Barbara Jo Davis Narrator Linda Cameron Interviewer September 17, 2002 St. Louis Park, Minnesota LC: This is Linda Cameron. I’m interviewing Barbara Davis, former Betty Crocker Kitchens employee. The date is September 17, 2002. We are in St. Louis Park at Ken Davis Products. Barbara, when did you work at Betty Crocker Kitchens? BD: From 1968 till 1988. Kitchens LC: What is your educational background? BD: [Chuckles] I love this part. I graduated from Testthe University of NorthernSociety Colorado with a degree in dietetics. Then, I went on to do a dietetic internshipProject and, then, I took some marketing classes and ended up in Betty Crocker Kitchens. LC: Wow, okay. Did they actively recruit you or did you just happen to see an ad? BD: Neither. [Laughter] Actually, when I was about twelve, I decided I wanted to be Betty Crocker. MuseumHistory Historical LC: Oh! Excellent! City BD: I saw my first Betty CrockerOral cookbook when I was in the home economics class in the seventh grade and I saw the home economist in the test kitchen and I thought, ‘Oh! That’s what I want to do.’Mill So, when I finished my internship, I immediately applied to Betty Crocker for a job and they didn’t have any available, so I went and did something else for a while and came back, eventually, to Betty Crocker. Minnesota LC: Where did you do your internship? BD: In Washington, D.C. at Freedman’s Hospital on Howard University campus. LC: Excellent. What position did you hold with Betty Crocker when you first started? BD: I was a home economist in the test kitchen. 11 LC: Were you a technician? BD: A technician is different, see? LC: Is it? BD: They have different definitions. LC: What would the difference be? BD: Technicians don’t have a degree. The technicians are paraprofessionals. I started out as a test kitchen home economist. I think in those days they called us product representatives. LC: What would your responsibilities be in that role? BD: I started out working on some products. It was a productKitchens assignment. I was assigned to, let me see, pie crust mix, muffins, casseroles, which evolved into Hamburger Helper during the time that I was on the product, as a matter of fact, and a few other things. Those are the ones that stand out. The responsibilities then would be the normal test kitchen activities, which would include tolerance testing, recipe development, workingTest with the labs on productSociety development, some quality control work, again working with the TechnicalProject Center on that. LC: Interesting. So the Technical Center really did work very closely with the home economists in terms of product development? BD: Absolutely. MuseumHistory LC: Is that because they dealt with things like shelfHistorical life and all of that and you guys dealt with the taste of the product? City BD: Well, it’s sort of a back andOral forth kind of a thing. Nine out of ten times initial product development started in the kitchens because it was our responsibility to come up with the prototypes,Mill so we would then do all the research into what was available in the supermarkets, what was in cookbooks, and that sort of thing. We would then decide in collaboration with marketing, of course, and with the R & D [research and development] people. We’d all collaborate on what we wantedMinnesota our end product to look like. For example, in those early days when I started, we were in the process of developing Hamburger Helper, so we started researching casseroles or what they call in Minnesota “hot dishes” made with hamburger, just making up all kinds of samples. [Laughter] LC: We have to get that phrase on tape. 12 BD: We’d all get together and taste those samples and say, “Okay, this is what we want that product to resemble.” Then, the labs would take over from that point to develop a product using—we’d develop it using products that were available in the grocery store and they would start out with products that were available commercially. LC: Do you know when the labs first really began to operate over there? Initially, wasn’t it just the kitchen itself? BD: When I started in 1968, the labs were very much in operation, so I can’t tell you at what point the labs started to operate separately from the kitchens. LC: I suppose once they started doing further processed things— BD: Although it may be that the labs were in existence before the kitchens because, actually, the kitchens were developed as the result of consumer feedback. LC: And, testing the flour and all of that had to be done, eachKitchens batch and—? BD: Yes, so all of that had to done long before there was a Betty Crocker. LC: You’re right. That just developed and developedTest and developed. Society Project BD: Marcia [Copeland] probably told you that Betty Crocker just sort of grew out of all these consumer letters that came as a result of some contest the Washburn-Crosby Company was running. LC: Right. MuseumHistory BD: So, I’m sure that there was research and developmentHistorical long before there were ever kitchens. LC: Yes, I bet you’reCity right about that. Oral BD: Once we had the prototypes developed and everybody had agreed upon them, then the labs took over Milland developed the actual products. Then, they came back to the kitchens for tolerance testing because our role was to represent what would happen in the home. So, we had to make sure that no matter what kind of material the skillets were made out of, no matter whether they used gas or electric stoves,Minnesota whether their temperature was regulated correctly, whether they measured correctly— Different measuring equipment will measure differently. Even if the consumer thinks she’s following the directions to the letter, there are all these variations and we had to make sure that we accounted for those. Then, it was our responsibility to write the package directions in a way that consumers could understand them and follow them. So, product development was then a joint effort. LC: Did you work with Marketing, too? 13 BD: Marketing folks were our bosses. LC: Oh. BD: We were a service to Marketing, so that’s the way that worked. LC: Then, from your position as a home economist, did you move up the ladder? BD: Yes. I think I was only in the test kitchens for a couple of years before I actually became a supervisor and didn’t have the responsibility to actually be out there cooking any longer. Then, I had groups of home economists reporting to me at that point. LC: Did you like that? Did you like the change? BD: Oh, yes, I did. I was a little nervous at first because I had not been in a supervisory position prior to that. In my previous job, I was a one-person department,Kitchens so I didn’t have people reporting to me. So, then, this was a whole new change for me, but I got used to it. [Chuckles] LC: Good. Test Society BD: Pretty soon, I had learned to love it. I think what I lovedProject most about that part of the job as a supervisor and, then, as a manager was the personnel development side, watching these young home economists develop and learning their jobs. By the time I had been there for eighteen, twenty years, I became sort of the historian, so people would come to me and say, “Okay, have we ever done this before?” [Laughter] “When we did it the last time, what did we do it?” that kind of thing. MuseumHistory LC: So, you served as a mentor? Historical BD: Yes. City Oral LC: When you say, “manager,” what was your title? What were you managing, managing the kitchens? Mill BD: Manager of the kitchens, yes. We went through several transitions with names for the Betty Crocker Kitchens and MarciaMinnesota might have told you that. It was Betty Crocker Kitchens. Then, we weren’t getting enough respect, so they took “Kitchens” out of it because we were just the “girls” in the kitchens. LC: I didn’t know that. BD: We were expected to, you know, make birthday cakes for the management and all of that kind of thing. We were just thought of as the girls in the kitchens and no one respected us as 14 professionals who had degrees and who knew what we were doing. So, they took the word “Kitchens” out of the name of the department for a while and it became the Betty Crocker Food and Nutrition Center and, then, it became the Betty Crocker Food and Publications Center. It now is back to Betty Crocker Kitchens because it really is what the whole world knows it as is the Betty Crocker Kitchens. LC: Interesting. How many employees did you have working for you as the manager? BD: Usually somewhere between eight and twelve. LC: How many of those would be actual home economists then? BD: That varied also, but usually the majority of them were home economists. Then, we had a few technicians. When the technicians were added actually was later during one of those name- change periods. The technicians were hired to do some of the routine stuff that the home economists just— I mean there was too much work to do, so the technicians would do things like greasing and flouring the pans. They would run some of the toleranceKitchens testing and help the home economists with the evaluations.