Famous Amos Cookies Founder Wally Amos Dead at 88
Wallace "Wally" Amos, the man who launched the Famous Amos cookies brand in the mid-1970s, has died. He was 88.
Two of the entrepreneur’s children, Shawn and Sarah, confirmed their father’s passing this week, according to The New York Times. Amos, who celebrated his most recent birthday last month, died on Tuesday, Aug. 13, at his home in Honolulu, H.I. His death was attributed to complications from his battle with dementia, his children told the newspaper.
The cookie brand founder was born Wallace Amos Jr. on July 1, 1936, in Tallahassee, Fla. He moved to New York City as a kid and spent several of his teenage years living there with his aunt. He went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force for nearly four years before landing a job with the William Morris talent agency, where the Times reported Amos climbed the ladder and had by the early 1960s become the company’s first Black junior agent.
In 1975, Amos decided to take some of his Hollywood friends up on an offer to loan him $25,000 so that he could start his own baking company. Amos launched his first bakery along the iconic Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Calif., that same year, where he baked handmade bite-sized chocolate chip cookies to stand out from his competitors’ mass-produced treats.
The store “became a Hollywood success story” by using “only the best ingredients from an original family recipe,” according to the Famous Amos website, which described the brand’s commitment to high-quality ingredients as a “core belief” of Amos’.
In the decade that followed the launch of Amos’ first store, Famous Amos expanded across the U.S. with enthusiastic support from its founder, who often appeared in the media to promote his cookies. After selling the company in the late 1980s, Amos briefly served as a company spokesperson before launching a new career as a published author and speaker.
