<strong>Margaret Rudkin (1897-1967)</strong><br /><em>Pepperidge Farm</em><br />Started: 1937<br /><br />Rudkin began making stone-ground wheat at her family's farmhouse in Connecticut for her son, who suffered with asthma and food allergies. Soon her son's doctor, initially skeptical, was prescribing her bread to other patients and her husband was carrying loaves on the train to New York to be sold at specialist grocers.<br /><br />By the end of 1939, Rudkin had sold more than a million loaves and featured in Reader's Digest. In 1940, she moved her business from her garage to its own factory, adding cookies to her range a decade later.<br /><br />She sold the business to Campbell Soup for $28 million in 1961, and was the first woman to serve on Campbell's board of directors.
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