How Vlasic Pickles Went Bankrupt

If you ever pulled a Vlasic spear out of the jar at a summer picnic, or remember that giant gallon jar sitting on the shelf for $2.97, you already know this brand. At one point Vlasic took one of every three dollars Americans spent on pickles. Then the company went bankrupt. I'm Vince Thomas, and I was there. In this video: How Frank Vlasic went from a Detroit creamery and a 1922 milk route to America's number one pickle Bob Vlasic, the hot-pack process, and the 1974 stork that made pickles fun Why Campbell Soup bought Vlasic in 1978, then spun it off in 1998 with $500 million in debt The $2.97 gallon jar at Walmart, and why selling 240,000 gallons a week lost money What a Walmart buyer really said when Vlasic asked to change the deal The January 2001 bankruptcy, and why the gallon jar wasn't the main reason Who owns Vlasic today, and where the pickles are still made This isn't a story about a bad pickle. It's a story about a family business built on one simple rule: sell people a little something they'll come back for. The day Vlasic forgot that rule, it sold its customers a year's worth of pickles at once. I've tried to tell it the way I'd tell it to you across the kitchen table. Did you ever bring home one of those gallon jars? Tell me what town, roughly what year, and whether you finished it. And if the empty jar is still on a shelf somewhere full of buttons or nails, I want to hear about that too. #Vlasic #Nostalgia #BrandHistory #WhatHappenedTo #RetailHistory