Aunt Jemima Brand Gets A New Name: Pearl Milling Company

Image via PepsiCo, Inc.

Aunt Jemima is making her last batch of pancakes.

Quaker Oats said Tuesday that its Aunt Jemima brand pancake mix and syrup will be renamed Pearl Milling Company. Aunt Jemima products will continue to be sold until June, when the packaging will officially change over.

Quaker Oats, a division of PepsiCo Inc., had announced last June that it would retire the Aunt Jemima brand, saying the character’s origins are “based on a racial stereotype.” The smiling Aunt Jemima logo was inspired by the 19th century “mammy” minstrel character, a Black woman content to serve her white masters. A former slave, Nancy Green, became the first face of the pancake products in 1890.





Quaker Oats bought the Aunt Jemima brand in 1925 and had updated the logo over the years in an effort to remove the negative stereotypes. But in the cultural reckoning that followed last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, Quaker decided to change the name altogether. Other brands, like Uncle Ben’s rice, followed.

Quaker said Pearl Milling Company was founded in 1888 in St. Joseph, Missouri, and was the originator of self-rising pancake mix. While the brand will be new to store shelves, the boxes and bottles of syrup will still have the familiar red packaging of Aunt Jemima.

Quaker said it sought input from customers, employees and external cultural experts as it developed the new brand name.





















Quaker said it is also donating $1 million to groups that empower Black women and girls as part of the Pearl Milling Company rollout.

 

2 Comments

  1. Hilarious, Aunt Jemima got canceled by the Cancel Culture.

    Guess what, her Great Grandson is furious, his great grandma was proud of that logo (probably lost his royalties now that they are not using her face-if you think the Corporate Big Guys did this because it is something they truly believe in, your a fool).

    Now it looks like a generic brand, watch the sales drop.

    • Yep. It’s about inclusion and diversity! Erase all traces of black culture… If that’s not racist, I don’t know what is.

1 Trackback / Pingback

  1. official website

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.