• The amount of the BAKER'S Chocolate consumed in a year (lined up in squares) would span the length of the Grand Canyon nine times!
• In 1765, Dr. James Baker went into the chocolate business with John Hannon, setting the foundation for what is known today as BAKER'S Chocolate.
• The BAKER'S Chocolate Company was founded in 1780 – well before George Washington was sworn in as president.
• Dr. James Baker – as well as his son and grandson – share something in common with Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy: they all attended Harvard.
• The first sale of BAKER’S-made chocolate was in 1772, when a hundred-weight of product was sold to Mr. Jonathan Shirtleaf.
• Instead of using BAKER'S Chocolate for baking, pre-revolutionary Bostonians purchased the “hard cakes,” and scraped the chocolate into boiled water to make a sweetened chocolate drink.
• BAKER'S Chocolate became popular for making this sweetened chocolate drink because, after the Boston Tea Party incident in 1773, patriots drank it instead of tea.
• In 1833, BAKER'S Cocoa was the only packaged and branded food product sold in the general store in Old Salem, Ill., which was co-owned by Abraham Lincoln.
• In 1834 Walter Baker hired two women to work at the chocolate mill: Mary and Christiana Shields. By 1846, there were several women on the payroll.
• Actress Katherine Hepburn once said, “My greatest strength is…common sense. I’m really a standard brand, like Campbell’s Tomato Soup or BAKER'S Chocolate.”
• A 1920s print ad showed Little Red Riding Hood going to her grandmother’s house with treats made with BAKER'S Chocolate. In the 1950s, a BAKER'S Chocolate TV commercial featured Jiminy Cricket.
• German Chocolate Cake was originated in the U.S. at Walter Baker & Company. In 1852, Sam German created a sweet baking bar named in his honor (BAKER'S German’s Sweet Chocolate). Then in 1957, a Texas woman sent a cake recipe using German’s Sweet Chocolate to a newspaper in Dallas, causing a spike in the sales. Hence, the birth of German Chocolate Cake!
