Wolferman's · KS.City

Wolferman’s was Kansas City’s premier gourmet grocery for most of a century — a chain of stores and restaurants built from a bankrupt corner shop bought for $750 in 1888 by German immigrant Louis Wolferman and his son Fred. Its six-story downtown flagship at 11th and Walnut, with its second-floor Tiffin Room, was a fixture of the downtown shopping district; its most durable product was the super-thick English muffin Fred first shaped in a tin can in 1910. The stores closed as suburban supermarkets took over, but the muffin outlived them: rebranded as a mail-order bakery in 1975, the company passed through Sara Lee, Williams Foods, and Harry & David, and is today a brand of 1-800-Flowers.com, operating from Medford, Oregon.

This is the company page. For the man, see Fred Wolferman.

Founding (1888)

Louis Wolferman, a German immigrant living in Kansas City, was running a vinegar plant that “hardly paid the bills” when a small corner grocery went bankrupt in 1888. He mortgaged the family’s modest home at 1521 Charlotte and bought the failing store’s stock for $750.¹²³ The company’s own telling makes that mortgage the origin of “what would become an empire of ‘Good Things to Eat.’”³

His son Fred Wolferman, born in Milwaukee on September 13, 1870, had intended to become a doctor or a lawyer. He shelved those plans at 17 when he saw how badly his father needed help. By one account Louis settled the matter by stamping the name “Fred Wolferman” on the front of the building.¹² Fred’s own summary, as employees recalled it: “If grocery business it is then it will be the best grocery business.”²

The first store’s location is given differently by two good sources: the Pendergast Kansas City project places it at 9th and Oak, a rented one-story space selling canned goods and freshly ground coffee; the Clio public-history entry places the 1888 founding at 9th and McGee.¹⁴ Both are recorded here.

In the earliest years the staff consisted of Louis, Fred, and a workhorse named Fanny. Fred made market rounds each morning, called on customers in person to take orders, returned to fill them, and then delivered with Fanny and the wagon.¹² The learning was expensive: on the first day open he was delighted to sell many cans of peaches at 15 cents apiece, and learned afterward that each cost 25 cents to replace.¹

The Walnut Street flagship and the Tiffin Room

Wolferman’s moved to 1108 Walnut — the Pendergast project dates the move to 1895, Clio to 1894 — and grew steadily, adding a delicatessen, bakery, candy shop, and liquor department.¹⁴

In 1908 Fred bought a farm near today’s 97th and Holmes Road to supply the store with milk, butter, eggs, turkeys, and chickens. Producing so much of what it sold gave Wolferman’s its reputation for quality: sausage, bread, salad dressing, candy, roasted coffee, and English muffins were all made in-house to Fred’s specifications.¹ The company’s stated rule, as employees remembered it, was “We only buy what we cannot make better.”²

A fire in 1909 destroyed the Walnut Street building. Wolferman’s rebuilt on the site at 11th and Walnut — a six-story structure with retail floor, warehousing, offices, an in-house bakery on the sixth floor, an elegant staircase, and an indoor balcony.¹⁴² By then 11th Street had become the epicenter of Kansas City’s downtown shopping district, and the new building became the flagship of the chain.⁴

Its best-remembered feature was the Tiffin Room, a second-floor restaurant serving breakfasts, light lunches, and the store’s own blended teas. It became a place Kansas Citians spent whole afternoons: breads straight from the oven, made-from-scratch dressings and spreads, cream from the Wolferman’s dairy farm, and desserts baked upstairs.¹⁴²

Fred was not above a misfire. One spring he tied two live lambs in front of the store to advertise lamb for Easter dinner; their cuteness discouraged customers from buying the featured meat.¹

The English muffin (1910)

In 1910, the same year the rebuilt store and Tiffin Room opened, Fred Wolferman produced the item that would outlast everything else. Experimenting with the store’s English muffin recipe, he shaped the dough in a large tin can — remembered in most accounts as a tuna can — and baked it on a hot griddle. The result stood about two inches high, roughly twice the height of an ordinary English muffin, and split open into a deeply pitted surface.¹²⁴

Harry & David, the brand’s later owner, describes the muffins as individually baked each morning in the store era and states that the signature muffin has been made “using the same recipe since 1910.”²⁵ Clio’s account likewise records that Wolferman’s English muffins “were individually baked in a tuna can each morning.”⁴

The muffins stayed a regional item for six decades. In 1975, Fred’s grandson — also named Fred — rebranded the business as a mail-order bakery, the Wolferman’s Original English Muffin Company, to compete against the rise of big-box grocers. That decision made the muffin national.² It drew durable press: Esquire called the super-thick muffin the “Arnold Schwarzenegger of breads,” USA Today “the Rambo of English muffins,” and the muffins were reported as favorites of Bob Hope, Walter Cronkite, Calvin Trillin, and President Gerald Ford.² These characterizations come from the current owner’s marketing history and have not been verified against the original publications. “

Expansion and decline of the stores

At its height Wolferman’s was a chain, not a store. The counts differ by source:

Pendergast Kansas City: grew from a father-son, one-horse operation into “an employer of over 500 at eight area stores and restaurants by the 1960s.”¹
Harry & David: “a total of seven locations: six in Kansas City and one in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”²
Clio: “a chain of 9 local stores and a store in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”⁴

Expansion anticipated the city’s southward growth: a store opened at 59th and Brookside Boulevard — next to a cornfield — in 1912, followed by a restaurant on the Country Club Plaza and several Midtown satellites.¹

Fred Wolferman died at 85 on October 2, 1955, and his sons took over, continuing the stores while greatly expanding the specialty gift and mail-order side of the business.¹

Wolferman’s then met the same fate as the downtown department stores. Competition from suburban shopping malls and supermarkets forced closures beginning in the late 1960s. The flagship at 11th and Walnut closed in 1972 and was demolished for a parking lot; the site is now part of the Town Pavilion office complex.⁴

Some secondary accounts state that the last Wolferman’s store closed in 1984. That claim could not be traced to a source fetched for this page and is not asserted here; Clio dates the flagship’s closure to 1972 and titles its entry “Wolferman’s (1894–1972).” “

Ownership after Kansas City

The Wolferman’s name survived the stores as a mail-order and wholesale brand, changing hands repeatedly:

Consolidated Foods Corp. / Sara Lee. Wolferman’s was among the earliest acquisitions of Nathan Cummings’ Consolidated Foods Corp., the grocery-supply group founded in 1953 that renamed itself Sara Lee Corp. in 1985. Food Dive describes Wolferman’s as “one of the first acquisitions,” which spread the muffins first through Consolidated’s grocery chains and then the wider retail world. The acquisition year is not given. “⁶
Williams Foods, Inc. (1999). Sara Lee sold the brand to Williams Foods in 1999, in the course of a broad brand-selling program.⁶ Pendergast Kansas City likewise lists Sara Lee, Williams Foods, and Harry & David as the company’s successive banners.¹
Harry & David Holdings, Inc. (2008). On January 15, 2008, Harry & David Holdings, Inc., headquartered in Medford, Oregon, announced it had acquired Wolferman’s from Williams Foods. The press release describes Wolferman’s as founded in 1888, selling through catalogs and an e-commerce site, with approximately $28 million in sales in 2007. Williams Foods CEO Conrad Hock Jr. framed the deal as letting Wolferman’s “continue creating ‘Good Things to Eat’ — founder Louis Wolferman’s motto.”⁵
1-800-Flowers.com (present). Wolferman’s Bakery is today part of the 1-800-Flowers.com family of brands, alongside Harry & David.²

The result is that the brand that defined how Kansas City ate for half a century is now an Oregon-based direct-mail bakery with no retail presence in the city that produced it.

Note the motto’s attribution: the Harry & David and 1-800-Flowers accounts, and Williams Foods’ CEO, credit “Good Things to Eat” to founder Louis Wolferman. The vault’s fred-wolferman page associates the motto with the company under Fred. Both usages appear in the sources; the phrase was the firm’s, not one man’s. “ on who coined it.

Significance

Wolferman’s occupies an unusual place in Kansas City’s commercial history: a locally founded specialty grocer that became a genuine civic institution — the Tiffin Room functioned as a downtown gathering place in the same way the department-store tea rooms did — and then produced a single product durable enough to outlive the entire retail operation by more than fifty years. The muffins are still sold nationally under the Kansas City name, which means Wolferman’s is simultaneously an extinct Kansas City business and a living national brand.

It is also a clean case study in the mid-century collapse of downtown retail: a chain that expanded southward with the city (Brookside 1912, the Plaza, Midtown), then lost to suburban supermarkets and malls, closed its flagship in 1972, and survived only by converting itself into a mail-order catalog.

Sources

The Pendergast Years (Kansas City Public Library / UMKC) — Daniel Coleman, “Fred Wolferman.” — Confirms: founding in 1888 as a father-son, one-horse operation, growing to an employer of over 500 at eight area stores and restaurants by the 1960s; German native Louis Wolferman came to Kansas City from Milwaukee, where Fred was born September 13, 1870; Louis’ vinegar plant “hardly paid the bills”; he mortgaged the family home at 1521 Charlotte to buy a foundering grocery’s stock for $750; Fred shelved medicine or law at age 17; the first store at 9th and Oak, a rented one-story space selling canned goods and freshly ground coffee; the 15-cent/25-cent peach-can lesson; morning market rounds, in-person orders, and deliveries with the horse Fanny; the move to 1108 Walnut in 1895 and additions of a delicatessen, bakery, candy shop, and liquor department; the Easter lambs anecdote; the 1908 farm near 97th and Holmes supplying milk, butter, eggs, turkeys, and chickens; in-house production of sausage, bread, salad dressing, candy, roasted coffee, and English muffins; the 1909 fire and rebuild at 11th and Walnut with elegant staircase, indoor balcony, and the Tiffin Room serving the store’s own blended teas; the 59th and Brookside Boulevard store opening next to a cornfield in 1912, followed by a Plaza restaurant and Midtown satellites; Fred’s death at 85 on October 2, 1955; his sons continuing the business and expanding specialty gift and mail order; operation under the banners of Sara Lee, Williams Foods, and Harry & David; the muffins’ size owing to the tuna cans in which Fred first shaped them in 1910. Cites Kansas City Times, Kansas City Star, and “The Story of Wolferman’s.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵
Harry & David / The Table — Maggie Skelton, “Do You Know the (English) Muffin Man?”, June 25, 2025 — Confirms: German immigrant Louis Wolferman mortgaging his family home in 1888 to buy a bankrupt corner grocery for $750; Fred’s initial reluctance, Louis stamping “Fred Wolferman” on the building, and Fred’s “then it will be the best grocery business” line; the early staff of Louis, Fred, and the workhorse Fanny, and the daily market-and-delivery routine; “We only buy what we cannot make better”; later purchases of a coffee plantation, livestock yards, and farms; the “Good Things to Eat” destination framing; expansion to seven locations, six in Kansas City and one in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the third store built in 1910 downtown, six stories, with retail floor, warehouses, employee offices, in-house bakery, and the Tiffin Room; the Tiffin Room’s breakfasts, light lunches, specialty brews, dairy-farm cream, and sixth-floor desserts; Fred introducing the super-thick English muffin the same year, using a large tin can on a hot griddle, producing a muffin about two inches high; the 1975 rebranding by Fred’s grandson Fred as the mail-order Wolferman’s Original English Muffin Company; the Esquire “Arnold Schwarzenegger of breads” and USA Today “Rambo of English muffins” tags and the Bob Hope / Walter Cronkite / Calvin Trillin / Gerald Ford claims; Harry & David’s 2008 acquisition; Wolferman’s Bakery today as part of the 1-800-Flowers.com family of brands. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³
Wolferman’s Bakery — “Welcome to Wolferman’s Bakery” (About Us) — Confirms: the 1888 founding when “German immigrant Louis Wolferman mortgaged his family home in Kansas City, Missouri, to purchase a bankrupt corner grocery store beginning what would become an empire of ‘Good Things to Eat’”; Louis, Fred, and the workhorse Fanny delivering produce and canned goods; Fred opening multiple storefronts; the signature super-thick English muffins “that Fred and Louis introduced in 1910.” ↩ ↩²
Clio: Your Guide to History — “Wolferman’s (1894–1972).” — Confirms: Wolferman’s as Kansas City’s premier gourmet grocery store and bakery for nearly a century; founded by Louis Wolferman and his son Fred in 1888 in a small space at 9th and McGee; known for imported fruit, cheeses, liquor, and candy; English muffins individually baked in a tuna can each morning; the family moving to a 2-story building at 1108 Walnut in 1894; the 1909 fire destroying that building and the construction of a new 6-story building; 11th Street as the epicenter of the downtown shopping district; the site becoming the flagship of a chain of 9 local stores plus one in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the second-floor Tiffin Tea Room; store closures beginning in the late 1960s under competition from suburban malls and supermarkets; the store at this location closing in 1972 and being torn down for a parking lot; the site now home to the AT&T Town Pavilion office complex. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — Harry & David Holdings, Inc., Form 8-K exhibit 99.1 press release, “Harry & David Holdings, Inc. Acquires Wolferman’s,” January 15, 2008 — Confirms: Harry & David Holdings, headquartered in Medford, Oregon, acquired Wolferman’s from Williams Foods, Inc. on January 15, 2008; Wolferman’s founded 1888; sold through catalogs and e-commerce; signature product a market-leading premium English muffin “produced using the same recipe since 1910”; also specialty breads, breakfast pastries, desserts, and gourmet toppings, largely in gift baskets; approximately $28 million in sales in 2007; quotations from Harry & David CEO Bill Williams and Williams Foods CEO Conrad Hock, Jr., the latter attributing the motto “Good Things to Eat” to founder Louis Wolferman. ↩ ↩²
Food Dive — “The strange history of Sara Lee, told through five notable brands.” — Confirms: Nathan Cummings founding the grocery-supply group Consolidated Foods Corp. in 1953 and buying the Kitchens of Sara Lee bakeries two years later; the corporation renaming itself Sara Lee Corp. in 1985; Wolferman’s, “an English muffin maker… which dated to 1888 in Kansas City,” as one of the first acquisitions, spreading the muffins through Consolidated’s grocery chains and then wider retail; Sara Lee selling the brand to Williams Foods in 1999; Wolferman’s now owned by Harry & David, which bought it in 2008 from Williams Foods. ↩ ↩²