I suspect you are wondering what baking powder has to do with auto racing. It is among the reasons that Tony Hulman had the financial resources to buy the Indianapolis 500.
Clabber Girl Baking Powder was manufactured by Hulman & Company which, by 1945, was owned by Tony Hulman. Hulman & Company, a wholesale grocer, supplied foods to a market area within a couple of hundred miles of Terre Haute, Indiana. Terre Haute is about ninety miles west of Indianapolis, very close to the Illinois border.
Hulman & Company traces its roots back to 1853 when Tony Hulman’s great great uncle, Francis Hulman started F. T. Hulman Wholesale Store which sold a large variety of goods including tobacco, castor oil, flour, sugar, salt beans, beef, whiskey and peach brandy. Francis Hulman encouraged his two brothers to immigrate from Germany and join him in the business. Tony Hulman’s grandfather, Herman, joined the business in 1854. Francis Hulman returned to Germany to visit his mother in 1858. En route back to the United States, Francis died after his ship caught fire. As part of the settlement of the estate, Herman Hulman bought the business.
The company’s business expanded after it joined forces with R. S. Cox & Sons which carried a similar product line. The 1870s were a time of significant growth and Hulman & Cox became a general wholesaler. By 1879, it was one of the largest wholesalers in the nation. Hulman bought out his partners in 1879 and his two sons, Herman Jr. and Anton, joined the business. The business was inherited by Herman Jr. and Anton upon Herman, Sr.’s death in 1914.
Tony (Anton, Jr.) Hulman joined the business in 1925 after graduating from Yale. His father’s philosophy was that Tony shouldn’t be handed things on a silver plate…rather he should work for them. His father soon tasked him with marketing Clabber Girl Baking Powder.
While baking powders had been around since the 1850s, Herman Hulman, Sr. introduced a new formula that was superior to other baking powders in 1897. It combusted twice, once when it was added to the other ingredients and a second time when the biscuit or cake was baked. It also was stable which most other baking powders weren't…housewives didn’t have to worry if the cakes and breads they made would rise properly.
When Tony Hulman took over the leadership of the business in 1931, the country was in the grips of the Great Depression. Hulman & Company’s sales were stagnant as housewives were doing more of their shopping at chain stores which operated their own warehouses. He decided to take Clabber Girl national. He said of the decision, “Of all the items we had, the baking powder seemed to have a little foothold of its own, seemed to repeat sales when given the opportunity.”
He employed a marketing technique which had been used by Coca-Cola and Burma Shave and put up signs on barns and fences in Kentucky and Tennessee. In some places, they would have someone bake some cakes and then go house to house letting the housewife taste the product. Tony Hulman joined about 100 men calling on the trade and putting up the signs. They also offered free product with the purchase of a product (BOGO). Sometimes it was buy one, get one, other times it could be up to five free cans of Clabber Girl with the purchase of one can. This strategy was successful as the increase in sales quickly outstripped Hulman & Company’s ability to manufacture the product.
The expansion of Clabber Girl to a national product resulted in the company establishing internal controls to track the baking powder separately from the other products. As sales of Clabber Girl increased, Hulman & Company changed its focus from wholesaling. Warehouses were set up at strategic points and the plan for selling was revised from focusing on sales to grocery stores to focusing on wholesale grocers and chain store warehouses. By 1941, Clabber Girl was the industry leader.
The company purchased two competitors—Rumford Chemical Works in 1949 and the K.C. Food division of Jakes Manufacturing in 1950. Rumford Chemical produced Rumford Baking Powder and Hearth Club Baking Powder which was distributed on the eastern seaboard and New England. The impact was to turn Clabber Girl into a national product. By 1998, Clabber Girl had a 65 percent share of the U.S. market and the product had been introduced into Europe, Asia and Africa. Human & Company exited the wholesale market in 1995. Clabber Girl was sold in 2019 to B & G Foods shortly after the sale of IMS to Roger Penske.