On March 10, 1975, when Wally Amos opened Famous Amos, a cookie-and-cookie store on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Formosa Avenue in Hollywood, it was an unlikely idea in an unlikely place.
There was a strip club across the street, recalled Shawn Amos, Wally Amos's youngest son. And sex workers and runaways hung out on the sidewalk in front of the store.
Wally Amos sits in a chair holding his son Shawn in front of the first Famous Amos store in Hollywood.
(Courtesy of Shawn Amos)
Still, it was a highly visible location, just blocks from A&M Records, where Amos had an office next door to Quincy Jones. And the 39-year-old entrepreneur was confident. After all, he had been the first black talent agent to work at the William Morris Agency, where he signed Simon and Garfunkel and worked with Motown stars like Diana Ross and the Supremes, Dionne Warwick and Sam Cooke, before quitting — because of racism, Shawn Amos says — and starting his own entertainment management company.
That venture failed, but Wally Amos was known in Hollywood circles for his cookies, which he baked using his Aunt Della's chocolate chip nut recipe and handed out at meetings with film and record company executives. When he went out to raise $25,000 in seed money from his former clients and partners, he easily convinced Marvin Gaye, Helen Reddy and other showbiz figures to invest.
Her timing was ideal. It was two years before Debbi Fields opened her first cookie store in Palo Alto, which meant the market for premium cookies was wide open. And although refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough had been available since the 1950s, the first major supermarket brand of chocolate chip cookies, Chips Ahoy, had been launched by Nabisco just 12 years earlier. The market was ready for a higher-quality, bite-sized cookie in which the emphasis was on flavor over shelf life.
“He placed a big ad in the Hollywood Reporter and advertised the cookie like a new movie,” Arizona Daily Star reporter Ken Burton wrote in 1976 after Amos opened his third cookie shop, and first outside California, in Tucson.
Famous Amos stores quickly became a magnet for celebrities, counterculture figures and children's birthday parties. Wally Amos became a pioneer in the luxury biscuit business.
“They are all the rage in Los Angeles and already share the ‘taste sensation spot’ with beluga caviar!” said Vogue magazine shortly after Amos opened in Hollywood.
Her big personality helped promote her cookies.
“His cookie was his customer,” said Gregory Amos, his middle son.
“They always put on a good show and I don't have to pander to their egos,” Wally Amos told Burton of the Arizona Daily Star in 1976.
Wally Amos dances with cheerleaders wearing Famous Amos cookie T-shirts.
(Courtesy of Shawn Amos)
Compared to the soft, oversized cookies seen in so many bakeries today, Famous Amos' cookies were crispier and smaller. He didn't like soft cookies, Shawn Amos said of his father, and believed a cookie should be big enough to be eaten only once or twice. He was also very particular about how the dough was placed on the cookie sheet, as well as the size of the pinch of dough. Once it was on the cookie sheet, he didn't shape the dough.
“According to our dad, the irregular, individual shape of each cookie was its main attribute,” explained Shawn Amos. “Each cookie has its own personality, with its own amount and placement of chocolate chips and nuts.”
Wally Amos also made sure to talk to his cookies as he dropped the dough, said Shawn Amos, who described the process in his young adult novel “Cookies & Milk.”
The key to much of their father's success was a strong work ethic and confidence, his four children — Michael, Gregory, Shawn and Sarah — said in interviews with The Times.
“I saw him fit in wherever he went,” Shawn Amos said. “He was always bold and optimistic.”
His positivity is perhaps the most important thing in his life, said his children and his widow, Carol Amos.
Wally Amos, an Air Force veteran, died on August 13 from complications due to pneumonia at the age of 88. He passed away at his home in Honolulu with his wife by his side.
Wally Amos makes a guest appearance on the CBS sitcom “The Jeffersons.” The episode, “The Jeffersons Go to Hawaii: Part 2,” first aired on November 16, 1980.
(CBS / Getty Images)
Originally from Tallahassee, Florida, Amos grew up in the 1940s in the segregated South. He learned his determination from his mother, who refused to move a young Wally Amos from their seats in the front row of a public bus.
This determination helped Wally Amos become a talented salesman and a great promoter, but he was not a great businessman, Shawn Amos said. Wally Amos struggled to keep up with his company's growth and made some poor business decisions, eventually selling the company in the late 1980s.
In the early 1990s, he launched Wally Amos Presents cookies, but the new owners of Famous Amos cookies sued him for trademark infringement and banned him from using his own name and image. In response, he changed the name to Uncle Nonamé, but eventually declared bankruptcy a few years later.
Undeterred, he took on muffins with Uncle Wally's Muffin Co. He even appeared on an episode of “Shark Tank” in 2016, where he pitched the hosts his new cookie company, called Cookie Kahuna.
“He was the eternal optimist,” said his eldest son, Michael Amos.
In the episode, Wally Amos can be seen wearing his signature panama hat and beaded necklaces, asking the hosts for $50,000 in exchange for 20% ownership of Cookie Kahuna. They refused. The store closed about a year later.
Wally Amos poses for a photo with his son Shawn. (Courtesy of Shawn Amos)
Wally Amos stands in front of one of his cookie stores in Los Angeles. (Courtesy of Shawn Amos)
Wally Amos, a lifelong advocate for children's literacy, reads a book to children at the Langston/Carver Boys and Girls Club in Forestville, Maryland, in 1995.
(Washington Post/Getty Images)
Wally Amos, who never finished high school, was also a lifelong advocate for children's literacy. He wrote eight books and served as a spokesperson for Literacy Volunteers of America for decades. He earned numerous honors for his volunteer work, including the Literacy Award given in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush.
But he never replicated the success of the famous Amos.
“He spent the rest of his life chasing what he had created and wanting to be able to achieve that success again,” said his daughter, Sarah Amos.
Yet, all these years later, a reminder of Wally Amos' legacy still lingers at Sunset and Formosa. The city of Los Angeles has placed a sign in front of the original Famous Amos location (now Bossa Nova Brazilian Cuisine) in tribute to the cookie pioneer.
“The famous Amos Plaza,” he says. “Wally Amos opened the world’s first chocolate chip cookie store in 1975.”
By the end of his life, Carol Amos said, Wally Amos had come to the conclusion that the choices he had made in his life were acceptable and that he would never have the same success he had with Famous Amos.
“He had that expression on his forehead that I saw from the moment I met him,” she said. “He didn’t have that expression when he left the body.”
