An unlikely success story: The rise and fall of the Famous Amos cookie brand

Wally Amos, Jr. took a $25,000 loan from a few celebrity friends, including Marvin Gaye, to start the Famous Amos cookie brand. The high school dropout, who broke color barriers in the talent industry, used his aunt’s recipe to build a multi-million-dollar business within a few years.

However, like many entrepreneurs, he though he was “infallible” and that same spark drove him to take a chance on himself prevented him from listening to others explained his son. Amos passed away in August 2024 with only about $20,000 to his name.

Famous Amos: from rags to riches and back again

Amos was born in 1936 in Tallahassee, Florida. He lived there until he was 12 years old when his parents got divorced and he moved with his aunt Della Bryan to New York City. Her skills in the kitchen prompted him to attend the Food Trades Vocational High School in Manhattan.

However, he found that he was repeatedly passed over for promotion during his apprenticeship at the Essex House hotel in favor of white students, so he left school and joined the Air Force. While serving at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, Hawaii he got his GED.

After graduating college he went to work for William Morris Agency in New York City. He started out in the mail room but rose up through the ranks to become the first African-American talent agent at the agency and one of the first in the country. He represented artists such as Diana Ross and The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, and Simon & Garfunkel.

However, he was still held back by racism so when an opportunity to popped up to take a job in Los Angeles, he jumped at it. Fortunately for cookie-lovers, that ended up not working out, and with a $25,000 loan from celebrity investors he opened the first Famous Amos cookie store in a “seedy” part of the Sunset Boulevard in 1975.

The business, which sold three types of craft-made cookies based on his aunt Della’s recipe, rapidly took off, going from $300,000 in sales the first year to $12 million in under a decade. He even made appearances on television shows like ‘Taxi’ and ‘The Jeffersons’,

However, “He wasn’t a businessman,” explained his son Shawn. “He was an amazing marketer and had great promotional instincts. But he made a lot of bad decisions.” In an effort to continually raise money he diluted his own share in his company. He eventually “sold it to save it,” his son said.

He tried to start up a new cookie company called Wally Amos Presents, but was sued for trademark infringement by the owners of Famous Amos. “I was stupid, plain and simple,” Amos said “I sold the company and didn’t realize I had sold my future along with it.”

He wrote several books about his life story and started other food business ventures, even pitching ‘The Cookie Kahuna’ on ‘Shark Tank’ at age 80. However, that business venture left him “flat broke” as he explained in a video for GoFundMe he launched in 2017. He was asking people help him cover the basics like paying for food, gas and rent.

Amos passed away in Hawaii in August 2024 at the age of 88 due to complications of dementia according to his children.

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