
"Six," said Gen X/Millennial Cusp-er Kristen.
"Three chicken noodles and four low-salt vegetables," another Sandy said.
"One tomato and three Paw Patrol chicken noodles," said Kate, the mother of two.
"Three! Tomato, health requires tomato chicken noodles," said Generation Z Shaunice, who is younger than my child.
"A tomato," Gen X Brian said. "We usually prepare a few jars of creamy mushrooms to make tuna casserole noodles, but we just made that, so we didn't."
Oh my goodness. Young people are still making the perfect tuna casserole?
I'm surprised. I'm confused. I was sitting at my desk (well, on my kitchen table), and for a long time, I was thinking about any other food-bread? ice cream? milk? coffee? ketchup? -So many people of different ages and backgrounds will have the same brand on hand. did not think of. Campbell Soup is really a universal food, American soy green.
In July, Campbell Soup announced to great fanfare its first redesign of its iconic brand in half a century. Traditionalists shuddered at the news, but when the updated cans were unveiled, they didn't look... completely different. Campbell’s logo, which is said to be based on Joseph Campbell’s true signature, has lost the background shadow and the letters are slightly separated. The word "soup" has a new font, and a small sketch of the key ingredients-mushrooms, noodles, tomatoes-with the name of the variety next to it. But the bronze medal of the Paris World Expo is still there. The company stated that the new design “evokes the same sense of comfort, beauty and beauty.” To celebrate, Campbell invited street-style artist Sophia Chang to create its first non-fungible token (NFT) and put it Auction for charity.
If I hadn’t read about the label redesign, the next time I stood in front of Giant’s soup wall to replenish my cabinets, I might not even notice it. As usual, Campbell's is adjusting, not revolutionizing, gradually pushing American consumers forward, just like it introduced us to the curry-flavored Mulligatawny and the Victorian Mock Turtle, or convinced us to eat all these green beans and tomato soup Cake. After all, this company wrote in Fortune magazine as early as 1935 that removing moisture from its products is "the only basic idea of anyone in Campbell Soup."
Now, James Regan tells me that the company intends to use the momentum generated by its new fans and move forward. Clouse mentioned the company's recent successes during the September earnings conference call and added: "With the recovery of COVID, I think some consumer dynamics supporting demand may continue for some time." In the report of the conference, Food Dive, a website that provides news for food industry executives, cited "family-centered eating behaviors," which may continue to be the driving force for soup resurrection: "The pandemic can help revive and promote reinvention. Category-a category that can maintain staying power in the coming months and years."
Like most companies today, the company has been solving some of the supply chain issues triggered by the pandemic. Its instant soups, including Pacific Foods organic series, are showing signs of strength. Well Yes soup has only been reformulated with popular ingredients such as bone broth and chickpeas. The new "Snack Soup" features delicious shortbreads such as oyster crackers and Pepperidge Farm's beloved goldfish. By the way, those Snyder's-Lance snacks are still very popular. In that earnings conference call, Clouse specifically mentioned the brand's entry into the millennial generation. He recently told the Wall Street Journal, “Now is the moment when we should consider some of these categories that have existed for more than 100 years as new product launches.”
Everything old is new again. I think the cool thing about America is that sometimes, it only takes a basic idea, a little luck, and a lot of branding to build a dynasty.
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