Cookie entrepreneur Wallace “Wally” Amos Jr., also known as Famous Amos, died from complications related to dementia on August 13, 2024, at his home in Honolulu, Oahu. Though most recognize the name from grocery store shelves, Amos opened his first retail storefront in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard in 1975. Amos opened one of the nation’s first cookie stores two years before Mrs. Fields, and decades before nationwide chains Crumbl or Levain.

Amos became a pioneer in self-promotion and food sales in Los Angeles, becoming an influential force in the entertainment industry. The Tallahassee native who moved to New York City as a teenager learned how to make chocolate chip cookies from his aunt Della Bryant, according to the New York Times. After serving in the Air Force, Amos worked as a mailroom clerk at William Morris in New York in the late 1950s. Amos also became the agency’s first African American talent agent in 1962, sending cookies with an invitation to potential clients. Those clients eventually included Simon and Garfunkel and the Temptations. He moved to Los Angeles in 1967 and continued working in talent representation.

With a friend’s suggestion, Amos started searching for a storefront to sell his bite-sized cookies in 1975. At the time, most mass-manufactured cookies used coloring and chemicals in their products. Amos didn’t use any of those ingredients for his cookies. He secured funding from industry friends like singer Helen Reddy, and her first husband/producer Jeff Wald, who managed Sylvester Stallone and Donna Summer. He even secured a $10,000 investment from his client Marvin Gaye.

LAist reports that Amos found his ideal location at the original House of Pies on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Formosa Avenue, which is currently Bossa Nova Brazilian Cuisine. Amos’s shop was successful from the get-go thanks to his showmanship, marketing, and celebrity-filled block parties in front of the store. The Famous Amos brand showcased “the Cookie” character complete with a headshot, dressing room, and contract showing a record deal. Amos was almost always on-site with an oversized hat and a kazoo. Though this splashy strategy may seem pretty familiar in 2024, it was an innovative leap in marketing for the 1970s.

Famous Amos in Hollywood made $300,000 in revenue in its first year. The company grew to a $12 million retail operation by 1981, with over 20 Famous Amos stores throughout the U.S., and placement in supermarkets and department stores. Though Famous Amos had a meteoric rise, the company started losing money in the mid-1980s. The Shansby Group bought the company for $3 million, closing most of the independent shops, and focusing on sales inside grocery stores. By the early 1990s, the Shansby Group and Amos became embroiled in a legal battle over the use of his face and image. Currently, Nutella producer the Ferrero Group owns the Famous Amos brand. In 2011, the 7100 block of Sunset Boulevard was designated the Famous Amos Square in honor of Amos’s first store.

Amos was a longtime advocate for literacy and hosted a PBS television series in the 1980s called Learn to Read. Amos built other baking businesses including Uncle Wally’s Muffin Company (formerly Uncle Noname Cookie Co.) and Chip & Cookie in the 1990s.

Amos made a 2016 appearance on NBC’s Shark Tank to pitch a new cookie company called the Cookie Kahuna.