ConAgra

Healthy Choice, Banquet, Armour, Blue Bonnet, Parkay, La Choy, Butterball, Slim Jim, Chef Boyardee, and Orville Redenbacher are the brand names of some of America’s most recognized food products. But few Americans outside the food industry know that they are all produced by ConAgra Foods, the second-largest food processing company in terms of retail sales.

This food processing giant started out in 1919, when Alva Kinney bought four grain milling companies in central Nebraska. He operated them successfully as Nebraska Consolidated Mills (NCM) until he retired in 1936. His successor, R. S. Dickinson, followed the example of other Midwestern millers, such as General Mills and Pillsbury, and expanded into prepared foods, made profitable by the postwar boom. Company research led to the successful development of a cake mix. In 1953 NCM entered into an agreement with Hines-Park Foods to market the cake mix under the Duncan Hines label.