Edwin Perkins had always enjoyed studying chemistry and inventing things. As a child he experimented with home-made concoctions such as flavoring extracts and perfumes in his mother’s kitchen.
Meanwhile, his father opened a general store in town where the boy was introduced to new and exciting food products such as Jell-O and first got interested in entrepreneurship.
As a teenager he sent away for a kit called “How to Become a Manufacturer.” After he finished high school, the active and ambitious Perkins published a weekly newspaper, did job printing, served as postmaster and, at age 25, set up a mail order business called Perkins Products Co. to market the numerous products he had invented.
One of the company’s offerings that proved most popular was a concentrated drink mix called Fruit Smack, which came in six flavors. A four-ounce bottle made enough for an entire family to enjoy at an affordable price. But shipping the bottles of syrup was costly and breakage was becoming a problem.
This prompted Perkins in 1927 to develop a method of removing the liquid from Fruit Smack so the remaining powder could be re-packaged in envelopes and consumers would only have to add water to enjoy the drink at home.
Perkins designed and printed envelopes with a new name –Kool Ade –to package the powder with. (Later this spelling would change to “Kool-Aid.”)
Because the packets were lightweight, meaning a dramatic drop in shipping costs, Perkins sold each Kool-Aid packet for a dime, wholesale by mail at first, to grocery, candy and other stores. It came in strawberry, cherry, lemon-lime, grape, orange and raspberry. In 1929, Kool-Aid was distributed nation-wide to grocery stores by food brokers. Perkins and his family handled all the distribution by themselves.
By 1931, demand for Kool-Aid was so strong, Perkins dropped the manufacture of his other products to concentrate solely on Kool-Aid.
After the war, Perkins expanded the Kool Aid factory further, and by 1950, 300 production workers produced nearly a million packets of Kool-Aid each day. In 1953, Perkins announced to his staff that he was selling Kool-Aid to General Foods (which would merge with Kraft in 1989).
Photos by hastingsmuseum.org/nebraskahistory.org.