In 1927, Dorothy Gerber was facing a tedious problem familiar to parents feeding babies solid food: She was repeatedly straining food by hand for her 7-month-old daughter, Sally.
Eventually, she had enough.
Her frustration helped spark an idea that would grow into Gerber, one of the most recognizable baby food brands in America. Eighty years later, Nestlé agreed to buy Gerber for $5.5 billion.
According to Gerber’s official site, the idea began in the Gerber family’s kitchen.
Following the advice of Sally’s pediatrician, Dorothy began hand-straining fruits and vegetables for her daughter during the summer of 1927. Preparing the baby’s food was a laborious process, so Dorothy suggested that her husband Dan Gerber give it a try.
He soon discovered just how much work was involved. But Dan had something most parents didn’t: access to a canning company.
The Gerber family operated the Fremont Canning Company in Fremont, Mich., where it produced canned fruits and vegetables. Dorothy pointed out that the same equipment used by the family business could make the process of preparing strained food considerably easier.
It turned out that other parents were interested, too.
After workers at the plant began requesting samples for their own babies, the Gerbers recognized that Dorothy’s problem was hardly unique. The company began researching the possibility of producing baby food commercially, and by 1928, Gerber was selling strained foods including peas, prunes, carrots and spinach.
But Gerber needed a way to introduce the new products to American families.
That same year, the company held a contest seeking an image of a baby for an advertising campaign. Artist Dorothy Hope Smith submitted a simple charcoal sketch of a baby’s face, intending to finish it if her entry was selected.
Instead, judges wanted the sketch exactly as it was. The drawing became the famous Gerber Baby, eventually serving as the company’s official trademark and becoming one of the most recognizable images in American advertising.
Meanwhile, the food itself was spreading quickly.
What had begun as one mother’s attempt to make feeding her daughter easier developed into a booming business as commercially prepared baby food offered parents an alternative to cooking and straining fruits and vegetables themselves.
Within years, Gerber baby food was being sold across the country.
The company changed hands over the decades. Gerber became part of pharmaceutical company Sandoz in 1994, which later merged with Ciba-Geigy to create Novartis.
Then came an enormous deal.
In April 2007, Nestlé announced that it had agreed to acquire Gerber from Novartis for $5.5 billion.
The acquisition gave Nestlé the leading position in the U.S. baby food market and added one of America’s most familiar food brands to the Swiss company’s enormous portfolio.
It was a remarkable outcome for an idea born 80 years earlier from an ordinary household chore. Dorothy Gerber wasn’t trying to create a multibillion-dollar brand when she began straining food for Sally. She was a mother looking for an easier way to feed her baby.
But Gerber isn’t the only legacy that still carries her name.
In 2000, Dorothy’s daughter Gay Gerber Cummings and her husband Peter Cummings were approached about supporting an effort that would give children in Northern Michigan the opportunity to study stringed instruments at no charge during the school day.
They accepted the challenge, and the Dorothy Gerber Strings Program was created in her honor.
Since then, the program has expanded to offer music education to children from age 4 through their senior year of high school across Charlevoix, Emmet and Antrim counties. Its offerings include in-school string classes, individual lessons, the Suzuki Method, summer music programs and the Dorothy Gerber Youth Orchestra.
Nearly a century after Dorothy’s frustration over straining food for her baby helped launch Gerber, her name is still associated with children, although in a very different way.
What began with a mother trying to make mealtime easier ultimately became a household name worth billions. Today, the Dorothy Gerber name is also helping a new generation of children learn to play violin, viola, cello and bass.
Related: In 1921, a Minneapolis Flour Company Invented ‘Betty Crocker’ to Answer Customers’ Letters; by 1945, Fortune Named Her America’s Second-Most Famous Woman After Eleanor Roosevelt
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