Explore jobs
Find specific jobs
Explore careers
Explore professions
Best companies
Explore companies
Sara Lee International Corp history
Sara Lee International Corp company history timeline
Born in Canada in 1896, Cummings began his career in his father's shoe store.
By 1917 he had built his own shoe manufacturing firm.
1939: Nathan Cummings buys C.D. Kenny Company, a small wholesale distributor of sugar, coffee, and tea based in Baltimore.
Cummings broadened his geographic scope in 1942 with the purchase of Sprague, Warner & Company, a distributor of canned and packaged food nationwide.
After several smaller acquisitions, in 1945 Cummings acquired Reid, Murdoch and Company, the producer of the nationally recognized Monarch label.
The Monarch purchase boosted sales to $123 million in 1946.
After this acquisition, the C.D. Kenny Company changed its name to the Consolidated Grocers Corporation, and in 1946 Consolidated made its first public stock offering.
Since he was a man who took great pride in the quality and taste of his products, it wasn’t until 1951 that the soon-to-be famous All Butter Pound Cake was introduced.
Sales in 1954, the year Consolidated Grocers changed its name to Consolidated Foods, dropped to $133 million.
In 1956, the company bought the Kitchens of Sara Lee, a five-year-old Chicago bakery named after the daughter of founder Charles Lubin; as a division of Consolidated, this became the world's leading producer of frozen pastries.
L.H. Parke Company, Michigan Fruit Canners, and Monarch Food Ltd. of Toronto together added $35 million in sales for 1962.
In 1964, the company opened a large new automated bakery in suburban Deerfield.
New production facilities were planned for Shasta and Sara Lee in 1964, tripling the latter's output, and sales that year topped $600 million.
The Deerfield plant began production in 1964.
In 1966 Consolidated agreed to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) order to spin off its supermarket division within three years, principally its Piggly Wiggly and Eagle supermarket chains.
In 1966, Consolidated made two more important food purchases: Kahn's Meats and Idaho Frozen Foods.
William Howlett became Cummings's successor in 1968, but Cummings remained a director, and the largest shareholder, until his death.
1968: CFC enters the apparel industry with the purchase of Gant shirts.
By 1970, Cummings had supervised the purchase of more than 90 companies by pursuing family-owned businesses who consented to mergers.
Under President Richard Nixon's economic-stabilization program of 1973, for instance, Sara Lee was allowed to raise prices on frozen baked goods only 6.35 percent; Consolidated had requested a 7.52 percent hike.
Sales continued to rise in 1974, but earnings dropped for the first time in 19 years as nonfood business did poorly.
1974: John H. Bryan becomes company president, beginning a long reign as head of the firm.
Buzick left in 1975 and John H. Bryan became president.
1978: CFC acquires Douwe Egberts, a Dutch coffee, tea, and tobacco producer.
These figures allowed the company to set a goal of doubling sales volume by 1980; the actual amount achieved exceeded $5 billion.
1984: Jimmy Dean Meats is acquired.
In 1985, the company changed its name from Consolidated Foods to the Sara Lee Corp., with headquarters in Deerfield.
Return on total investment typically decreases in the wake of large purchases, but Bryan kept return on equity above 20 percent in nearly every year since 1985.
Chef Pierre and Sara Lee merged together in 1988, combining Sara Lee’s technological leadership in laminated doughs with Chef Pierre’s expertise in fruit-based technologies.
In 1989 the company began the divestiture of its food-service operations, then its poorest-performing division.
A combination of several factors converged to lead to declining hosiery sales starting in late 1992.
In another irony, in June 1994 Sara Lee announced a major restructuring of its European personal products operations, which included cuts much more severe than those imposed by Boonstra.
In December 1998, while this restructuring was still being implemented, Sara Lee announced the recall of 35 million pounds of hot dogs and deli meats that were thought to have been contaminated with listeria, a life-threatening bacteria.
1998: Sara Lee sells its tobacco unit to Imperial Tobacco Group.
1999: Company acquires coffee brands Chock Full o' Nuts, Hills Bros., MJB, and Chase & Sanborn.
The Courtaulds fabrics manufacturing unit was sold to Spanish fabric maker Dogi in April 2001.
In 2001 Sara Lee launched the Sara Lee Bakery Group, a company that manufactures and distributes fresh-baked goods.
Acquisitions were not a major feature of fiscal 2001, although Sara Lee did purchase Café Pilao Caboclo Ltda., the leading coffee company in Brazil, and Sol y Oro, the leading seller of women's underwear in Argentina.
Rate Sara Lee International Corp's efforts to communicate its history to employees.
Sara Lee International Corp jobs
Do you work at Sara Lee International Corp?
Is Sara Lee International Corp's vision a big part of strategic planning?
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Sara Lee International Corp, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Sara Lee International Corp. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Sara Lee International Corp. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Sara Lee International Corp. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Sara Lee International Corp and its employees or that of Zippia.
Sara Lee International Corp may also be known as or be related to Sara Lee International Corp.