Basic American Foods is an American food corporation.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
/ref> The company, which is privately owned, claims three-quarters of the North American dehydrated potato granule market.

Overview

It was started in 1933 by Jaquelin H. Hume and his brother Bill Hume as a dehydration processing plant in

Vacaville, California Vacaville is a city located in Solano County, California, United States. It is located from Sacramento, California, Sacramento and from San Francisco, it is on the edge of the Sacramento Valley in Northern California. The city was founded in ...

. In the 1950s, they established a potato processing plant in Blackfoot, Idaho, whereby potato powder could be turned into mashed potatoes by adding boiling water. This technique was used by brands such as Potato Pearls, Golden Grill, Classic Casserole and Savory Series. In 1986, they invented the same technique for beans, for brands such as Santiago Refried Beans and later Santiago Black Beans and Santiago Quick-Start Chili. The company holds forty patents for food production. Basic American Foods competes with

General Mills General Mills, Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded ultra-processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in ...

, Pillsbury and Sunspiced, Inc. The company, however, had an agreement with General Mills for it to manufacture the dehydrated potato products that it sells under its

Betty Crocker Betty Crocker is a brand and fictional character used in advertising campaigns for food and recipes. The character was created by the Washburn-Crosby Company in 1921 to give a personalized response to consumer product questions. In 1954, Gener ...

brand. During the 1990s, Basic American Foods also acquired Pillsbury’s entire food service business, including its facility at Shelley, Idaho. Basic American Foods is led by Jaquelin's sons, William J. Hume and George H. Hume. It is headquartered in

Walnut Creek, California Walnut Creek is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States, located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, about east of the city of Oakland, California, Oakland. Walnut Creek has a total population of 70,127 per t ...

. The company is one of the original members of a consortium led by Avure Technologies formed for the

Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...

Dual Use S&T (DUST) program.

References

External links

* Food and drink companies established in 1933 Companies based in Contra Costa County, California Food and drink in the San Francisco Bay Area Food and drink companies based in California 1933 establishments in California {{food-company-stub