Who invented little debbies

McKee, a Chattanooga, Tennessee, business man, who began selling 5-cent homemade snack cakes during the Great Depression. Along with his wife Ruth, McKee purchased a bakery, in the back of which the young family would live.

The company wouldn't become truly profitable until , however, when the McKees devised a line of packaged cakes, naming them after their four-year-old granddaughter, Debbie.

Debbie's image, as it famously appears on the product packaging, is inspired by a real-life photo of the young girl in her play clothes. Miraculously, her parents Ellsworth and Sharon McKee weren't privy to their daughter's involvement as the namesake of the food brand, until production began on the popular treats. The iconic Oatmeal Cream Pie was the first snack the McKees rolled out of the brand, at an original market price of 49 cents per carton.

The innovative product was the first of its kind, as a carton of desserts with individually packed units inside. In the first 10 months of the cake's production, over 14 million cartons were reportedly sold. Within 4 years, there were 13 more types of cakes added to the Little Debbie lineup.

Today, Little Debbie cakes are available in all U. The company remains a family operation, with the fourth generation of McKees beginning to step up into leadership roles. Additionally, there are more than 75 cakes that don the Little Debbie monicker. In , the Huffington Post caught up with now-not-so-little, adult Debbie McKee-Fowler, who had been recently honored at the 30th Annual Chattanooga Women of Distinction Awards luncheon as the Executive Vice President of the company her grandparents founded.

Want to know more about Little Debbie? Check out their brand history by visiting their website. A group of New Yorkers recently hated on Cracker Barrel after trying it for the first time, and Southern Twitter was real quick to come for 'em.

In a video shared by Food Insider, a group of New Yorkers recently had an experience most Southerners have before they can even walk -- they ate at Cracker Barrel for the first time. The video, which was was billed as "millennials try Cracker Barrel for the first time," consisted of four people trying some of the Tennesse chain's most popular dishes -- Chicken 'n Dumplins, country fried steak, loaded hash brown casserole and mac 'n cheese.

The foursome was quick to find fault with the appearance of most of the dishes although one of 'em was wise enough to know that looks can be deceiving. They called the dumplings "sad," said the mac and cheese was fast food-quality and claimed the country fried steak was a heart attack waiting to happen. Among the responses, Southerners were quick to point out how New Yorkers can't be trusted when it comes to Southern food given what they think barbecue is -- bless their hearts.

It's also worth mentioning that there's a whole lot more on the menu worth trying. Once back in Tennessee, he started production on two lines and the Swiss Rolls were added to the Little Debbie brand a year later, in It remains one of the top three best-selling items in the lineup. But it's not just the name that makes these treats out of this world, they've also been to space!

In , Little Debbie, in partnership with the University of Tennessee Chattanooga , literally and figuratively launched their most recent galactic offering to date, Cosmic Cupcakes. The new cupcake, along with an astronaut bobble head, was attached to a weather balloon and, with a crowd counting down, were launched 18 miles into space. Growing up, my favorite Little Debbie snack was the Nutty Bar. Peanut butter, wafers, chocolate, they were so good.

But, as I started to do research for this article I found out that the Nutty Bar had vanished. Well, sort of. Somewhere along the way, as this imgur from November indicates, the Nutty Bar is now known as Nutty Buddy. There's no official word from Little Debbie or McKee Foods about the name change, but the brand page does now refer to the snack as Nutty Buddy. And the original Nutty Bar is still listed as the third of the top three sellers, which also proves that regardless of what they are called, I'm not the only one who holds a special place for this classic combo.

The taste of Little Debbie is so good that some people think they're worth going to jail for, apparently. Over the past several years, there have been at least two known incidents of people stealing huge amounts of Little Debbie products.

In North Carolina in , brazen thieves cut through a fence where a distribution van was parked. The stolen trailer was eventually found and thankfully no one nor any cakes were harmed. Debbie's grandparents, O. In , they took things a step further when they purchased a failing bakery. They worked side by side, and little by little their business dreams were realized.

Today, over 80 years later, the company is still family-driven , and business decisions, as well as day-to-day operations continue to be overseen by several members of the McKee family. The Oatmeal Creme Pie isn't just among the best-selling Little Debbie snacks, it is also the original. In , O. McKee began tinkering with his hard oatmeal cookie recipe to produce a softer cookie. Any fan of the individually packaged Oatmeal Creme Pies, Swiss Rolls, and creme-filled Chocolate Cupcakes that have come to represent the taste of childhood is familiar with the smiling face of a curly haired, hat-wearing girl named Debbie.

Debbie McKee was just 4 years old when her grandparents, Ruth and O. McKee decided to expand their small bakery operation to a national scale. The McKees first got into the business in , when they bought a struggling bakery and revamped its business model, selling small cakes for lower prices than their competitors. There are slightly conflicting stories on how O. Casting about, O. Still wanting to use a family name, O. Not long after, famed pin-up artist Pearl Frush Mann used that picture off of O.

McKee Foods is still family-owned by second and third generation McKees. While other snack cake companies may be struggling, McKee Foods keeps thriving. In , they announced an over hundred million dollars investment in their Collegedale factory.