New World Pasta history

Another New World Pasta brand, American Beauty, was founded in Kansas City in 1912.

San Giorgio Macaroni Company was founded in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in 1914 by a young Italian immigrant named Girolamo Guerrisi.

In 1916, Sarli's company merged with the Denver Macaroni Company, which used the American Beauty brand name.

The company expanded in 1917 into a seven-story building which included a railroad yard so that trains bringing grain could unload right inside the factory.

Over the next twenty years, the company continued to expand, and in 1939 Prince moved again to a new facility, this time in nearby Lowell, Massachusetts.

Pellegrino bought a controlling interest in Prince in 1941 and moved to expand its markets outside Massachusetts.

In 1947, the company changed its name to American Beauty.

The pasta business continued to be run by one of the brothers, then by his son, Lloyd E. Skinner, who took over in 1950.

The Skinners also pioneered the well-known American breakfast cereal Raisin Bran and manufactured this until 1963, when the company sold its cereal business to the Uncle Sam Breakfast Food Company.

Creamette was run by the Williams family until 1979, when it was sold to Borden.

In 1984, San Giorgio-Skinner became an operating division of Hershey under the new name Hershey Pasta Group, led by C. Mickey Skinner.

As long as you provide good, consistent quality at a reasonable value, customers are not likely to change.” Though Hershey standardized the raw materials and thickness of a new brand when it acquired it, the company continued to market under the original pasta name. It bought two Ohio manufacturers in 1993, the Ideal Macaroni Co. and the Weiss Noodle Co.

The last available sales data estimated the pasta unit had brought in around $400 million in 1997.

Kosman, Josh, “JLL Takes a Taste of $450 Million Pasta Co.,” Buyouts, February 22, 1999.

C. Mickey Skinner, looking back on the drop in an article in Supermarket Business (February 15, 2000) claimed that the popularity of low-carbohydrate diets had put many consumers off pasta.