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Mabel White Holmes,
jiffy's mastermind
would taste great and be so easy that a man couki make it?"’ says Howdy S. Holmes, 58,
company president. "The whole idea was to provide a service to homemakers."'
Initially, Mabel puzzled over what to call her new product. Inspiration struck while she
was behind the wheel of a car on a tnp with her husband, Howard. She nearly wrecked in
her excitement, Howdy says.
“My grandma remembered that when she was a small child, the lady helping in the
kitchen would say, "Mabel, you run and tell your daddy that those biscuits will be ready
in a jiffy.’”
The first boxes of 40-ounce Jiffy all-purpose baking mix cost 28 cents —and
sold like the hotcakes they made. Homemakers spread the word about the time
saving mix and to this day, the company relies on word-of-mouth promotion. The
savings in advertising is reflected in the $1.49 price on the 4()-ounce box and the
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* Making
Baking a Jiffy
by MARTI ATTOUN Contributing Editor
When Mabel White Holmes saw the
hard-as-rock biscuits char a single father had baked for his sons in
1928, she set about finding a fix. For two years she experimented in
her kitchen in Chelsea, Mich., until six; had combined the perfect
proportions of flour, shortening, sugar, salt and baking soda into
Americas first prepared baking mix.
For the first time, a homemaker could simply add milk to a pack
aged mix, and with little fuss or chance of failure, bake a botch of
delicious, fluffy biscuits.
Seventy-eight years later, Holmes’ grandson and his 350 employees
continue to chum out more than a million boxes of Jiffy baking
mixes daily at the Chelsea Milling Co. in Chelsea (pep. 4,398).
"Grandma thought, "Wouldn't it be neat to invent a product that
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Howdy S. Holmes is proud of his family’s flour-milling tradition in Chelsea, Mich.
smaller 8.5-ounce boxes, which sometimes sell for three for a dollar.
Loyal customer Harriet Humphrey has stocked her cupboards with Jiffy mixes for
49 years. "The combread is an old standby,” says Humphrey, 71, of Pittsford, Vt. (pop.
3,140). “I couldn’t keep house without it.”
The Holmes family has been selling baking ingredients to homemakers for nine
generations. The family began milling flour in 1802, bought the Chelsea flour mill
in 1887 and introduced its popular Jiffy mix in 1930.
Six years after launching America's baking mix industry, Mabel assumed die role
of company president when her husband died in a grain silo accident. Tire couples
23-year-old twin sons, Howard and Dudley' Sr., ran tlx; company and the Jiffy- line
continued to grow with a pie-crust mix in 1940 and a com muffin mix in 1950.
Today, Chelsea Milling Co. fills 1.6 million Jiffy- boxes daily with biscuit, cake,
frosting, fudge brownie, muffin, pizza crust and pancake mixes. From the start, the
company has been a do-it-all manufacturer—from milling its own flour to making
its own cheery, blue boxes. With its gleaming white silos, die Chelsea plant—nick
named Jiflyville—is a downtown landmark and favorite destination for tour groups.
Visitors end tours with free samples of hoc fluffy biscuits or muffias.
While today's Jiffy boxes look nearly identical to the originals and carry tlx; slogan,
“Quality and Value since 1930,"
Chelsea Milling Co. lias endured
by changing with tlx; times.
When Howdy retired as a race
car driver and returned to tlx;
family business in 1988, he modernized the plant, built a $4.5 million warehouse in
1996 and introduced commercial-sized mixes to cater to restaurants and hospitals.
Still, he admires the perseverance of his flour-milling forefathers and cherishes the
ingenuity of his grandmother. "Grandma had a simple idea and followed chrough,"
Howdy says. "She wanted to save people time and money in the kitchen.”
Those basic ingredients are still valued by Americas homemakers.
Visit www.jiffymix.com for more information.
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