Wallace “Wally” Amos, founder of the Famous Amos chocolate chip cookie brand, has died at the age of 88.
Amos died Tuesday at his home in Honolulu, his children, Sean and Sarah Amos, told The New York Times. The cause was complications from dementia.
Born on July 1, 1936, in Tallahassee, Florida, Amos moved to Harlem in his early teens to live with his aunt, Della Bryant, who baked him cakes.
After serving in the Air Force from 1954 to 1957, Amos returned to New York and joined the William Morris Agency. He started in the mailroom and worked his way up the ranks to become the agency's first black talent agent. He notably signed Simon & Garfunkel and worked with Motown artists such as the Supremes, Diana Ross, Sam Cooke, and Dionne Warwick.
In 1967, Amos moved to Los Angeles, where he began baking as a side hustle while struggling to start his own management company.
“I started baking as a hobby; it was a kind of therapy,” Amos told The New York Times in 1975. “I would go to meetings with record companies or movie people and bring some cakes, and soon everyone was ordering them.”
With the help of a $25,000 loan from his celebrity friends, music legends Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy, Amos opened the first Famous Amos store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The small cookies, derived from a recipe Amos learned from his aunt, were known for their natural ingredients and lack of preservatives. Famous Amos sold $300,000 worth of cookies in its first year and had revenues of $12 million by 1982.
Due to poor management and financial struggles, Amos gradually sold off his shares of Famous Amos during the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1988, he sold the remainder of the cookie brand to a private equity firm, the Shansby Group, for $3 million. Amos continued to sell baked goods under other names, including Uncle Noname, Uncle Wally's Muffin Co., and Cookie Kahuna.
Outside of his famous cookie empire, Amos has made guest appearances on the TV series “The Office,” “Taxi,” and “The Jeffersons.”
Amos is survived by his wife, Christine Harris Amos, and his children, Sean, Sarah, Gregory, and Michael.
