The distinctive blue and white packaging for Jiffy corn muffin mix may seem charmingly dated, a throwback to pantries of decades past.
Splashy rebrands are not the company's style, said Howard S. Holmes II, president and CEO of Chelsea Milling Company, which has been making the mix for 75 years.
But the box has, in fact, been subtly tweaked over the years.
"Do you remember when Coca-Cola came out with their new Coca-Cola formula?" Holmes asked. "It didn't really go well. I think we'd be foolish to move away from what people expect, particularly from the performance of our mixes and the presence of our packaging."
The old-fashioned packaging sells itself, he said. Jiffy corn muffin mix is one of the top selling dry goods grocery items in the United States, according to the company. Holmes said the southeast Michigan-based company sells about 200 million boxes of various mixes every year, including for brownies, pie crust, buttermilk biscuits and cake.
"Historically, we've never had a marketing department," Holmes said. "We've never had an advertising department. You'll never see a print ad for Jiffy mix. You've never seen a commercial on TV for Jiffy mix. And as far as I'm concerned, you won't." The company is now experimenting with social media marketing, but Holmes said it's sticking to its old-school ethos.
Jiffy boxes are manufactured in Michigan, just like everything else made by Chelsea Milling Company. The company was started in 1887, taken over by Holmes' great great grandfather Harmon in 1901 and has been run by the family for five generations. Great grandmother Mabel Holmes invented the cornbread mix in 1930. As company lore has it, she wanted to help a single dad during the Great Depression to bake for his kids. Back then, boxes of Jiffy mix cost 10 cents. Right now, you can find them on sale for 50 cents at Walmart.
"They feel very ubiquitous," said food studies professor Amy Bentley, of New York University. She's nostalgic, she said, for the Jiffy cornbread she baked as a child and remains fond of iconic American brands. But she would be reluctant, she added, to make Jiffy cornbread today.
"The sodium level is super high," she noted. "A third of your daily allotment of sodium for a portion of cornbread or a corn muffin. That's ridiculous."
Not to mention all those preservatives that keep Jiffy shelf-stable, she added. But for many families in a tough economy, Bentley said, a box of Jiffy mix is better — and cheaper — than a bag of corn chips. And at least these mixes encourage people to cook, she added.
Affordability is a point of pride to Howard S. Holmes II, who said his family-run company can keep prices low because it does not answer to shareholders. Not once in the company's long history have there been layoffs, he said, and the average length of employment is 14 and a half years. He said he constantly fends off calls from private equity firms.
"It's become kind of a laughable occurrence," he said. "You'd think that people would get it at this point, that we're never going to sell, we're never going to move away from the core of who we are. But they keep calling and I just keep, you know, toying with them on the phone and then say, 'I'm sorry, I got to go.'"
A visitor to the Chelsea Milling Company will see a vast factory filled with gleaming, state of the art machinery. But there's also a room of vintage equipment that looks like an industrial museum. It isn't though. It's all in use. Every day, Holmes said, an old box maker shoots out Jiffy packages on an antiquated metal track that dates from World War II. Why does he keep the old machines around? "We still use them," Homes said. If it ain't broke, why replace it?
Edited for radio and the web by Meghan Sullivan, produced for radio by Chloee Weiner.
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