- [Narrator] Today's kids enjoy an endless selection
of lunch options from a rainbow of fruit snacks,
to sandwiches for every preference imaginable.
- Lunch is much more than just food.
Often, it's the highlight of your day.
[school bell rings]
- [Narrator] Yet less than 75 years ago,
lunch was an unappetizing necessity.
- Lunch was what dinner was the night before.
- Kids just ate what the adults ate.
So if parents were having meatloaf,
they were eating meatloaf.
- [Narrator] Until a spark from
enterprising food visionaries.
- Behold, the future
- [Narrator] Fuels a surge of unexpected innovations
across four decades.
[dramatic music]
- Now you have ham and cheese, baloney and cheese,
turkey and cheese.
The common denominator, cheese.
- There was nothing else like it on the market.
Was a huge gaping hole in hindsight
waiting to be filled by someone.
- [Narrator] Culminating in inventive products
that kids not only want to eat...
- He had one of the most brilliant ideas
in American lunch history.
- [Narrator] But enjoy.
- This is literally Disneyland in a box.
- [Narrator] Turning lunch into a $20 billion industry.
- These giants will reverberate through the history
of kids' lunches forever.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] After World War II,
elementary school populations are rapidly growing.
- The post-war baby boom is ridiculous.
Every year, 3.5 million babies are born.
That's 60% higher than previous generations.
So now schools have to deal with this massive influx of kids
and all the questions that raises,
like how to staff the classrooms,
how to make the classrooms big enough
and what and how they're being fed.
- [Narrator] Many students don't have the option
to buy lunch at school.
- If you did have school lunch,
it was usually some sort of meat product
with a side of vegetables and a starch,
you know, potato or bread
that was so awful,
a lot of parents chose to send their kids to school
with a lunch that they packed at home.
- [Narrator] Even lunches carried from home
have their flaws.
- Lunch was what dinner was the night before.
It was a sequel.
It was dinner 2.0 if you will.
- Parents were sending their kids to school
with last night's pork chops or deviled eggs.
People were experimenting with sandwiches
by combining dried beef and cream cheese
or pickled liverworts with olives and mayo.
If you were lucky, you got plain baloney.
- [Narrator] But in 1950, a new food combination
is grabbing the attention of kids.
- After World War II,
peanut butter and jelly was this new
sort of sandwich filling for lunch for children,
but a sandwich at the time is not really
how we think about it today.
People were not necessarily cutting up cheese
and putting it on sandwiches.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] And one executive is wondering
how to capitalize on lunch.
He's recently become the vice president
of the world's largest cheese company.
His name is Norman Kraft.
- It's hard to overstate the significance of Kraft
as a food company.
There is no modern day equivalent in the world of food.
They did tens of millions of dollars a year in annual sales,
they sold a million pounds of cheese a day
and their whole business hinged on this processed cheese
that was essentially a shelf stable product.
- [Narrator] The company's visionary founder,
James L. Kraft, has just retired,
leaving his younger brother, Norman,
to continue the legacy.
- The guy's last name is Kraft.
That carries a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility,
and he feels the pressure of living up to that family name.
- [Secretary] Pardon me, Mr. Kraft.
- Here, please.
- [Narrator] Now Kraft is determined
to bring cheese into the future.
- Norman started out in research and development
and has been deeply obsessed with innovating cheese.
But back, then Kraft sells its product in five pound,
half pound, and one pound cartons and cans
and it's mainly used for baking and putting it in recipes.
- Can you get the lights?
- [Secretary] Of course, sir.
[intense music]
- Now Norman Kraft is left to his own devices
and he's got his own ambitions.
The thing he wants to really bring to people is convenience.
- [Narrator] To make cheese simpler,
Kraft is developing a product he hopes will be
a lunchtime hit,
prepackaged sliced cheese.
- Norman Kraft really saw this as like a major innovation
that could hugely grow the sales of the company
because if cheese was pre-sliced,
people could start to make sandwiches out of it.
- Pre-sliced bread has literally blown up
in the bread market, it has created sandwiches.
The thing about sliced bread entering and changing
the whole sandwich market
is it just made it convenient, right?
Peanut butter, mayonnaise, deli slices,
everything was easy.
Cheese, not convenient.
- In the middle of the 20th century,
people put butter on sandwiches and meat on sandwiches,
but they didn't really put cheese on sandwiches.
That's like not a thing that people did.
- [Narrator] Kraft believes the efficiency
of pre-sliced cheese will make it a breakthrough product
and prove he can continue to grow the company
without his brother.
Yet they've hit a snag during development.
Simply slicing blocks of cheese
is producing a substandard product.
- When you cut it, it was very crumbly, it was very dry,
and it was not conducive to being sliced.
So even at home,
people couldn't make a nice even consistent piece of it
because the texture by and large was too dry.
- [Narrator] Kraft realizes that in order to create
uniform slices that won't dry out,
they need to be cut before the cheese solidifies.
- The problem Norman is facing
is that the processed cheese is still hot
and very much a liquid.
Trying to slice this cheese before it's packaged
is like trying to slice molten lava.
- [Narrator] After working for months to solve the problem,
the scientists at Kraft finally come up
with a groundbreaking solution.
- They figured out a way to modify the temperature
of the cheese by quickly cooling it in a big sheet.
This makes it way easier to slice.
So they pour the cheese over a large cooled
stainless steel surface.
To ensure the cheese is level,
he flattens it out
and then he slices the cheese into three inch squares.
- It's important for Norman to have the cheese
be the perfect size and shape
to fit onto pre-sliced bread slices
because bread slices have become a standardized size
to fit into modern toasters.
- [Narrator] Norman Kraft's innovative
pre-sliced processed cheese is the first of its kind.
He brands the new creation Kraft Deluxe.
- It's revolutionary, it is eight slices of cheese
in a block format.
You open the package
and you can have eight individual slices of cheese.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] After its initial launch however,
Kraft Deluxe pre-sliced cheese
is a flop.
- Unfortunately, the whole marketing behind it
is sort of lost when you look at the sliced cheese
and it just looks like a block of cheese
- [Narrator] Sales in 1950 are down nearly $8 million
from just two years prior.
- Norman is determined that sliced cheese will be a success,
even if it means starting over again from scratch.
- [Narrator] As Kraft figures out
how to popularize sliced cheese,
in New York City, a small family run bakery
called Joseph Shalhoub and Sons has been selling
Middle Eastern sweets since the turn of the century.
- Louis Shalhoub was 12 years old when he started working
at the shop with his dad, Joseph,
and Louis was a very talented baker.
- Louis, a customer.
- It was very clear that he had a gift
for making confections, which included making
filo pastry by hand for baklava and bird's nest.
- Hi.
- [Narrator] Shalhoub's shop is small,
but popular with locals
thanks to an uncommon imported item called amardeen.
- Amardeen is a very traditional Syrian confection.
It's apricot's pureed with sugar,
sun dried in sheets.
It's basically a big sheet of apricot.
We call it fruit leather
and customers would just come into the store
and he'd snip off a piece for them.
- Thank you.
- [Narrator] But Louis Shalhoub's ambition
stretches far beyond a neighborhood bakery.
- So Louis Shalhoub went off
to bravely serve the United States in the Korean War.
When he returned, he went back into the family business.
- He's seen more of the world than his father
and his grandfather did
and he sees different opportunities.
- [Narrator] And now the store that's been run
by the Shalhoub's for three generations
is not enough for Louis.
- Louis has this dream to take their business beyond retail,
but his father is happy with the pace of their shop
and he likes business the way it's always been.
- [Narrator] Shalhoub's desire for change
will give rise to a new food category
worth over $16 billion.
[intense music]
But first, he'll have to turn a Middle Eastern specialty
into a kid's lunch classic.
[dramatic music]
After years of working for his father at their bakery,
Louis Shalhoub suddenly finds himself at the helm
of their family business.
Thrust into leadership after the passing of his father,
Joseph in 1959.
- This is a huge deal and a huge blow to the family business
because Joseph has been running it since about 1920.
So now all this responsibility of preserving
both the Shalhoub family business
and the Shalhoub family legacy,
as well as championing these beautiful
Syrian culinary traditions
all fall on Louis's shoulders.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] With few other options,
Shalhoub opts to continue running his family's bakery.
- Hi, two sheets of amardeen, please.
- Oh, sorry, we're waiting for a delivery.
- [Narrator] But their signature amardeen fruit product
is becoming increasingly harder to import.
- Lebanon and Syria are going through
political upheaval and instability.
Anyone trying to import products from the region
would've been dealing with
increasing logistical challenges.
- [Narrator] Rather than waiting for imports
to become available,
Shaloub will make the amardeen fruit sheets himself.
- This was a guy who loved to create things,
but he's never made something like this before.
And at this point, he's just experimenting.
- [Narrator] Soon Louis learns the hard way
why his father and grandfather before him
had always opted to import the delicacy.
- Now he was actually making it from scratch
using dried fruit, and he was flattening them
in a letter press
and putting them on cellophane
and hanging them from clotheslines.
And that's how they were drying
in the very early days.
- They didn't have the money to spend on expensive equipment
like food dehydrators.
So they're relying on letting the fruit air dry.
It's a labor intensive process.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] Shalhoub's first batch
leads to a stunning revelation.
His homemade amardeen is the best he's ever had.
- It was packed with apricot flavor,
chewy but not leathery like the imported stuff.
It was a real treat to eat
and potentially something it had never been before.
- [Narrator] Suddenly, Shalhoub realizes this obscure snack
might be the key to unlocking the dream he's been chasing.
- His really big idea was to take amardeen,
which is generally sold in bulky sheets
that you have to snip to size for customers
and turning it into an individually packaged snack.
- [Narrator] Shalhoub believes that by selling amardeen
in single servings,
it could be a quick and easy way to snack on fruit.
- And he thought, well, if I can make individualized
fruit rolls and get it out into the world,
there's probably more future in that
than continuing this one small store.
- [Narrator] But not only is amardeen a foreign concept
to most Americans,
nothing like it exists in grocery stores.
- If someone wanted a fruit snack,
what were they gonna give you?
Like slices of apple, actual pieces of real fruit
or maybe raisins.
Let's be honest, who wants raisins?
- [Narrator] And to turn his Middle Eastern fruit treat
into an American brand, he'll first need to figure out
how to produce it in bulk.
At Kraft Foods after more than a decade on the market,
the company's pre-sliced cheese blocks
have still not caught on.
By 1962, Norman Kraft is getting anxious.
- His brother had processed cheese
and it was an enormous game changing runaway success.
And I think Norman was hoping pre-sliced cheese
was gonna be the same thing for him,
but it just wasn't and that was a real barrier to growth.
[tray clanks]
- Norman Kraft knows that all eyes are on him
and he doesn't want to miss the boat on kids' lunches.
He knows that this is a big opportunity
and he knows that if he messes this up,
he could be the reason that the empire crumbles.
- [Narrator] Norman knows there's something about
sliced cheese that's causing it not to sell.
- Hold on one second.
[intense music]
- And he realized because of the packaging,
people just didn't understand that it was pre-sliced.
They can't tell by looking at it.
- [Narrator] His realization will fuel a last ditch effort
to sell America on the convenience of sliced cheese,
changing not just cheese, but lunch as we know it.
[intense music continues]
As in New York, Louis Shalhoub has shuttered the bakery
his family has been running for three generations
to focus on wholesaling a homemade fruit treat
few people have ever heard of.
- Louis Shalhoub thinks that the abandoning the store
is the way to take the family business to the next level.
- Louis Shalhoub's decision to focus exclusively on amardeen
was a big risk.
There's nothing like that on the market
and they didn't have a lot of money.
So Louis putting all of his eggs in that basket
was a big move
- [Narrator] Despite the risks, Shalhoub forges ahead.
- Louis gets this old fashioned pressing machine
that allows him to press the apricots
to a consistent thickness
and it allows him to process more apricots at a time.
- [Narrator] To brand this reimagined
Middle Eastern delicacy,
he gives it an original name...
Joray.
- Joray was a port manto
of his two sons names, Joseph and Ray.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] In 1960 to introduce Joray Fruit Rolls,
Shalhoub targets Middle Eastern communities
who were familiar with amardeen.
- They had a number of contracts in different grocery stores
and supermarkets in the New York area
and there was a market for it,
people were interested.
They found some loyal customers
and it was kind of growing at that point.
- It was amazing because it was a snack
that wasn't like anything anyone else had.
- It was very popular with the kids.
They would wrap them around their thumbs
and chew 'em and suck on 'em.
- [Narrator] As sales of Joray surge,
Shalhoub starts to recognize their potential
for an even wider audience.
- The next step for Louis is to expand beyond New York.
He's confident that people will love
his apricot fruit snacks as much as New Yorkers do,
but he's gotta get to those other stores.
- [Narrator] Fruit rolls will one day become a lunch staple
all across the country
all thanks to Louis,
but not in the way he'd like.
Back in Chicago, Norman Kraft has spent years
trying to jumpstart sales of sliced cheese,
and in 1965, he believes he's finally come up
with a revolutionary solution.
- He needs to be able to get the customer to see them
as truly individual slices,
but it'll require building and installing all new machinery
for their factories.
A very costly undertaking,
especially when you consider
that this is all to double down on an idea
that by all financial measures, is not a winner.
- The Hopper contains the cheese in a molten state,
- [Narrator] But as the board is losing faith...
- Stay with me guys.
- [Narrator] Kraft mounts one final effort
to save sliced cheese.
- You hear cheese slice today and it's a no brainer.
You picture the yellow orange square
wrapped up in its little plastic wrap
and you know what that means.
Back then, people had no idea.
- Turn off the projector, turn on the lights, please.
[intense music]
Behold, the future.
- [Narrator] He'll individually wrap every single slice.
- Suddenly you've got this very obvious pre-sliced cheese,
it didn't stick together.
You know, you could even just take it out
and just handle it.
It's not gonna melt in your hand, nothing, it's not messy,
it's wrapped in plastic.
It's perfect and it solved a huge problem.
- That is really the moment
where the innovation of the cutting
and the innovation of the packaging come together.
- [Narrator] In 1965, with the approval of the board,
Kraft becomes the first company
to sell individually wrapped slices of cheese,
known as Kraft Singles.
- We talk a lot about the best thing since sliced bread.
Well, Kraft American Singles are legitimately that.
37 years after sliced bread was introduced,
these come on the market and they take America by storm.
- [Narrator] Just as Norman envisioned,
the grabable, simple to open
and easy to store cheese slices
become a popular lunch option for kids.
- Suddenly, cheese was as convenient as sliced bread.
You could just get it, you could give it to a kid,
you could put it in their lunchbox by itself.
I remember growing up, kids peeling off the plastic
on their cheese and then putting it on their sandwich.
- It used to just be PB and J for lunch.
But now, you've got all these sandwich with the cheese,
ham and cheese, baloney and cheese,
turkey and cheese.
The common denominator, cheese.
- [Narrator] But Norman Kraft doesn't live long enough
to see the impact his creation will have.
He dies less than two years after the release
of Kraft Singles. - We really have
Norman Kraft to thank for making the perfect addition
to the school lunch sandwich,
whether it be a turkey and cheese sandwich
or just the cheese by itself.
- He added a dimension to sandwiches that didn't exist
and changed lunch in modern America.
How could we ever have some of the meals
that truly built America without Kraft Singles?
[intense music]
- [Narrator] By 1970,
home packed lunches are far
from the leftover dinners from years past.
Thanks to Kraft, the invention of pre-sliced cheese
has ushered in a new era of sandwiches across America.
- From a simple baloney sandwich, to a tuna melt,
to the iconic grilled cheese sandwich,
the truth is kids love cheese.
It's creamy, it's salty, it's flavorful.
- [Narrator] And now they're brought to school
in a container that's becoming all the rage.
- So originally, lunchboxes are not for children at all,
but actually for men going off to work in the day.
And they were that hard metallic material
because you didn't want your stew or your soup
to get smooshed if something heavy fell on it.
- [Narrator] 120 million steel and vinyl lunch boxes
have been sold over the past two decades.
- They filled them with sandwiches,
the parents are also looking for other things
that they can throw in there,
and there's really not that many options.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] A Joray fruit snack could be the ideal addition
to kids' lunchboxes,
but Louis Shalhoub is still struggling
to turn it into a mainstream delight.
Hoping to expand their reach,
Shalhoub meets with a trade magazine.
- Once we press the apricots into a paste,
we need to ensure the consistency is just right.
- Louis gave an interview about the fruit roll
that they're making.
At that point, there was nothing like it on the market.
It was a huge gaping hole in hindsight,
waiting to be filled by someone.
- In this article in the trade magazine,
he goes into great detail about his product,
how it's made just step by step,
and it was all because he was so proud of it.
- And you end up with this, a Joray Fruit Role.
[dramatic music]
- Louis was overly forthright in some regards
in terms of his process and what they were manufacturing
and how they made it.
He was less protective of his trade secrets
than he maybe should have been.
- [Narrator] Little does Louis know
the interview will have a far greater impact
than he could have ever imagined,
but it'll ultimately be his biggest regret.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] Since launching Joray Fruit Rolls
over 10 years ago,
by 1979, Louis Shalhoub's product
still isn't widely known.
- Louis Shalhoub really wants to continue the legacy
that his grandfather George and his father Joseph started
and he wants to sell this sweet treat
outside of New York City.
- [Narrator] And now may be the perfect time
as parents' views on nutrition are changing.
- Americans were becoming more health conscious
in the '70s and you were seeing the percolation
of the health food movement starting to appear.
And one thing that Joray had to its advantage
was that every single Joray Fruit Roll
start with dried fruit.
- [Narrator] Yet the first product
to capture the national market is not Joray.
[dramatic music]
But food giant, General Mills.
[dramatic music]
- General Mills came along with all their marketing power
and all their branding power and hit grocery store aisles
and it was like an atomic bomb going off.
- [Narrator] Dubbed the Fruit Roll-Up,
General Mills first releases
their fruit snack product in 1979.
- One could argue it's the most fun food.
You unroll it and then you just peel it off
that kind of cellophane, it would stick,
it would have a sound,
and I would kind of like tear it into pieces.
- Suddenly finicky kids that would not want to have fruit,
you could convince 'em me to Fruit Roll-Up like that.
It was kind of like magic.
- The original flavors were cherry, strawberry,
apple and apricots,
which you'd have to assume was a direct shot
to Joray and their fruit roll.
- [Narrator] While turning amardeen
into a popular American treat was his goal,
Louis never imagined it would happen like this.
[intense music]
- Louis was horrified because his idea,
as far as he was concerned,
was basically ripped off by a giant corporation.
- Louis blamed the turn of events on that trade magazine
and because of that, he never gave another interview
to another publication ever again.
- Fruit Roll-Ups knocked the accounts that Joray had
with supermarkets just out really in one fell swoop.
They could not compete when they were just this one item,
tiny mom and pop brand.
- [Narrator] But Shalhoub doesn't give up.
Determined to keep growing,
he adapts by targeting smaller, more niche markets.
- He decided to focus in on the kosher market.
Joray became the fruit role of the kosher community
and it ended up being an extremely fruitful partnership.
- [Narrator] While his fruit rolls don't reach
the popularity of fruit roll-ups,
Louis Shalhoub manages to clinging to his dream.
- To this day, if you go to a Jewish deli,
you're going to see a Joray Fruit Roll.
- Louis Shalhoub is the godfather of fruit snacks
in the United States or even around the world frankly.
Without Louis Shalhoub's foresight
and determination to create this fruit roll product,
there wouldn't be the fruit snack market
and fruit snacks that we know today.
- Joray is still manufacturing
out of a small factory in Brooklyn.
And every single fruit roll is still made by hand.
What other snacks can you say that about?
- [Narrator] What started with
Shalhoub's creative undertaking,
led to the diverse selection of fruit snacks
that grace lunch boxes today.
- You go into the grocery store aisle now,
like there's gonna be like 50 different brands.
Every cartoon character has their own fruit snack.
- If you love Gushers, if you love Fruit by the Foot,
Fruit Roll-Ups, you owe a huge debt
of gratitude to Louis Shalhoub.
- [Narrator] Back at Kraft, with cheese singles
now the bedrock of kids lunches,
the company's success triggers a major corporate move
in October, 1988.
- Philip Morris, the tobacco company,
is on the hunt for food and beverage companies
and they acquire Kraft Foods
for a whopping $12.9 billion.
- The reason cigarette companies are moving into food
is because they can read the writing on the wall.
Americans are becoming really hostile to cigarettes.
- [Narrator] Philip Morris immediately reorganizes
by putting Kraft in control of their other food brands,
including a troubled company
that was once a celebrated icon, Oscar Mayer.
- Oscar Mayer was founded in 1883.
About a century later, they're being passed around
by different big food holding companies.
- People knew their baloney, they knew their hot dogs,
but their sales are flagging
and everything they try doesn't work.
- [Narrator] A mere 13 years ago,
the brand had over $1 billion in annual sales,
but the 1980s has seen a seismic shift in diets
as Americans are eating less and less processed meat.
- People were concerned about chemicals and cured meat.
There was concern about heart disease,
about contributing to weight gain.
Per capita consumption of decreases by 20%.
- [Narrator] Seeking to revitalize the Oscar Mayer brand
- We need you to right this ship.
- [Narrator] Kraft executives tap Bob Drain
to lead the charge.
- Bob Drain is working at Oscar Mayer
as the vice president for new business,
strategies and development.
- Drain really wants to prove to the Kraft leadership
that he can be part of the future there.
And this was his shot to do it,
but he faces a huge challenge,
reimagining a 100-year-old brand,.
- Gimme a week to unpack the numbers.
- No one thinks that Oscar Mayer can come back from this
and kids just aren't eating lunch meat the way they used to.
If Bob Drain can't turn the fortunes of the company around,
this could be the end for Oscar Mayer.
- [Narrator] By 1988, the American family dynamic
has shifted as more moms choose careers over homemaking.
- Because of things like changing gender roles
and a sluggish economy,
nearly 60% of women are now working full-time jobs.
- [Narrator] Amid the rising demands of a fast-paced life,
parents are eagerly seeking time saving options
and preparing their kids' lunchboxes
with homemade sandwiches,
snacks and drinks is a lengthy process.
- Mom's mornings are chaotic.
They gotta get their kids ready for school,
they gotta get 'em lunch, they gotta get 'em out the door.
It's a gold mine of inconveniences.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] Under pressure from Kraft,
Bob Drain has been tasked
with improving Oscar Mayer's sales.
- Oscar Mayer is coming up on their 100 year birthday
and they are facing irrelevance.
- [Narrator] And Drain's plan is to reimagine
their main product.
- So he puts together a team of people,
a team of food scientists, a team of marketers,
and they get to work.
- [Narrator] Drain's team starts studying
other consumer goods
that have had successful transformations.
- The Boombox turned into the Walkman.
Shoelaces turned into Velcro.
Somewhere on these tables, is the key.
[intense music]
- The lab where they're essentially playing
with food products is known as the food playground.
Their process was all about creativity.
- [Narrator] The team works around the clock for months,
but their efforts to revamp baloney have hit a dead end.
- Coming up with a new way to sell baloney isn't easy.
There are so many preconceived notions about it,
that it's very limited beyond sandwiches.
I mean, what else is there?
[intense music]
- Let me see that tray.
- [Narrator] Out of ideas,
Drain finds a spark in a revolutionary food
innovation from the '50s.
- Trash can.
- [Narrator] Yet it's not the food that's inspiring him.
[food clanks]
- He sees that there's an opportunity
to not just create something cool
to put in a kid's lunchbox,
he's gonna give him the whole lunchbox
with everything in it.
[dramatic music]
It's all contained in one thing,
it's fun for the kids, it's easier for the parents.
Let's give them a lunch on the go.
- [Narrator] But figuring out how to put a baloney sandwich
in a box on store shelves poses serious challenges.
- They wanna add bread because obviously,
that's the first thing you need to include
with slice meats for sandwiches.
- He realizes he can't put bread in there
because bread's gonna go stale.
Anything he puts with the baloney needs
to stay fresh for two months.
- [Narrator] Designing the sandwich fillings
isn't working any better.
- They also experiment with adding fresh fruit,
adding vegetables.
The problem is fresh fruit and vegetables don't last
in that packaging.
They need stuff that's going to stay good the entire time
and healthy foods have a much shorter shelf life.
- Keep trying.
- [Narrator] Without being able to keep
the sandwich components fresh,
Drain is back to square one.
- So suddenly, this product that's supposed to be
really convenient is actually just kind of becomes a mess.
But his belief in himself
and his ideas is as strong as ever.
- So he pivots.
[dramatic music]
He says, instead of bread, let's do crackers.
- It's such an unexpected concept, not one big sandwich,
but multiple tiny little ones.
- People were skeptical to say the very least.
You are gonna turn a snack into lunch?
A kid's gonna want to make their own lunch?
Are they gonna be satisfied with a snack with everyone else
around the meeting sandwiches, really?
- [Narrator] Drain is willing to bet his career
on a deconstructed cracker sandwich.
- It can be one elegant, groundbreaking lunch product,
or it could be the failure
that sinks Oscar Mayer once and for all.
- [Narrator] In 1988, Bob Drain's team at Oscar Mayer
is gambling on an innovative idea
to revitalize the dying brand.
A ready made lunchbox with build your own mini sandwiches.
- In addition to bite-sized baloney and crackers,
they decide to finish this mini sandwich with cheese.
And of course, they could just go
with Kraft processed cheese and save costs.
[intense music]
[cracker crunches]
- [Narrator] With a green light from Kraft's executives,
the team now focuses on pinning down the perfect name
for their pioneering product.
- One of the names is On-Tray, not E-N-T-R-E-E-S.
Oh, no, no, no, no, it's On-Trays.
Like we put the food on trays.
Cracker witches.
Then the incredibly pedantic mini meals,
the incredibly literal Fun Mealz spelled with a Z
because with a Z, you know it's cool.
But the name that they ultimately land on
is a name that will reverberate through the history
of kids' lunches forever.
Plus it got a lot of attention
when I brought them to school.
- [Narrator] In 1988, Oscar Meyer launches Lunchables.
- There really isn't anything else like it on the market.
The big thing is that 50% of people who bought a Lunchable
bought them again right away.
And the thing that coming back to is convenience.
- Now, you don't even have to go to the trouble
of making a sandwich
and choosing what sides to put into the lunchbox.
All you had to do was buy 'em and hand them off.
I mean, I don't think you could ask for a better time saver.
- And you combine that with the fact
that you give kids agency.
Mommy didn't pack my lunch,
I'm making my lunch right here.
And there's a kind of unique experience
that you can create from one bite to the next.
- Lunchables disrupted the lunchbox industry
because once you've tasted that sweet Lunchable,
going back to a tuna fish sandwich
and a bag of chopped carrots is gonna be tough.
- [Narrator] But while sales of Lunchables are good,
the high production costs leaves Oscar Mayer
with a net loss of $20 million.
- Bob Drain realized that even though this product
is a huge success, it's not making money
because the packaging process,
the very thing that makes it stand out and be special
is too complicated and new and expensive
for these products to turn a profit.
And it's floated that they might just kill the product.
- [Narrator] Yet instead of giving up,
Drain pushes Kraft executives to go all in.
- Bob Drain goes to executives
and he convinces them to inject more money into the product.
He says, we got a product that people wanna buy.
Let's just figure out the logistics
so that we can make it cheaper and profitable.
- [Narrator] The company pours 30 million more dollars
into 10 new assembly lines,
but the added investment necessitates
a price hike for Lunchables.
To justify the increased price,
Drain wants to offer consumers a full lunch experience.
- Drain realizes what's the one part of a complete lunch
that's not included in the box?
The drink of course. - Embracing the creative
spirit of Lunchables, Drain bypasses the common juice box
for a unique drink that's become popular in Europe.
- Invented by Rudolph Wild in 1969 in Germany,
it was first called Capri-Sonne.
It came in lemon and orange flavors,
but what made it so incredibly distinctive
was that lightweight, futuristic looking
aluminum foil pouch.
It was easy to travel, it didn't leak as much
as the juice box did,
and they kept the contents of the package fresh
for at least one year.
- [Narrator] Bob Drain is desperate for the product
to boost sales,
but Drain's final shot at saving his creation
is an expensive gamble.
- Kraft Foods acquired the North American rights
for $155 million
and they decided to make the sweet beverage
the official juice for Lunchables.
- In 1994, Lunchables debuts with the drink,
now called Capri-Sun and sales explode.
- Every year since then, Lunchables have made more money
than the year before.
So it's quite the monster.
- So Lunchables could have easily come and gone,
but boy have they continued to innovate.
They continue to offer kids really provocative
and compelling food offering.
- [Narrator] A pizza version of Lunchables
is released in 1996
and the continued success sparks more innovations.
Everything from tacos to burgers and hot dogs.
- They actually made a color changing pizza at once,
where you had this magical color changing powder
you would put on there and it would change
like the pizza sauce to like blue and green.
It was mind blowing.
What could be any more appealing to a kid?
This is literally Disneyland in a box.
[upbeat music]
- [Narrator] By 1999 with 1.6 billion Lunchables sold,
they expand beyond lunch, creating breakfast options
with pancakes and waffles.
Today, Lunchables brings in $1.8 billion in annual sales.
- It's made its market at this point.
It's really ingrained in American culture
and it's not leaving at this point.
- When I mention Lunchables, no one's confused.
Everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about.
And even if you didn't have 'em as a kid,
you remember 'em being there.
- [Narrator] From Kraft popularizing sandwiches
with sliced cheese to the innovation of fruit snacks
and the all in one Lunchables,
these brands have redefined the very concept of lunch
- Nowadays, you go to the average grocery store
and there are numerous meal kits for kids.
So many different types of cheese slices,
so many different types of fruit snacks
for kids to indulge in.
the kids lunches of today offer a variety
of amazing flavors, textures, and culinary experiences
that they could never have had without amazing visionaries
like Louis Shalhoub, Norman Kraft and Bob Drain.
We truly dine at the snack table
on the shoulders of giants.
[triumphant music]
I'd like to take this opportunity
to apologize to my dentist.
[triumphant music]