Wallace “Wally” Amos, the founder of Famous Amos cookies, has died at the age of 88. The company founder’s children Shawn and Sarah announced Tuesday that the cookie creator died at his Honolulu home on Aug. 13 due to complications with dementia, according to the New York Times.
Throughout his life, Amos had talked about how he promoted his cookie in a similar way that he’d promote artists when he was an agent at William Morris Agency, where he was the first Black talent agent in the industry, according to the History Channel. In his 2002 book, The Cookie Never Crumbles, Amos wrote that he would include a photo of the cookie and provide little plastic bags with the cookies stapled so you could “taste the cookies.”
Amos even got R&B legend Marin Gaye to invest in his sweets company early on.
“Marvin Gaye had returned my call and wanted me to get back to him,” Amos wrote in the book, per LAist. “I called him from that waiting room, got him on the line, and started right in describing what it was I was up to with The Cookie and Famous Amos, and my store and all. He stopped me in mid-pitch and said, ‘Wally, Wally…hey, wait a minute, man. If you’re doin’ it, that’s Ok, I’ll invest in it.'”
“And just like that, he was in for the $10,000 I needed,” he added. “My shortfall set me back only a week, and thanks to Marvin, my plans were back on track.”
Born Wallace Amos Jr. in Tallahassee, Florida, on July 1, 1936, he lived his teen years in New York City’s Harlem borough. Amos got his G.E.D. while in the Air Force before he joined Willam Morris Agency. There, he signed talent such as Simon and Garfunkel, and worked with the Supremes, Diana Ross, Sam Cooke, and Dionne Warwick.
“I’d go to meetings with record company or movie people and bring along some cookies, and pretty soon everybody was asking for them,” Amos told The New York Times in 1975. That year, he launched his company and its first store on the east side of Sunset Boulevard in L.A.
According to History, the Famous Amos Cookie Company sold $300,000 worth of cookies during its first year and made $12 million in revenue by 1982. (About $42 million in today’s currency.) Four years later, President Ronald Reagan awarded Amos an Award of Entrepreneurial Excellence. In 1986, Amos sold his company to Ferrero Group for $4 million and the remainder of his stakes to the Shansby Group for $3 million.
In the early Nineties, Amos launched a new cookie company called Wally Amos Presents, but he was sued by the new owners of Famous Amos for copyright infringement. He changed the name of the company to Uncle Noname, and after a two-year legal battle, he renamed to Uncle Wally and sold muffins instead, opening a bake shop in Hawaii and later sold his portion of the company.
Outside of cookie-baking, Amos appeared as a guest on The Jeffersons and Taxi, and also The Office. The entrepreneur was also a passionate advocate for literacy, and in 1981, became the spokesman for the Literacy Volunteers of America, an organization focused on teaching adults to read. He eventually wrote several books, including The Cookie Never Crumbles cookbook and The Path to Success is Paved with Positive Thinking.
