Jell-O, Jello, Gelatin and Pudding TreatsIn 1897, fifty-two years after philanthropist Peter Cooper obtained the first patent for a gelatin dessert, Pearl B. Wait, a carpenter and cough medicine manufacturer from LeRoy, New York, came up with a fruit-flavored version of Cooper's gelatin. It was christened Jell-O gelatin by his wife, May Davis Wait, and was available in strawberry, raspberry, orange, and lemon flavors.Frustrated with poor sales, Wait sold the Jell-O gelatin business for $450 to his LeRoy neighbor, Orator Francis Woodward, an entrepreneur who had founded the Genesee Pure Food Company two years earlier. Woodward's first year sales of Jell-O gelatin were so poor that one day, after touring the plant and seeing cases of Jell-O piled high, he offered the business to his plant superintendent for $35, a new low for the fledgling product. The offer was refused. With the turn of the century came a new lease on life for the Jell-O company. Helped along by Woodward's creative sales and sampling strategies, Jell-O gelatin began to catch on. In 1902, when Woodward launched his first advertising campaign in Ladies' Home Journal, sales reached $250,000. The 3-inch ad, costing $336, featured smiling fashionably coifed women in white aprons proclaiming Jell-O gelatin "America's Most Famous Dessert™."
Apricot
Jello Mold
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