The Small Detail That Made Marie Callender's Original Bakery-Style Restaurant So Unique In The '60s

It's easy to forget that some of the names you see on supermarket shelves were, in fact, real people. Orville Redenbacher, for instance, was a food scientist who developed hardy popcorn hybrids well before he became the ubiquitous mascot of his own company. And Marie Callender, whose name adorns boxes of frozen sweet and savory pies, was a real person who lent her name to a restaurant owned by her son, Don; one that got popular in the 1960s.

Marie Callender was in fact a baker, and she initially sold pies with the help of Don, who would deliver them to customers on his bicycle. A wholesale shop was set up in 1948 and a proper location serving pie and coffee opened in 1964. Of course, there were no shortage of places offering pie and coffee back in the 1960s, so the Callenders had to do something to stick out. One particularly unique move was to put ovens in the window display so prospective customers could see mouth-watering pies baking in the oven as they walked past. It wasn't long before the restaurant was successful enough to become a chain.

Marie Callender's isn't the only restaurant chain to end up well-represented in the frozen food aisle of grocery stores everywhere. Stouffer's, which is now owned by Nestlé, was originally a Cleveland-area restaurant chain, and you're of course familiar with T.G.I. Friday's mozzarella sticks and baked potato skins (it was originally known as a singles bar, hence why becoming a bartender at T.G.I. Friday's was so difficult in the '70s). But while you're less likely to see a brick-and-mortar Marie Callender's in the wild these days, it was a semi-popular chain restaurant at one time – as recently as 2006, there were 138 locations.

After a number of corporate sales, including stints being owned by Ramada Inn and Wilshire Restaurant Group, Marie Callender's was sold in 1999 to a financial firm called Castle Harlan, which merged it in 2006 with Perkins, another homestyle restaurant chain. This merger was on shaky ground from the start as Perkins and Marie Callender's ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2011, after which the brand was sold to Conagra. In 2019, Marie Callender's split from Perkins following a second round of bankruptcy. Elite Restaurant Group now owns the 22 remaining Marie Callender's locations (most of which are in California) while Conagra has retained the frozen food line, meaning it can reap the rewards of the fluffy frozen pie we declared Marie Callender's best.