[Adolph Levitt - Doughnut Corporation of America].

Two Presentation Albums, Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Doughnut Corporation of America.

1953

Two large albums, 52 & 84 leaves respectively. Unique. Issued on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Doughnut Corporation of America (DCA) as presentation volumes to the company's founder, Adolph Levitt. DCA was one of the original fully-integrated specialty food companies. By the time of this publication, the company was operating across the US and in Great Britain. It operated the famous Mayflower doughnut chain, and manufactured machinery and supplies for other businesses. By contrast, Ray Kroc was not to purchase and open his first McDonald's franchise shop in Des Plaines, IL for another two years. The first album, a large folio bound in stamped leatherette, is filled with dozens of original photographs with silkscreened text and artwork showing the size and scope of the DCA operation: from the New York offices to grain silos in the Midwest, egg cracking operations (imagine hundreds of women in a light manufacturing space, cracking eggs into buckets), shipping and distribution facilities, retail shops, counter operations, marketing meetings, packaging and print advertising examples, etc. The album also includes examples of the many ingenious marketing ploys Levitt used to take the doughnut from a traditional homemade product to a mass-produced fast food phenomenon. Levitt, who has been called the "Gutenberg of fried foods" used special event marketing to encourage Americans to use the doughnut as part of all holiday celebrations and created the Congressionally recognized National Doughnut Month. The second album is medium-sized folio bound in full gray leather with a metal plaque affixed to the front panel, dedicated to Levitt and bearing the company's slogan and design, the "Optimist's Creed." It collects more than eighty original manuscript and typed letters congratulating Levitt on his accomplishments with the doughnut and thanking him for the doughnut's service to American interests. The initial one page typed letter signed is from President Dwight Eisenhower, and is accompanied by an inscribed photograph of the President, in military dress and surrounded by soldiers and Red Cross personnel, gleefully digging in to a plate of doughnuts. Other congratulatory letters are from other politicians, as well as from the heads of the many, many companies involved in, or related to the DCA, including American Sugar, Interstate Bakeries, Corn Products Refining Company, Stop & Shop, National Tea Company and Swift & Co. While interesting as a collection of congratulatory business correspondence, this second volume is important evidence of the vast integrated network of farming, manufacturing, financial, transportation and marketing firms brought into the equation to make an industrial food marketer like DCA possible. An incredible representation of an early national food manufacturing businesses, a company which helped pave the way for chain fast food and for the modern industrialized food world we live in.

AS YOU RAMBLE ON THRU LIFE BROTHER, WHATEVER BE YOUR GOAL; KEEP YOUR EYE UPON THE DOUGHNUT AND NOT UPON THE HOLE

Price: $12,000.00