If you're a waffle aficionado, there's never been a better time to be alive.
It wasn't all that long ago that frozen waffles didn't even exist, so you'd have to go through a
lot of work whenever you were in the mood for some batter cake. But that all changed, thanks to Eggo.
When you think of Eggo, you probably think of delicious waffles covered in melting
butter and maple syrup. What probably doesn't come to mind is mayonnaise.
But as odd or gross as it may sound, Eggo mayo was actually once very much a reality.
And without it, there's a real chance that the Eggo waffle would've never gotten off the ground.
In 1932, inventor Frank Dorsa entered the food business with his brothers Anthony and Sam.
Their first taste of success came by way of Eggo mayonnaise. A newspaper ad in the 1940s touted
the spread as having the "highest egg content" among mayo brands of the day. The ad also noted
that it was made with "fresh ranch eggs," hence the name "Eggo." It's not exactly clear why
the Dorsas decided to venture into waffles after their foray in mayo, but we do know for sure that
prior to developing the frozen waffle, they began selling waffle batter and then a dry waffle mix.
Frank Dorsa wasn't just a pioneer when it came to developing the frozen waffle.
He was also a trailblazer in food preparation and a gadget inventor. The Dorsa brothers
started their food business in the basement of their parents' home,
and within six years their operation had outgrown its original location.
They then bought a potato chip plant in San Jose, California, which led to Frank inventing an
automatic continuous potato peeler that would eliminate the need to peel potatoes by hand.
Before Eggo waffles came along, Frank also invented a fryer that wouldn't curl bacon.
He even ventured outside of the food world and developed a squeegee for cement. But the invention
that truly carved out his place in the world was his waffle iron carousel. In the 1950s, he and his
brothers developed the machine that functioned much like a merry-go-round, only with waffle
irons, which allowed them to pump out thousands of fresh waffles per hour. It wasn't long before area
grocery stores were stocked with Eggo waffles, or "froffles," as they were called at the time.
Eggo waffles forever changed breakfast when they began showing up in supermarkets in the 1950s.
You might think, then, that frozen pancakes would've naturally followed relatively soon after.
But that wasn't the case at all. In fact, it would be decades before Eggo ever introduced frozen
pancakes to consumers. By all accounts, they didn't start selling frozen pancakes until 1997,
a year after Frank Dorsa's death. A commercial at the time boasted
that the new frozen pancakes would turn your microwave into a griddle.
So what exactly took Eggo so long to roll out frozen pancakes? As it turned out,
making a decent pancake that froze well just wasn't all that simple.
Dorsa actually got to work on developing frozen pancakes soon after releasing his waffles,
but he just couldn't develop a recipe that he was satisfied with. Pancakes might seem
easy enough for most home chefs, but there are plenty of cooking mistakes that can ruin a stack,
and freezing them surely added another challenge on top of that.
"New Eggo pancakes: makes every house a pancake house."
Eggo waffles may have been around since the 50s, but it wasn't until the 70s that they really
started to catch on. In 1966, the Dorsa brothers sold Eggo to a company that was eventually
absorbed by breakfast giant Kellogg's. Kellogg's needed a way to sell their frozen waffles and
tapped their marketing agency partner Leo Burnett to come up with a catchy tagline.
Introduced in 1972, the "L'Eggo My Eggo" campaign was a huge success that drove
home the idea that the frozen waffles were simply too good to share. The tagline helped
the brand solidify its reputation and establish itself as a giant towering over its competition.
"L'Eggo my Eggo."
"Oh-ho-ho. Wait'll you have kids of your own someday. Hmm."
The tagline was used in the brand's commercials and marketing efforts
all the way up through 2011, when it was retired for the new slogan "simply
delicious." But "simply delicious" had nowhere near the same catchy appeal as its predecessor,
and in 2013, Kellogg's began working "L'Eggo My Eggo" back into its marketing.
Eggo shortage
Fans were left waffling about what to do when Kellogg's announced an Eggo shortage
in November 2009. The unexpected problem was due to an interruption in production at two
of the four plants responsible for making Eggos. One of those interruptions was due
to a bad storm that dumped water on the company's facility in Atlanta, Georgia. At the same time,
crucial production lines in Rossville, Tennessee were shut down for needed repairs.
It didn't take long for Eggo waffles to become scarce in grocery store freezers.
One shopper and mommy blogger told NBC News that she bought one of the last boxes on
her shopping trip and was brainstorming how to stretch them out. As she put it,
"We have eight of them, and if we ration those — maybe have half an Eggo in one
sitting — then it'll last longer. I told my husband that maybe I need to put them on eBay."
Kellogg's estimated at the time that it wouldn't be until the middle of 2010 that
its Eggo supply was back at full capacity. They even attempted some damage control with
a hotline for worried customers. That may sound a bit extreme, but people love their waffles.
Who would've thought that a sci-fi show about 80s kids battling supernatural forces would be the
best advertising for Eggo in years? When Stranger Things debuted on Netflix in the summer of 2016,
it was an instant hit. The character of Eleven, as played by Millie Bobby Brown, was known for her
psychokinetic abilities, as well as her abiding love of Eggos, which reminded fans just how much
they loved those frozen waffles. Eggo sales had recently been on a downward slide, but they came
roaring back once the show debuted. As Kellogg's chief executive Steven Cahillane told CNN in 2018,
"When Eggo waffles became a fixture on [...] Stranger Things, we quickly leveraged the
[resulting] consumer engagement. It sparked conversations. And it prompted consumers to
reconsider a long-established brand in new and very contemporary ways."
On the surface, it may have seemed that Eggo's placement in Stranger Things was a classic case
of product placement. After all, Eleven could've just as easily been in love with a different 80s
favorite, like Lunchables or Cheez Whiz. But as it turns out, it was all a complete surprise
for Kellogg's. As the company's frozen breakfast director Trinh Le told Advertising Week 360,
"We found out about it just after Season One dropped and we started seeing tons of Eggo and
Stranger Things mentions on social media. Netflix doesn't offer any paid placement in their shows,
so Eggo's presence was a really great surprise for the brand."
That's not to say, though, that the brand didn't quickly capitalize on Eggo's newfound popularity,
as Kellogg's partnered with Netflix for a Super Bowl commercial, developed a "L'Eggo My Spoiler"
app for watching the show, and put together DIY Halloween ideas for its waffle boxes.
Eggo isn't the only variety of frozen waffles in the grocery store's freezer section,
but it might seem that way when you consider its market share. In 2014,
Eggo dominated 60 percent of the frozen waffle market, and not much has changed since then.
According to Statista, Eggo was the biggest brand in the frozen waffle market in 2020 as it raked in
$118 million for Kellogg's. That's compared to a combined $32.5 million for the various
private label waffle brands that make up Eggo's closest competitors.
But just because Eggo dominates the market, that doesn't necessarily mean
it has the tastiest product on the shelf. In fact, there are a number of frozen waffle
rankings floating around on the internet that give Eggo some pretty mixed reviews.
Eat This, Not That!, for example, ranked Eggo's Homestyle waffles a dismal ninth place of nine
for being "very limp" and "fake-tasting." Uproxx, however, gave the Homestyle variety high marks,
as they praised its nostalgic appeal. Perhaps the key to maximizing your enjoyment of Eggos
is to eat them while watching your favorite childhood cartoon or, of course, Stranger Things.
"Got you breakfast."
It's a safe bet that the longer a food product remains in the marketplace,
the weirder its spin-off varieties are. Sometimes these new editions end up becoming big hits, like
Coca-Cola Cherry, but other times you end up with epic fails, like Coca-Cola C2. For its part, Eggo
has been around for more than half a century, so it's introduced quite a few of its own variations,
and naturally enough, some of them are better than others. If you head over to the Kellogg's website,
you'll find the likes of blueberry, strawberry, and buttermilk waffles. Nothing too weird in that
lineup. But the brand also ventured into less familiar breakfast territory with the likes of
its Confetti waffles. Perhaps the thinking behind that one was, just in case waffles weren't sweet
enough with syrup, why not make them taste like birthday cake? In addition to all those varieties,
Kellogg's surprised nobody by jumping into the autumnal pumpkin spice trend.
There's really no reason that your Eggo has to even resemble a waffle if you don't want it to. In
an effort to appeal to kids everywhere, Kellogg's also offers Eggo waffles shaped like Mickey Mouse,
Spider-Man, and characters from shows like Paw Patrol and movies like Frozen 2.
The Dorsa brothers' minds would surely be blown if
they were alive today to see the evolution of their humble Eggo.
According to Kellogg's, one serving size of its Eggos consists of two waffles. But
competitive eating champion Joey Chestnut is a man who laughs at suggested serving sizes,
as he piles as much food into his mouth as humanly possible. He's most famous for chowing down on hot
dogs, but it was only a matter of time before frozen waffles found their way to his plate.
But he hasn't always been victorious. At the 2007 World Waffle Eating Championship, for example,
he had to settle for second place behind Patrick Bertoletti,
who downed a whopping 29 waffles, while Chestnut could only manage 28 and a half.
But in the years since, Chestnut has undoubtedly stepped up his waffle-eating game.
In 2019, he faced off against fellow competitive eater Matt Stonie to see who could eat the most
"Eggo-style" frozen waffles. The two of them dove headfirst into
the waffles in front of a packed house during intermission for a minor-league hockey game,
and Chestnut emerged victorious. And he didn't just defeat Bertoletti's old record,
he obliterated it, putting away 81 frozen waffles in just eight minutes. As for Stonie, he managed a
respectable 75 waffles. Somehow a winning total of 29 doesn't seem that impressive anymore.
Not every food from your childhood is destined to make a comeback.
For Surge soda reboot success story, there are a dozen Butterfinger BB's that just haven't
happened. This is especially true with breakfast cereals. The cereal market can be quite fickle,
as every fan surely knows, as there are plenty of unique cereals that we'll never see or eat again.
For a while, it seemed like Eggo Waffle Cereal was destined to remain in the ranks of the forgotten.
It was designed as a miniature version of the classic frozen waffles that you could readily
eat in a bowl with milk, although it's worth noting that it also looked suspiciously like
Honeycomb cereal. It first hit supermarkets in the early 2000s, and it was eventually pulled and
seemingly gone for good until Eggo announced on Twitter in August 2019 that if they got
10,000 retweets they'd bring the cereal back. Kellogg's did in fact bring back the original
syrup-flavored Eggo cereal later that year, and they also rolled out a new blueberry version,
and fans everywhere rejoiced that they no longer had to L'Eggo their Eggo.
"Hey! L'Eggo my Eggo." "Hey! L'Eggo my foot in your ass."
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