Grocery stores will no longer sell Knott’s Berry Farm jams and jellies. Smucker’s purchased this iconic Southern California brand in 2008, but now says it will be “dedicating resources to the areas with the greatest growth potential.”
Before the theme park, almost a century ago, Knott’s Berry Farm was a roadside stand and growing enterprise of Walter and Cordelia Knott. Californians were particularly drawn to the giant, sweet, and tart boysenberries they sold.
However, the boysenberry is not actually found in nature. In the 1920s, California horticulturist Rudolph Boysen hybridized a raspberry, a blackberry, and a loganberry to create it in Orange County.
“He didn't know how to promote it or sell it, and he just abandoned it,” explains Eric Lynxwiler, co-author of Knott’s Preserved: From Boysenberry to Theme Park, the History of Knott’s Berry Farm. “And then comes along Walter Knott … he tracked down Rudolph Boysen through the Yellow Pages and said, ‘Hey, I want to give this berry a shot.’ So in 1932, Walter Knott cut some clippings off of some wild berry vines that Rudolph let go fallow, and the boysenberry came into existence [in] about 1934, when Walter Knott had a bumper crop of these gigantic, wonderful berries. Walter wound up naming them after Rudolph Boyson. And that's pretty much all he ever gave Rudolph Boysen — was the name.”
Although Walter Knott popularized the berry, credit goes to his wife, Cordelia, for jams and jellies — which lasted months on shelves — plus juice and pies.
Lynxwiler points out that Knott’s in Buena Park is probably the world’s only theme park based on a farm — founded on a boysenberry and fried chicken dinner.
“It was Cordelia Knott who gave us the boysenberry preserves and jams and pies. But she also gave us a fried chicken dinner in 1934. And what I love so much about Knott's Berry Farm is that that same fried chicken dinner — with biscuits and jam, with corn, with rhubarb on the side — it's still available today at Knott's Berry Farm, and the same thing with those preserves.”
Then in the 1990s, Walter and Cordelia Knott’s children sold the jams and jellies to ConAgra Inc., which then sold it to Smucker’s in 2008. The reason: money.
“There was a lot of value to the Knott's Berry Farm brand name. The jams and jellies were produced on Knott's Berry Farms’ Buena Park property for decades. Eventually, they grew … they had nationwide reach for the Knott's Berry Farm brand name. … I think the children of Walter and Cordelia Knott said they wanted to retire, so they wound up selling the brand's name to ConAgra in about 1995. And Knott's Berry Farm the theme park would just buy back the Knott's Berry Farm brand jams and jellies at that point.”
However, Smucker’s changed the recipe of those jams, using corn syrup instead of sugar and other “long-worded chemicals” for mass production, says Lynxwiler.
“That's one of the reasons why I'm not all that upset about the loss of the Knott's Berry Farm brand — is because that ingredient deck is not quite what it used to be. … It just wasn't the same for me. I'm really dedicated to what is now the Berry Market brand over the Knott's Berry Farm brand.”
He adds, “It makes me upset that when the Knott children sold off the Knott's Berry Farm brand in 1995, they sold the name. So Knott's Berry Farm itself cannot use the Knott's Berry Farm name on their own food production of jams and jellies. Which is why Knott's Berry Farm is selling the Berry Market brand, which is named after their 1928 Berry Market. So Walter Knott founded the Berry Market as a roadside stand in 1928. And almost 100 years later, it's still going strong and selling its own brands of Berry Market produce.”