The Food That Built America

A young boy accidentally discovers a frozen treat on a stick, and grows up to bring an endearing classic to the world. Plus, a candy store owner radically re-invents ice cream and launches the first ever ice cream truck. But when both men own a patent on the same thing, the resulting battle will destroy one man, and cement the other’s fortune.

Gilbert Swanson inherits his father’s frozen turkey company and partners with a food chemist to innovate a revolutionary dinner that Americans can heat up at home… they call it the TV Dinner. And when a restauranteur named Vernon Stouffer tries to bring his frozen meals to market, he’s blown out of the water by the TV Dinner… until he harnesses a new technology called…the microwave.

A short order chef invents the hamburger bun and engineers a new way of making a burger faster than ever before. Meanwhile, Nathan Handwerker invests his life savings into a hot dog stand at Coney Island. Both restaurants help bring hot dogs and hamburgers to the nation, and set the stage for every fast food restaurant to follow.

When a chemist begins working at the Joseph A. Campbell preserve company, he invents a condensed soup that brings this rare luxury to the nation for the first time. But as they try to get the word out to Americans who aren’t yet accustomed to soup, it also attracts the attention of Henry Heinz, who becomes a bitter competitor in a race for revolutionary innovation and nationwide soup sales dominance.

A business partnership gone wrong leads Adolphus Green to create one of the most iconic cookie and cracker companies in history, and revolutionize packaging. But when his former partners strike back with their signature invention, the chocolate sandwich cookie, Green retaliates with the help of milk chocolate titan Milton Hershey, and rolls out the biggest selling cookie of all time.

Herman Lay takes regional and small-time chips business to a national scale with his cutting-edge sales techniques and world-changing packaging technology, while a rival innovator invents a new kind of snack chip that will challenge Lay’s crown. And when the empires meet, they will have to strike a deal…or go to war.

In the 1970s, one major cola brand launches a blind taste test marketing plan that takes direct aim at their biggest competitor. As a new era of competition heats up between the behemoth brands, each side selects a new leader who takes the companies to battle in a rivalry that will birth countless iconic soda products and memorable marketing stunts.

At the turn of the 20th century, James Kraft challenges thousands of years of cheese-making tradition and forever alters the dairy industry with his new cheese innovation. Meanwhile, the Pabst brothers are desperate to keep their successful beer empire solvent through Prohibition, and introduce a shelf-stable cheese of their own, putting them on a collision course with James Kraft’s flourishing cheese juggernaut.

In the 1950s, Ray Kroc franchises McDonald’s nationwide, but right behind Kroc a wave of other entrepreneurs try to cash in on the fast food restaurant craze. Two Florida visionaries start up what will become Kroc’s biggest rival, by re-inventing their kitchen’s equipment into the pioneering “flame broiler.” Over the next two decades the two iconic restaurants battle it out over burgers, launching signature sandwiches that will become staples all over the world.

In the 1950’s, two enterprising brothers from Wichita, Kansas aim to build their restaurant, Pizza Hut, into a franchise empire by boldly introducing America to a little-known Italian dish–pizza. Americans soon fall in love with their signature, thin crust pizza, but unchecked growth and an underdog rival, Domino’s, threatens to derail their first-of-its-kind pizza franchise juggernaut.