- [Narrator] It is the nation's number one condiment
with an astonishing $3 billion worth sold every year.
- You cannot overstate
how significant the success of mayonnaise is.
- [Narrator] Today, mayonnaise touches nearly every corner
of the American kitchen.
- Think about how many dressings, and dips,
and salads that we owe to mayonnaise.
- [Narrator] But that wasn't always the case.
- It's crazy to think that there was a time
where mayo wasn't the all-purpose condiment
that we think of today
- [Narrator] Until a small-time deli owner...
- You just wanna buy my mayonnaise?
- [Narrator] Introduces Mayo to the masses.
- He distinguishes it with a blue ribbon.
- [Narrator] To build a brand
that dominates as the number one mayonnaise in the world.
- Hellmann's didn't just win the category.
Like, it created it.
- [Narrator] And lays the foundation
for an entirely new industry.
- There weren't bottled salad dressings, so people are like,
"Oh, I'll put some mayonnaise on this salad."
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] But it will take a veterinarian
with a restaurant dream.
- Now that's something people will come back for.
[Lena chuckling]
- He calls this place The Wish-Bone.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] And an Alaskan plumber.
- Sauce of the steak is good, Steve.
- So they start calling it after that little ranch
in a hidden valley.
- [Narrator] To turn unlikely creations.
- He's introduced America to Italian dressing.
- [Narrator] Into American staples.
- Ranch, that's a distinctly American flavor.
- [Narrator] Building a market
worth more than $3 1/2 billion.
- Today, nearly 270 million Americans
say they use bottled salad dressing.
- It's the only thing that makes salad tolerable.
- They've made our world a much more flavorful place.
[rock music]
[compelling music]
[pensive music]
- [Narrator] It's the late 1800s,
the height of the Gilded Age.
The number of millionaires in the country
has exploded from 50 to 4,000 in a single generation.
And with that wealth comes an appetite for new luxuries.
- Back then, a lot of wealthy Americans
were traveling more frequently to Europe
and really getting to taste the finer things in life,
and a lot of that was based around French cuisine.
- Some French food really defines what it means
to have like fancy food in America at this point.
And with that comes all these new ingredients,
and preparation techniques, and recipes.
- [Narrator] Soon, a delicate French sauce
begins appearing on menus
of the country's finest restaurants.
- It is an emulsion of raw egg yolks and oil.
And if you continue to whisk it and whip it together,
the oil and the egg yolk slowly combine
into this beautiful creamy white sauce
that even stays creamy at room temperature,
and that becomes the foundation
of what we know as mayonnaise.
[suspenseful music]
- [Jason] The earliest usage of mayonnaise
would've been to dress what we'd call salads today,
dressing cold meats, so like chicken or poached lobster.
- Delmonico's, I think as early as 1838, in New York City,
served a chicken mayonnaise or a mayonnaise of lobster.
- [Adam] At the iconic Waldorf Astoria Hotel,
they begin making a salad,
taking leftover cold chicken
and combining it with great apples, sometimes walnuts,
binding it with mayonnaise, serving it with crisp lettuce,
and suddenly the Waldorf salad is born.
- [Narrator] Yet beyond these gilded dining rooms,
most Americans have never heard of mayonnaise.
- [David] Heinz was the ketchup that you might have known.
French's was the mustard that you might have known.
There wasn't a brand that was attached to mayonnaise.
- [Narrator] By the early 20th century,
one place an average American
may unknowingly taste mayonnaise
is at a European-style delicatessen.
- [Adam] Eventually, mayonnaise finds its way
into immigrant enclaves throughout New York.
German and Jewish delis began using it
in the preparation of things like chicken salads,
egg salads, white fish salads.
- [Narrator] On Manhattan's Upper West Side,
one deli owner makes fresh mayonnaise
for his salads by hand daily.
- He's a German immigrant who has a background in food,
and this obsession
with really, really high-quality products.
- His mayonnaise recipe
is based on one that's been passed down
through his wife's family of deli owners.
But he has made a few adjustments,
adapting the acidity and adding a few extra spices.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] But the delicatessen is struggling,
and he's not sure how much longer it will survive.
- [Brooke] The competition is steep
because every other deli is selling his exact same menu.
They have cured meats, pickled vegetables,
and composed salads.
- [Adam] After six years of incredibly long, exhaustive
hours, a doctor ultimately told him
he needed to step away from the business
or risk dying early.
So he has the dilemma,
"What can I create to both make my deli stand out
without killing me in the process?"
[suspenseful music]
- [Customer] How do you make your mayonnaise?
[compelling music]
- It's on us. - [Customer] Thank you.
[compelling music]
- What was all that?
- She thought she might try making mayonnaise at home.
Changed her mind when she heard what went into it.
- [David] Making mayonnaise, it's a little bit of a hassle.
- [Jason] Back then, this all had to be done by hand.
You know, you have to dribble this oil
into these eggs very carefully.
And if you break the emulsion,
you know, things become a mess.
- He realizes everyone is selling salads,
but the reason they love his salads
is because they're dressed with his mayonnaise.
He figures, "Why don't I package this,
so people can use it at home?"
- [Narrator] His name is Richard Hellmann.
Today, his name and iconic Blue Ribbon
are on shelves in 65 countries,
with 1,000 bottles sold every single minute,
dominating the top spot in a $13.5 billion market.
[suspenseful music]
He'll transform mayonnaise from a simple salad dressing
into a product that outsells ketchup, mustard, and salsa
as the number one condiment in America.
[suspenseful music]
But in 1912, no one has thought
to sell the little known dressing on its own,
until Hellmann sees its potential
beyond just the deli salads he makes.
- [Rutledge] So, in the early 20th century,
that's really where we got the birth
of the green salads that we know today.
- [Jason] But they were kind of boring.
- [Rutledge] So, people really start looking for a way
to dress these green salads up a bit.
[pensive music]
- Americans are making all of their salad dressings at home.
- [Jason] And the idea of a dressing is really just an oil
or an oil and vinegarette.
- [Rutledge] There weren't these bottled salad dressings back
then, so Hellmann thinks that maybe Americans
will love putting mayonnaise on a green salad.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] Hellmann starts offering small portions
to customers for a nickel.
- [Kate] Now, it's so obvious to buy mayonnaise at the store,
but at the time,
the idea of buying mayonnaise was just unheard of.
- So at first, everything goes well.
People are coming in just to buy his mayo,
but there's a serious kink in his plan.
[suspenseful music]
[container clattering]
- This dressing you sold me spoiled in two days.
[suspenseful music]
- [Jason] Back then, people weren't familiar with
mayonnaise, so they didn't really know how to keep it,
how long it could be kept out.
- It is meant to be eaten fresh.
- [Sarah] Mayonnaise is not the easiest thing to keep long-term.
- [Rutledge] The first electric refrigerator
hasn't even been invented at this point.
It's gonna be decades
before most Americans even understand what that is.
- [Adam] Unfortunately, you have to remember,
mayonnaise is largely comprised of raw egg yolk,
salmonella's best friend.
It's a perfect breeding ground for food poisoning.
- Again, my apologies.
If there's anything I can do to...
[suspenseful music]
- [Brooke] In a deli market that's as saturated as New York
City, selling a customer some mayonnaise that spoiled
could be a disaster for him.
One bad review could sink Hellmann.
- [Adam] So he needs to create a shelf-stable
mayonnaise, and fast.
[suspenseful music]
[pensive music]
[lively band music]
- [Narrator] In 1912,
Richard Hellmann refuses to give up
on selling his mayonnaise dressing to customers.
- [Jason] Hellmann realizes pretty quickly, of he wants to
succeed, he's gotta figure out a way
to make his mayonnaise last longer.
It's gonna have to be able to sit on shelves days,
or even weeks.
- [Narrator] But Hellmann is not the first person
to face a similar problem.
[suspenseful music]
Six years earlier,
Henry Heinz developed a ketchup recipe
using only extra sugar, salt, and vinegar as preservatives,
which allowed his glass bottled ketchup
to dominate the market.
[suspenseful music]
- So, Hellmann realizes,
"Hey, I can use a little bit of that vinegar,
a little bit more of that salt,
a little bit more of that sugar in my mayonnaise
to add not only a tanginess that is kind of delicious,
but will add a sort of preservative function."
- The whole reason that people love his mayonnaise
is the taste.
He spends a lot of time trying to figure out the ratio,
so that it's not too sweet and not too vinegary.
[pensive music]
- [Hellmann] Tell me straight.
[pensive music]
- When did you make this?
- A week ago.
Tastes off?
- It tastes...
[suspenseful music]
Amazing.
[pensive music]
- In essence, by using more egg yolks,
more vinegar, more sugar,
he's making a higher-quality product
with a wonderful flavor that lasts longer.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] But higher quality means a higher price.
- So not wanting to alienate any of his customer
that's already buying and using it quickly,
he decides, "Why don't I sell both versions?"
- [Adam] He's got his original recipe,
which doesn't last quite as long,
and he has this other one that is a bit more expensive,
but has greater shelf stability.
Now, if Hellmann is selling two kinds of mayonnaise,
which are both white stuff in a jar,
how does he distinguish
between the sort of lower-quality mayonnaise
and the more expensive version?
[pensive music]
He distinguishes it...
With a blue ribbon.
[pensive music]
- [Rutledge] That little blue ribbon
gave people this feeling of first prize at the county fair,
and that one little thing is a symbol for his mayonnaise
for more than 100 years.
- People end up liking the new blue ribbon product
even more than the original mayonnaise.
So pretty soon,
Hellmann just stops making the original mayonnaise product.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] After years struggling
to make a name for himself with his deli,
Hellmann sees a path for his future.
[compelling music]
- [Adam] In May of 1914,
he trademarks the name Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise.
He sells the deli,
opens a factory West 126th Street in Harlem
to start manufacturing his mayonnaise in bulk.
- [Narrator] By the 1920s,
Hellmann's is available along the East Coast,
in the Midwest, and even across the border in Toronto.
[suspenseful music]
- [Jason] For so many Americans,
Hellmann's is their first exposure to mayonnaise.
It's the first time they're tasting it,
but they're trying to figure out,
"Well, what do I do with this?"
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] Hellmann soon starts pushing his mayonnaise
beyond salads.
- [David] You can use this not only on chicken salad,
but maybe you could use it on warm foods,
use it in a sauce, put it in a chocolate cake,
- [Jason] And then comes the piece de resistance.
You can just spread it on your sandwich.
[compelling music]
- [Adam] And it only further serves
to increase Hellmann's popularity.
But soon, there are many other mayonnaises on the market
looking for a piece of the pie.
[compelling music]
- [David] You have Schlorer's in Pennsylvania and Philly,
which is slightly more vinegary or tangy sauce.
You have Duke's in the South,
which was started by a woman in South Carolina.
- [Narrator] While these brands remain quite regional,
in 1926, a far more serious challenger emerges:
Best Foods Mayonnaise.
- [Erin] In the 1920s,
Best Foods has been spreading throughout California,
and it's become the dominant brand
along the whole West Coast.
[pensive music]
- [Narrator] And it isn't the recipe
that has Hellmann worried.
It's the company behind it.
- [David] Best Foods is backed by Post, the cereal maker,
seller of grape nuts among other cereals.
- By the 1920s, Postum has taken on a strategy
of aggressively acquiring other food brands,
like Maxwell House, like Jell-O,
and now Best Foods Mayonnaise,
which, with a distributor like Postum,
is suddenly a serious threat to Hellmann's.
- [Narrator] Hellmann has just sunk everything
into a new factory in San Francisco,
but Best Foods is now conquering the West
before production even starts.
[pensive music]
- [Rutledge] Hellmann's realizes
he doesn't have anywhere near the money
and strength that Postum does.
So, if he's gonna try to stay on top of the game,
he's gonna have to do something really drastic.
He knows he needs to cut a deal.
- Mr. Hellmann, I'll be direct.
Postum intends to own the mayonnaise market.
[pensive music]
- I'll sell. [container clattering]
- [Rutledge] But he does have one condition.
- You can change your other mayonnaise recipes,
thin them, cheapen them, whatever you want to do,
[pensive music]
but not the one that bears my name.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] In August of 1927,
Richard Hellmann sells his brand to Postum
for an undisclosed amount.
- [Erin] Postum agrees that they're going to keep
the Hellmann name, the Blue Ribbon branding,
and most importantly,
the recipe that Hellmann himself perfected.
- [Narrator] But Postum also chooses
to retain Best Foods' name,
recognizing the brand loyalty built along the Pacific,
- [David] The company will sell Best Foods west of the Rockies
and Hellmann's east of the Rockies,
and this is a split that prevails to this day.
- [Rutledge] If you look at Best Foods' mayonnaise today,
it's got the Hellmann's blue ribbon on it.
And when you open them up side by side and taste them,
guess what?
It's the same.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] Today, under the global giant Unilever,
Hellmann's and Best control over half
of the entire American mayonnaise market.
Together, they rake in more than $3.5 billion a year.
[compelling music]
- [Erin] Hellmann takes his fortune,
and he finally gets the rest
that a doctor ordered 20 years ago.
He retires a philanthropist and dies at the age of 94.
- [Jason] Look, you cannot overstate
how significant the success of Hellmann's mayonnaise is.
This brand is in your fridge, it's in your parents' fridge,
it's in your grandparents' fridge.
Hellmann's didn't just win the category.
Like, it created it.
There are very few food brands
that ever achieve that level of cultural saturation.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] Over the next two decades,
as mayonnaise settles in as an all-purpose condiment,
salad consumption in America more than triples.
Yet even by the late 1940s,
dedicated dressing options beyond mayonnaise
remain practically non-existent.
- [Kate] Most Americans, after World War II,
are eating salad very, very simply,
where they're maybe throwing some mayonnaise on there,
maybe a little bit of oil and vinegar,
or Russian dressing,
which is literally just mayo and ketchup.
- Today, nearly 270 million Americans
use bottled salad dressing.
But back in the day,
for those who want a more creative salad dressing,
they really have to rely on restaurants.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] In 1948,
an Italian American named Phillip Sollomi
is sinking all his savings into a restaurant.
- Maybe less salt.
[pensive music]
- [Rutledge] Phillip Sollomi was in veterinarian school.
To make money, he started working at a restaurant
called the Brooklyn Spaghetti House.
But, then he got drafted to serve in World War II.
- [Narrator] After serving in the war,
he returns with a new focus.
- [Rutledge] He realizes he actually likes working more with
people than he does with animals,
and he starts dreaming
about owning his own restaurant one day.
[pensive music]
- [Adam] While driving around Kansas City, 1948,
he sees a beautiful Victorian home.
He decides he's going to turn that residence
into a restaurant.
- [Narrator] Sollomi is not a cook,
so he brings on his mother, Lena, as his chef.
- Now, that's something people will come back for.
[Lena chuckling]
- [Narrator] And he doesn't know it yet,
but the restaurant name he chooses
will soon become a household name.
- [Jason] So, Sollomi decides to make fried chicken
the star dish of his new restaurant.
And to get people really in for it,
he's gonna make sure you know
that fried chicken is what it's all about.
- [Phillip] With chicken this good...
- [Jason] He calls this place.
- How about...
[suspenseful music]
Wish-Bone?
[rock music]
- [Narrator] But Sollomi's legacy won't be a restaurant.
It will be a dressing that sits in millions of homes
across America,
becoming the most popular in the country,
one that will spawn an iconic brand
with now dozens of varieties,
selling over 50 million bottles a month
and generating nearly $1/4 billion a year,
helping launch an all new condiment category
that's now an institution in supermarkets
across the country.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] In 1948, Phillip Sollomi launches his dream
restaurant, the Wish-Bone,
proudly advertising its fried chicken dinners
right on the sign.
And the immediate response is dismal.
[pensive music]
- It's kind of wild if you think about it.
This Italian guy, born in Ohio,
comes down to the south
to open a fried chicken restaurant in Kansas City
with all these other fried chicken and barbecue places.
- At the start, he realizes,
"It's really expensive to run a restaurant,"
and he is barely making enough to even cover his expenses.
- [Narrator] Desperate to save the business,
Sollomi looks for a low-cost way to bring more people in.
- He decides he's gonna offer a free house salad
with every meal.
He remembers this really delicious salad dressing
that his mom used to make at home,
and he asks her to whip some up for his restaurant.
- [Adam] Lena Sollomi's family is from Sicily,
where a lot of the food tends to be a little bit more zesty
and spicy than in other parts of Italy,
and she's brought her salad dressing recipe with her.
- It's something she's just kind of made
for years, and years, and years.
It's not something she's written down
or followed from a cookbook.
[suspenseful music]
- [Adam] It's usually olive oil, white or balsamic vinegar,
oregano, garlic, salt, pepper,
and then the kind of clever additions
of things like capers and mustard.
- What do you call it?
- It's just...
[suspenseful music]
Italian-style.
So at the time, Italian dressing, it isn't even a thing.
No one's ever heard of it because it doesn't exist,
which is crazy when you think.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] Sollomi rolls the dice,
debuting a complementary house salad with every meal.
Topped with his mother's signature blend
that he just calls Wish-Bone Dressing.
[compelling music]
- [Adam] People love it.
It's more zesty than the traditional
sort of oil-and-vinegar dressings
that they've come across.
- [Kate] The customers were enjoying the salad,
start asking to take the dressing home themselves.
- [Narrator] Sollomi starts filling small mason jars
with extra dressing,
offering them for sale to his customers.
- [Adam] Over the next couple weeks,
the business really starts to pick up,
with people coming in almost exclusively for the dressing.
- [Kate] Sollomi starts thinking, "Okay,
maybe this salad dressing could be a bigger enterprise."
- [Brooke] But it's one thing to make a dressing at your
restaurant and quite another
to make one that you can sell in a grocery store.
He's just starting to break even
and, by no means, has the money
to start another side business.
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, 3,000 miles away,
one man is trying to feed a hungry work crew
in the Alaskan wilderness.
- Steve Henson is this big, muscular cowboy from Nebraska.
He's survived the Depression,
hopped trains west at the age of 16
in the search of a better fortune,
eventually finds his way in Alaska,
getting work as a plumbing contractor.
And these were not just like,
"I gotta fix someone's toilet."
These were major military contracts.
Very lucrative, but very hard work.
- [Kate] Henson ends up cooking
for the guys that he works with a lot,
and he realizes pretty quickly that when you're in Alaska,
a lot of the food you're getting has been frozen
or it's coming from a place that's super far away.
And by the time it gets to you, it's not in its top quality.
- Steaks are burning.
[compelling music]
- Fresh produce would go bad quickly, meat would be tough.
You had to cook it, maybe cook it too much.
- [Adam] And Henson always sort of fancied himself
a little bit of campfire cook,
and he started making a sauce to serve on steak
for his work crews.
- [Narrator] But with limited ingredients,
Henson works with what he's got.
- [Jason] He's got salt and pepper.
He's got dried herbs like parsley, onion, and garlic.
He's got mayo, and he's got a little bit of buttermilk.
- Alaskans were kind of known for their love of buttermilk.
It's normally delivered frozen,
especially in the wintertime.
- [Jason] And he kind of mixes that all together.
He's just kind of winging it, right,
and he just keeps tweaking it
until he gets something that he thinks is gonna be like,
"Oh, that's a tasty, creamy sauce."
- [Narrator] Henson doesn't know it,
but he's just created
the number one dressing flavor in America today.
It will give rise to a brand
that rakes in nearly $500 million a year,
used by more than 72 million Americans every single month.
The distinctive flavor will break out beyond salads,
becoming an everything sauce and seasoning,
powering a $1.2 billion industry all on its own.
- [Jason] He wasn't sitting down
to try to create the next big thing.
- Sauce of the steak is good, Steve.
- [Jason] He didn't have these global ambitions
of building an empire of dressing.
He was just trying to make his food a little tastier.
That was it.
- [Colleague] What is it?
- I don't know.
- [Jason] Heck, he hasn't even given it a name.
- Buttermilk sauce?
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] It is been three years
since Sollomi opened his restaurant, The Wish-Bone,
and he's taken the small leap
of offering his Italian-style dressing around town.
- [Adam] He starts filling whiskey bottles full of the
dressing and selling them outside the restaurant
at other stores in Kansas City.
He's been using 50-gallon drums,
pouring in huge bags of oil, and vinegar, and spices.
- [Austin] People are buying his dressing
and telling him how much they love
using his product at home.
And he realizes it's completely different
than anything out there on the market.
- [Narrator] By the early '50s,
only one national brand
has tried to make bottled salad dressing
a supermarket category.
Kraft.
- In 1933, Kraft had a brilliant idea,
which is to come up with a product that's like mayonnaise,
but doesn't use eggs.
The result is Miracle Whip.
- [Narrator] Kraft sells Miracle Whip as a salad dressing
and then adds one additional style to their lineup.
- Kraft also released a bottled French dressing
in the 1930s,
which was basically just a simple vinegarette
with a little paprika for color.
By the 1950s, they crank it up just a little bit
by introducing a sweeter version and a creamier version.
But really, that's it.
[pensive music]
- [Narrator] But now, as Americans dine out
three times more than before the war,
they taste dressings they can't find in stores.
- [Chirag] So, it's definitely an opportunity for
someone to bring new flavors
of restaurant-quality salad dressing
to supermarket shelves.
- [Brooke] Sollomi now dreams of expanding
beyond the local market,
but that requires scaling up,
and that's something that's extremely costly.
- Sollomi needs money,
and it's tricky 'cause he only really knows one way
to get an influx of cash.
- [Kate] So, he sells his restaurants
and decides to put all of his energy
into the Italian dressing.
- [Chirag] The restaurant is a proven success.
And now, to liquidate that in all his life savings
to go into only selling salad dressing,
I mean, this is a terrifying gamble.
- This is what Kraft uses for their French dressing.
Better control for pouring.
[pensive music]
- It's one thing for Sollomi to sell a jar of his dressing
to customers who've just enjoyed it in his restaurant.
But his new challenge
is to sell it to people who have never tasted it
or even heard of Italian dressing,
and so this is gonna mean
that branding plays a really big role.
- They all look the same.
[pensive music]
- [Jason] You go to a grocery store today,
and there are all kinds of shapes of containers,
bottles, jars.
But back then, you had standard shapes.
You did have a few standouts.
You had like the Heinz ketchup bottle,
the trademark Coca-Cola soda bottle,
but there was no iconic salad dressing bottle.
- [Brooke] He wants something that's both practical,
that's easy to pour, shake, and mix.
- [Phillip] What if we...
- [Brooke] But he also wants something that will make people
stop and wonder what his product is.
- He designed this glass bottle that is very...
A very striking packaging compared to their competitors.
- [Kate] It has this longer neck
that allows for a more controlled pour.
- I'll have a glass maker draw something up.
- [Rutledge] The bottle is shaped
like a Wish-Bone from a chicken,
which is wild because we don't associate
a salad dressing with chicken.
But now, we have that bottle shape all because of the name.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] In late 1952,
Sollomi releases Wish-Bone Italian-Style Dressing
in cities across the Midwest at 39 cents a bottle.
- [Jason] Sollomi is investing all of his profits
to sort of ramp up production,
so he can grow beyond just his small regional distribution
that he's currently got.
- [Adam] I don't think people really understand how hard it is
to recreate a recipe that came from your home kitchen
into something mass-produced.
It's the sort of hard work and the ingenuity
that goes into many of the brands that have made America.
- [Narrator] But just as he prepares his national push,
competition strikes back.
- [Jason] So, just like that, Sollomi gets a gut punch.
Kraft releases their own version
of Italian-style dressing at 29 cents a bottle.
- [Natalia] Of course, Kraft has access to these economies of
scale that he just doesn't.
Nobody's gonna buy Wish-Bone for 39 cents
when they can get effectively the same thing
10 cents cheaper.
- [Chirag] I mean, it must have been a slap in the
face for Sollomi.
He's the one who introduced America to Italian dressing.
He created it.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, by the late '50s,
after years of backbreaking labor in Alaska,
Steve Henson has made his way south.
- [Adam] He and his lovely wife, Gail,
decided to buy a 120-acre property
in the area surrounding Santa Barbara, California.
And they opened it as a dude ranch.
[country music]
- A dude ranch is a place where people can go vacation
and live the cowboy life for a couple days
without really having to get their hands dirty.
- [Chirag] They're really charming, but dude ranches,
they're a risky financial endeavor 'cause they often fail.
They require a ton of land, they're seasonal,
and the cost to operate them are so high.
- [Austin] Plus, there's a lot fewer people taking these local
trips to so-called dude ranches when you've got air travel.
You can now go to far more distant,
far more exotic locales.
- [Adam] Within roughly a year,
Steve's business model really wasn't working.
- Henson is blowing through all the money he made in Alaska,
and he's wondering if he made a huge mistake.
- [Jason] Henson, he grew up in the Depression.
He's worked hard labor in Alaska.
He's not the type to give up easily.
So, he really starts looking at everything he can do
to make sure his guests are gonna want to come back,
whether it's the activities that he's offering
or the food he's serving.
- Is something wrong with the salad dressing?
- No, no.
Just thought your buttermilk sauce was better.
- [Narrator] Since opening the dude ranch,
Henson serves the sauce he invented in Alaska
with every meal.
- [Erin] At the ranch, it's going on everything.
It's going on chicken, it's going on vegetables, steaks,
and people really like it.
- [Chirag] I mean, people even start putting it on salad,
but I can't imagine Henson ever imagined
that it would be the sauce that would save his business.
- [Jason] You know what the name of this dude ranch is?
- She said she'd come back to Hidden Valley Ranch
just for more of that.
[compelling music]
- [Jason] Hidden Valley Ranch.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] After selling his Wish-Bone restaurant
to go all in on salad dressing,
Sollomi is struggling to compete
against Kraft's Italian-style option.
- Customers are walking into the grocery store,
and there's one brand that they recognize that's cheaper
and one brand that they don't recognize
that's more expensive.
- [Narrator] But Sollomi trusts his recipe,
so he makes a bold move.
[pensive music]
- Sollomi decides to promote Wish-Bone Dressing
by selling it for one penny a bottle.
- [Kate] Sollomi's limited period of time
penny promotion is a huge risk
because he's losing money
on every single salad dressing that he sells.
It's actually the more dressing he sells,
the more money he loses.
- [Adam] But he's willing to take such a big hit financially
on every single bottle sold
because he knows that with one taste of his dressing,
he's gonna get people hooked
and that they're gonna realize
that they have a better product on their hands.
- [Kate] This works.
Like, people know about Wish-Bone Italian salad dressing
because of this huge advertising campaign.
- [Narrator] By 1957,
Wish-Bone Italian Dressing is available nationwide,
and the company is bringing in nearly $10 million in sales.
- So, at this point,
you'd think a guy like Sollomi would be content.
I mean, just a couple years before this,
he was just running a restaurant.
But he continues to put all of his profits
back into his business.
- Sollomi expands beyond Italian.
He starts actually making flavors,
just like Kraft is making, like French and Russian dressing.
There's just one problem.
[suspenseful music]
- Our French is not catching on.
- And the Russian?
[pensive music]
- These new flavors are struggling
to really break through.
[pensive music]
- Are our Italians selling stronger than ever, though?
- And while Wish-Bone is really fighting to be the name
that America associates with Italian dressing,
they just don't have deep-enough pockets
to front this battle.
They might not survive much longer.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, Henson's buttermilk sauce
continues to gain fans.
- [Rutledge] So people really start raving about Henson's
sauce and since it came from his ranch,
they start calling it ranch dressing.
- [Narrator] But the actual Hidden Valley Ranch is failing.
[suspenseful music]
- By the time we pay staff, there's hardly anything left.
[pensive music]
- [Brooke] To help generate more income,
they opened up the restaurant to non-staying guests
and they gave them the opportunity to buy the dressing
and take it home with them.
- [Jason] His wife would also give away little mason jars
with the dressing in it to overnight guests
as like a little souvenir.
- But whether or not this pays off
depends on if people are actually coming back.
These jars, they're cute,
but they're just another cost being added
to a long list of expenses.
[pensive music]
- We're giving away more dressing than we're selling.
- We could try selling it in town.
- [Adam] Creamy dressings require bottling, sterilization,
refrigeration, very expensive process.
- It's not that easy.
- [Rutledge] But, Steve Henson was a hustler.
He was an entrepreneur
and he was not the kind of guy that was just gonna give up.
He was always looking for a way
to get through to the other side.
- Steve, could you go make up another jar of dressing?
- [Jason] So, one day, they have some overnight guests,
and they don't have any of their pre-prepped
little dressing jars,
and they don't even have all their ingredients.
- We don't have any buttermilk.
Delivery is not till this afternoon.
- [Jason] So, Henson gets this idea.
- Give me a second.
[pensive music]
- [Jason] Got a little Dixie cup,
he gets his dried ingredients, right,
he puts all those dried ingredients in there.
- This is all the seasoning.
- [Jason] And he puts a little note in there
with the amount of mayo and buttermilk that you need to add
to create the dressing.
- Just add a cup of buttermilk and 1/4 cup of mayo.
[suspenseful music]
- [Jason] And then, a light bulb goes off.
- You know,
[pensive music]
maybe we can sell it after all.
- [Jason] The thing that makes this hard to distribute,
hard to sell, are the buttermilk and the mayonnaise.
- [Adam] Steve realizes that there is something here.
I can sell the dry components.
- [Narrator] Henson begins packaging his dressing mix
in foil-lined waterproof envelopes.
- [Kate] People have instructions to add this much
buttermilk, add this much mayonnaise,
and they can make their own ranch dressing.
- [Rutledge] So, this is genius, right?
There's no bottling costs, there's no refrigeration issues,
and the most expensive parts about it
are the buttermilk and the mayonnaise.
So, now,
there's an opportunity for a really nice profit margin.
- [Narrator] Henson soon starts selling his packets
for 75 cents a piece via mail order.
- [Jason] But I still don't think he's thinking,
"Oh, this is gonna be this next big thing."
And he's probably thinking like, "Look,
this is gonna be a great little promotion
to get people to come to my Hidden Valley Dude Ranch."
- [Narrator] While Henson is still decades away
from making ranch an American obsession,
by 1957, the salad dressing market has nearly tripled,
yet Kraft remains on top,
with Wish-Bone a distant second.
[pensive music]
- [Austin] This must have been very painful for Sollomi.
He's disappointed, he thinks that he's got the best,
and Americans deserve the best.
[pensive music]
- [Narrator] Out of moves,
Sollomi agrees to meet with a possible investor.
- [Investor] I've been following Wish-Bone for a while.
- [Jason] They are a power player
that has been around for over 50 years.
- [Adam] They see that dressing is a massive segment,
and they want to compete with the likes of Kraft.
- A tea company?
You sure it's a fit?
[pensive music]
- We're not just a tea company, Mr. Sollomi.
We're Lipton.
[pensive music]
[lively band music]
- [Narrator] In 1957, America's largest tea company, Lipton,
offers to buy the Wish-Bone Salad Dressing Company.
- Lipton tells Sollomi, "We're willing to pay you
between three and $4 million for this."
And this is not that long
after this guy was just running a restaurant in Kansas City.
- Phillip Sollomi agrees to stay on
to make sure that the Wish-Bone dressing he created
is still the dressing that the public will receive.
- [Kate] But Sollomi only stays on the board for about a year
before he decides he's not quite cut out for corporate life.
So, he happily retires to Arizona a millionaire.
- [Narrator] Over the next decade,
Lipton markets Wish-Bone heavily,
especially its signature Italian.
- They're marketing it as a marinade for meat,
you can brush it on garlic bread, like pasta salad.
It's not just a dressing that you put on lettuce.
And Americans love a multitasker.
- [Adam] So much so that by 1972,
Italian dressing overtakes French
as the most popular dressing in America.
- [Kate] And Wish-Bone ultimately wins out
with the top Italian dressing.
- [Narrator] At the time Italian becomes number one
in America,
Steve Henson has spent 15 years
selling his Hidden Valley Ranch mixes.
- So by the late '60s, the dude ranch is closed.
It's just now serving his offices
for the dressing business.
- [Adam] He has a factory nearby in San Jose, California
that's manufacturing 35,000 packets of ranch dressing
every eight hours.
- [Narrator] They now fulfill mail orders
from across the country
and have even landed in grocery stores
in a handful of states.
- It's so hard to, today,
imagine a world where you cannot find
3,000 different varieties of ranch dressing
all across your supermarket shelves.
It's wild to think that you had to go and get a packet
and mix it yourself.
- But Henson, he's getting overwhelmed at this point.
I think he thought the dude ranch was probably gonna be like
his sort of laid-back cowboy lifestyle.
But he's trying to keep up with this dressing business,
so he's trying to figure out an exit strategy.
[suspenseful music]
- [Adam] And then Steve Henson catches the eye of another
company that is looking to diversify their portfolio
into the world of food.
[upbeat music]
- Imagine your ranch mix
in every grocery aisle in the country.
- Look, why is a bleach company looking at salad dressing?
- [Jason] It sounds like a punchline, but it's
totally true.
[pensive music]
- That's the point.
We don't want to be just bleach anymore.
- [Jason] Clorox, the bleach company,
they wanna get into food.
[pensive music]
- [Adam] Clorox makes Steve Henson an offer
for 203,000 shares of Clorox,
which, at that point, are valued at $8 million,
$77 million in today's money.
- [Jason] So, Steve Henson finally gets his dream.
He retires a millionaire
and lives out the rest of his days
splitting time between sunny Southern California
and vacations in Costa Rica.
His son, Nolan,
he continues on with the Hidden Valley business.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] Over the next decade,
Clorox puts Hidden Valley Ranch packets
into stores nationwide.
Then, in 1984,
Clorox scientists cracked the code Henson never could.
- Well, once it's bottled and sealed,
it'll stay fresh on the shelf for months.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] Bottled ranch.
- Foil packets that people need to add ingredients to
just can't compete with the ease of opening a bottle.
- [Narrator] But the ultimate boost to Hidden Valley Ranch
will come two years later.
- Ranch is still a fairly unknown flavor,
so what's it gonna take?
A huge marketing campaign?
Nope.
[upbeat music]
- [Adam] In 1986, leading snack chip brand Doritos
changes the trajectory of ranch as we know it forever
by launching a chip with a brand-new flavor,
Cool Ranch Doritos.
- Cool Ranch Doritos are my all-time favorite chips.
I'll eat several bags, I will admit.
Probably too many bags.
- [Narrator] Cool Ranch Doritos turns ranch flavor
into a nationwide sensation overnight.
- [Rutledge] Next thing you know,
you got Wish-Bone Ranch Dressing,
you got Kraft Ranch Dressing.
Everybody wants in on it.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] Today, ranch has dethroned Italian
as America's favorite dressing.
Ranch products now rake in
a staggering $1.2 billion annually.
- [Adam] The other popular dressings were called Russian,
Italian, French.
But ranch? That's a distinctly American flavor.
- [Narrator] Hidden Valley remains the king of ranch
with 72 million Americans using a bottle each month.
- [Jason] Hidden Valley Ranch comes in like all
sorts of flavors now.
You've got things like Jalapeno, Pickle, Nashville Hot.
You've got dips, you've got bottled seasonings.
I mean, there's even a Hidden Valley Ranch ice cream.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] But none of this happens
without the brand that taught Americans
to crave Boulder flavors.
- [Jason] So now, we have so many flavors of dressing,
and this is really all thanks to Wish-Bone
and their relentless push to compete with Kraft.
- [Narrator] Wish-Bone now sells over $200 million
in dressing each year.
Yet across all bottled condiments,
Hellmann's still dominates,
owning close to 50%
of the nearly $3 billion American mayonnaise industry.
- [Adam] Think about how many sauces, and dips,
and salads that we owe to Hellmann's.
Where would we be?
It is the mayo that binds us.
- [Jason] They've made our world a much more flavorful place.
These brands, they really are dressed for success.
[compelling music]