Cookie entrepreneur Wallace “Wally” Amos Jr., also known as Famous Amos, died of complications from dementia at his home in Honolulu, Oahu, on August 13, 2024. Although most people recognize the name from grocery store shelves, Amos opened his first retail store in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard in 1975. Amos opened one of the country’s first cookie stores, two years before Mrs. Fields and decades before the national chains Crumbl or Levain.

Amos pioneered self-promotion and food sales in Los Angeles and became an influential force in the entertainment industry. The Tallahassee native, who moved to New York City as a teenager, learned how to bake chocolate chip cookies from his aunt Della Bryant, according to the New York Times. After serving in the Air Force, Amos worked as a mail clerk at William Morris in New York in the late 1950s. Amos also became the agency’s first African-American talent agent in 1962, sending cookies with an invitation to prospective clients. Those clients eventually included Simon and Garfunkel and the Temptations. He moved to Los Angeles in 1967 and continued working as a talent agent.

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In 1975, on the advice of a friend, Amos began looking for a store to sell his bite-sized cookies. At the time, most mass-produced cookies contained dyes and chemicals. Amos used none of these ingredients in his cookies. He secured money from friends in the industry such as singer Helen Reddy and her first husband/producer Jeff Wald, who managed Sylvester Stallone and Donna Summer. He even secured a $10,000 investment from his client Marvin Gaye.

LAist reports that Amos found his ideal location in the original House of Pies on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Formosa Avenue, where Bossa Nova Brazilian Cuisine is now. Amos’ shop was successful from the start, thanks to his showmanship, marketing and celebrity-filled street parties in front of the store. The famous Amos brand featured the character “The Cookie,” complete with headshot, dressing room and record deal contract. Amos was almost always on site wearing an oversized hat and carrying a kazoo. While this flashy strategy may seem quite familiar in 2024, it was an innovative leap in marketing for the 1970s.

Famous Amos in Hollywood made $300,000 in sales in its first year. By 1981, the company had grown to $12 million in retail sales, with over 20 Famous Amos stores across the U.S., as well as locations in supermarkets and department stores. Although Famous Amos enjoyed a meteoric rise, the company began to make losses in the mid-1980s. The Shansby Group purchased the company for $3 million, closed most of the independent stores, and focused on sales in grocery stores. In the early 1990s, the Shansby Group and Amos became embroiled in a legal battle over the use of his face and image. Today, the Famous Amos brand is owned by Nutella maker Ferrero Group. In 2011, the 7100 block of Sunset Boulevard was designated Famous Amos Square in honor of Amos’ first store.

Amos was a long-time literacy advocate and hosted a PBS television series in the 1980s called Learning to read. Amos founded other baking companies in the 1990s, including Uncle Wally’s Muffin Company (formerly Uncle Noname Cookie Co.) and Chip & Cookie.

Amos appeared on NBC’s The Shark Cat to introduce a new cookie company called Cookie Kahuna.

THE COOKIE KAHUNA