Everyone lives by selling something.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Hines was staying in the Waldorf Towers in Manhattan when my father finally got an appointment to see him in November 1948. Pops had Bob Flannery design a Duncan Hines logo and a number of food product labels for my father’s presentation. The original logo changed little through the years, even under a succession of ownerships, and can still be recognized as similar to this day.
My father went into his meeting carrying the full-color labels that Flannery had designed and printed, affixed to dummy boxes, cans and jars. He felt sure it would show the world-renowned gourmet how well his name would look on products. “It’s always an advantage to be better prepared than the other fellow,” my father asserted; it was a credo he followed his entire life.
When Pops walked into Hines’s suite, Hines was on the phone talking to someone from Ford Motor Co. who was apparently trying to persuade him to endorse one of its products (something Hines had consistently refused to do for any product). My father overheard him saying, “I won’t give you any endorsement for Ford. I had one when I was a young fellow, but it was such a rough ride it shook my liver.” He hung up the phone and said to my father, “Well, I guess you’re here to ask me to endorse something. I don’t do that.”
To which my father responded, “Mr. Hines. I know that. I want to name something in your honor.” Not just something, he went on to say, but a whole line of fine food products, including a cake mix. “I plopped the displays on the coffee table and Hines picked one up. I put all the others away to prevent him the misery of choice.” He assured Hines that all of these gourmet foods would be prepared under his guidelines, meet his high standards and “upgrade America’s eating habits.”
Nothing worthwhile comes easy. The meeting was inconclusive; my father left some material and asked for a breakfast meeting the next morning. “At breakfast, Duncan was very ornery,” my father said. “He had spent the night out. I left some references and told him to call if he was interested and went home.” My father concluded that his efforts had been in vain. “Then,” he recalled, “in a couple of weeks, the people whose names I’d given Duncan started calling me, wanting to know what I was doing with Hines.”
In what must have been his greatest salesmanship performance, my father had succeeded in convincing Hines to lend his name to an impressive line of foods. Part of his pitch was to set up a Duncan Hines Foundation to help pay scholarships for Cornell home economics and hotel students. So they got together and signed what Pops calls “a very one-sided contract in Hines’ favor.” Hines had the right to stop production with only thirty days notice if any product failed to measure up to his standards.
One of the intended financial backers of the venture was P&C, who had been helped and encouraged by GLF to find a niche in the growing supermarket grocery business to serve as a link between producers and consumers, hence the name. But at the last minute, just before the franchise program was launched, P&C Stores withdrew their financial support. To overcome his setback, and upon advice from H.E. Babcock, Pops borrowed the money himself. He set up Hines-Park Foods and took over a half-interest in the cake mix. Hines still agreed to a six-month trial period and helped to test several of the products himself. My father had some Duncan Hines products made up and got them into several stores. He didn’t ask Hines to help him advertise, and that proved to be a mistake; at the end of the first six months, the launch without advertising was less than a success.
When the two met again, Pops brought Hines a certified check and asked for a six-month extension of the agreement. Hines said, “Roy, you haven’t made any money on this thing yet?” “No, sir,” my father admitted and was startled when Hines asked, “Why don’t you ask me to help you?” “I didn’t think I could afford you,” my father said. “I think you can,” Hines told him. “I like the idea, and all I want out of it is my expenses.” Then he tore up the certified check.
Thus did Duncan Hines agree not only to lend his name but also actively participate in promoting the products bearing it. With what he described as grubstake, the only walking, talking trademark in the world, my father became one of the first franchisers in the nation.
And so just as he turned forty, as I said, my father’s third career began.