CHEESE SPREAD FROM AREA

A (Kraft) slice of history)

Supplement to The Niagara Falls Review and The Evening Tribune
Centennial Edition
5 July 1984

Less than 100 years ago a Mennonite family named Kraft from Fort Erie had no claims to fame.

Today the ancestors of this family are known world-wide.

On Dec. 11, 1874, James Lewis Kraft was born, the second of George and Minerva’s brood of 11 children. As a boy James –better known as Lew-worked at various odd jobs including Ferguson’s General Store.

Although Grandfather Kraft was the first Kraft to enter the dairy business, he supplied fresh milk to the summer residents of Fort Erie-James was the first to take the business seriously. As he cut and weighed the cheese in Ferguson’s General Store he often wondered if there was not a better way to sell cheese. These silent musings were the beginning of the Kraft empire.

After graduating from Garrison Road School James went to Buffalo to attend business college. He later worked in the dairy department of Buffalo’s Loblaw’s store where he continued his musings of better ways to market cheese.

While working in the store James met a man who worked for a Montreal cheese company. The two men pooled their efforts and started their own cheese company while experimenting with blending and cold packaging cheddar cheese.

On July 5, 1903, James left Buffalo to start his own business in Chicago. He adhered to his business philosophy, “cheese should be brought to the grocers instead of the grocers coming for the cheese.”

By the time cheese wheels left the manufacturers they were already going rancid. When they arrived at the grocers the giant wheels, wrapped in gauze, were placed on the countertop where they quickly dried out. James was determined to find a better way to market cheese.

After negotiating a deal with a cheese wholesaler to buy cheese on credit, James invested in a horse and got down to business. He spent many hours experimenting in a small room behind his shop. Into an old copper kettle above his wood stove James poured various formulas, trying to discover a way to pasteurize the cheese. In his own words James admitted, “I got some pretty weird mixtures among those experimental batches of cheese.”

By the end of the first year, James had lost $3,000. An old Kraft family story tells how on one particularly unsuccessful day James in desperation asked his horse, “What is the matter with us Paddy?” A clear and firm voice from above replied: “You have forgotten your God in your business.” From this moment James never forgot his God and the business gradually grew.

In 1909 James incorporated the business to form the Kraft Cheese Company and hired all his brothers to work for him. John Kraft was hired as president; Norman as vice-president of research; Fred as vice-president of overseas operations; C.H. as vice-president of engineering; and J.L. as founder and chairman of the board. The brother worked together to discover a new method of processing and packing cheese, which they quickly patented.

The sales staff had grown to more than 1,000 workers and a huge fleet of trucks were needed to transport the cheese to thousands of destinations all over Canada and the States.

During the First World War, James and his brothers were asked by the Canadian government to produce a cheese for the soldier’s rations. After the war, the Kraft Cheese Co. bought out many other cheese companies such as Maclaren Cheese Co., A.E. Wright Co., and several salad dressing companies.

To this day the Kraft Cheese Co. is still growing and most people don’t realize this highly successful company was started by a small town boy from the Niagara peninsula.