This week's Soldier of Fortune is an Air Force veteran who started out sending cookies to the people he wanted to work with and ended up putting his name on one of the best-known cookie brands in America.
From Tallahassee to Hickam
Wallace "Wally" Amos Jr. was born in Tallahassee, Florida, on July 1, 1936. At 12 he moved to New York City to live with his aunt, Della Bryant, whose chocolate chip cookies became the recipe he later built a business on. He enrolled at a food trades vocational high school, then dropped out to join the U.S. Air Force. He served at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu from 1954 to 1957 and earned his high school equivalency diploma before he was honorably discharged.
A cookie as a calling card
Back in New York, Amos took secretarial classes and landed a mailroom job at the William Morris Agency. He worked his way up to become the agency's first African American talent agent and ran its rock and roll department. His trademark move was simple: he sent prospective clients homemade chocolate chip cookies with an invitation to come see him.
In March 1975, at a friend's suggestion, he opened the first Famous Amos cookie store in Los Angeles, backed by a $25,000 loan. The brand grew from that one storefront to supermarket shelves across the country, and in 1986 Amos received an Entrepreneurial Excellence Award at the White House Conference on Small Business.
Losing the name and starting over
The business wasn't a straight line up. Financial trouble forced Amos to sell the Famous Amos company in 1988, and because the company owned the trademark, he couldn't use his own nickname on a new product. He started over anyway: Uncle Noname cookies, then Uncle Noname Gourmet Muffins in 1994, renamed Uncle Wally's Muffin Company in 1999 and sold in more than 3,500 stores. Decades later he came back to cookies with The Cookie Kahuna in Hawaii and even pitched it on Shark Tank in 2016.
Using success to teach others to read
Starting in 1979, Amos threw himself into adult literacy through Literacy Volunteers of America, and in 1987 he hosted the public television series Learn to Read. The Air Force photo above shows that commitment in action: in 2007 he was back at Hickam, the base where he once served, reading to kids at the Child Development Center during Air Force Week Honolulu. He died in Honolulu on August 13, 2024, at age 88.
What veterans can take from it
- Finish what the service starts. Amos used his Air Force years to earn the diploma he'd walked away from. Use every benefit you've got.
- Make yourself memorable. A batch of cookies opened doors that a cold call never would have. Find your own calling card.
- Get back up after a loss. He lost the company and the name and still built new brands. A setback isn't the end of the mission.
- Give back where you can. His literacy work outlasted every cookie. Success means more when it lifts somebody else.
Wally Amos proves you don't need a big start to build something people remember. You need a good recipe, persistence, and the nerve to start again. Aim High.
Know a veteran founder or veteran-owned business I should feature next? Let me know.
Sources: Wally Amos, Wikipedia (citing The New York Times, Honolulu Magazine and the Smithsonian's Famous Amos Collection) · U.S. Air Force photo 070910-F-2034C-203 and caption, via Wikimedia Commons
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