Canadian Names And Trade-Marks: The Start Of A New Series

McCain Foods: In 1957, Wallace and Harrison McCain founded a frozen food business, McCain Foods Limited (McCain Foods), in the heart of potato-growing New Brunswick, near Florenceville. Today, McCain Foods’ multi-billion dollar business is a worldwide leader in frozen food products, particularly frozen French fries. Striving to place processing facilities near where the produce is grown, the company has over 50 plants on six continents. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the technology for freezing food was just being developed. The McCains encountered many challenges to building their business, including finding the right kinds of potatoes to freeze, and dealing with equipment problems for the manufacturing process. However, timing was in their favor as society was undergoing drastic changes: the Canadian population was booming as a result of both birth rate and immigration, an increasing number of women were entering the work force, and fast food chains such as McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken were expanding. Freezers were also becoming commonplace, and this contributed to the growing demand for frozen French fries and other frozen foods. An aspect of the early success of the business was the promotion of the trade-mark McCain’s into what many Maritimers to this day refer to as “Upper Canada” (Ontario and Quebec), via its associated trucking business. Finished potato products for the retail market were transported the long distance from New Brunswick to markets in Central Canada in branded vehicles which displayed the emerging brand name to thousands of motorists sharing the highways. Such indirect marketing was ubiquitous and had the even greater virtue of being “free”. After only a decade, McCain Foods met with enough success in Canada to decide in 1967 to expand to the United Kingdom. Again, although there were challenges, McCain Foods fared so well that many Brits, including Prince Charles, have mistakenly thought that McCain Foods is a British company. From Britain, McCain Foods expanded into continental Europe. In 1969 it started exporting to the United States, and operated its first plant in Maine in 1975. In the early 1970s, McCain Foods established itself in Australia. It now operates in several other countries, including South Africa, Argentina, China and India. For McCain’s fiftieth anniversary, the company published a book detailing the growth of the company into a worldwide enterprise called “From the ground up: the first fifty years of McCain Foods”. For further information, follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/nuomn8m Summary by: Cheryl Cheung