Who founded the bakery, Pepperidge Farm?”
Article: Naturally Pepperidge: Pepperidge Farm’s new $72 million bakery in Bloomfield, Conn., not only provided much-needed capacity to its core market in the Northeast, but it also improved the consistency and shelf life to its bakery products. Article from: Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery Article date: February 1, 2004 Author: Malovany, Dan Sitting on 41 acres of land in a New England industrial park, the outside of the new 265,000-sq.-ft. bakery in Bloomfield, Conn. looks distinctively Pepperidge Farm, with a white pre-cast concrete facade set off by signature-painted stripes in rustic red and farmhouse orange. At the front of the bakery stands a Pepperidge Tree, a tradition that dates back to the company’s early days. As legend has it, founder Margaret Rudkin used to plant a tree in front of every new bakery that she built from the time she founded Pepperidge Farm in 1937 until Campbell Soup purchased it in 1961.
Pepperidge Farm founder Margaret Rudkin was one of the great business leaders of her time. She was born Margaret Fogarty in New York City in 1897, the oldest of five children in a second-generation Irish family. A striking young woman with bright red hair and green eyes, Margaret graduated valedictorian of her high school class, and then spent nine years working in New York before marrying Wall Street Broker Henry Rudkin in 1923. Fourteen years later, Margaret was a 40-year-old-mother of three young sons, living in Fairfield, Connecticut on a beautiful property called Pepperidge Farm—named for an ancient Pepperidge tree that grew there. The Rudkins had moved into Pepperidge Farm in 1929—the same year as the great Stock Market Crash. The Rudkins faced many challenges during the Great Depression—but as parents, one of the most difficult challenges was dealing with the severe allergies and asthma of their youngest son, whose condition made him unable to eat most commercially processed foo
