The founder of popular chocolate chip cookie brand Famous Amos Cookies died Tuesday at the age of 88.
Wallace “Wally” Amos died at his home in Honolulu from complications of dementia. His children He told The New York Times.
While working as a talent agent to the stars, Amos turned her hobby of baking bite-sized cookies into a hugely successful brand when she opened the Famous Amos Cookie Shop on Sunset Boulevard in 1975, with a $25,000 loan from Marvin Gaye and other Hollywood cronies.
The lifelong entrepreneur, who never owned a famous brand, learned baking recipes from an aunt who lived in Harlem, and after her parents’ divorce, she moved from Tallahassee, Fla., to New York City at age 12 to live with her. According to history.
Influenced by his aunt, he aspired to become a chef and attended Food Trades High School in Manhattan, but dropped out to join the Air Force.
After four years in Hawaii, Amos returned to New York and was hired in the mailroom by the prestigious talent agency William Morris, where he rose through the ranks to become a junior agent in 1961, the first Black person to hold that position at the agency, according to History magazine.
In that role he became close friends with Gaye and other famous musicians of the time, and signed talented musicians such as Simon & Garfunkel.
Eventually, Amos moved across the country to Los Angeles, where he started his own talent agency. He would bake cookies in his free time to relieve stress and take the treats to client meetings and film shoots.
“I started baking as a hobby. It was a kind of therapy,” Amos told The Times in 1975. “I started taking cookies to meetings with record companies and movie people, and soon everyone wanted them.”
His cookies were such a hit that he decided to turn his hobby into a business and opened a bakery on Sunset Boulevard that quickly stood out among the stores selling cookies full of preservatives and artificial additives.
According to History magazine, Amos’s store made $300,000 in revenue its first year, and by 1981 it had become a $12 million business, with dozens of new stores opening and his cookies being packaged and sold in retailers across the country.
As the success of Famous Amos Cookies grew, Amos himself became something of a pop culture icon, known for his big smile and Panama hat. He made guest appearances on TV shows like “The Jeffersons,” “Taxi” and later “The Office.”
However, as the company grew, it struggled to stay afloat financially, and by 1988 he sold his ownership interest and stock in the company.
He spent the next few years working as a motivational speaker and author, sharing his own success story and advocating for black entrepreneurship and child literacy, according to The New York Times.
According to the paper, he returned to baking cookies, launched several brands over the course of his life, and opened a small bakery in Honolulu that also housed a children’s book library where he would spend hours reading to neighborhood kids every Saturday.
He is survived by his fourth wife, Carol Williams, four children, Sean, Sarah, Michael and Gregory, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
