PUBLISHED ONAugust 15, 2024 5:11 AMByMelissa Teo The world has lost yet another icon.
Founder of popular cookie brand Famous Amos, Wally Amos, has died at aged 88.
He passed in his Honolulu Hawaii home on Tuesday (Aug 13) with his wife, Carol, at his side.
The cause of death was complications from dementia, shared his children, Sarah, Michael, Gregory and Shawn Amos in a statement to several publications including The New York Times and ABC News.
"With his Panama hat, kazoo, and boundless optimism, Famous Amos was a great American success story, and a source of Black pride," read the statement.
They added that their dad "inspired a generation of entrepreneurs when he founded the world's first cookie store".
Wally opened his first bakery on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1975, shared an anecdote on the Famous Amos website.
While big cookies were popular during that time, Wally took a risk and created bite-sized ones.
These were crafted from an original family recipe and soon attracted Hollywood celebrities and musicians.
To Wally, Famous Amos was not just a business, but something he enjoyed doing.
"I started making cookies just to make a living and to be happy doing what I was doing. And I just, I was so committed and so involved and so joyous about it," Amos said in the interview in 1991 with the Detroit Black Journal.
"I wanted to make a living because you've got to support the business, otherwise you'd be out of business. But I didn't say I wanted to go into the cookie business to make a lot of money and sell a lot of cookies. I wanted to do something I like the way I wanted to do it."
Unfortunately, after a few years in the business, he struggled to keep up profits as the company expanded, reported The Business Times.
He had to sell off equity stakes throughout the 1980s and in 1988, sold the remainder to a private equity firm.
He stayed with the company he built from scratch for another year before leaving.
"I'd lost the company really because I didn’t use to listen to people a lot because I was Famous Amos," he told The New York Times in an interview in 1999.
However, he didn't stop there and over two decades, he developed more brands, including The Cookie Kahuna.
While these ventures didn't work out either, the tenacious Wally still appeared on business reality TV series Shark Tank US in 2016 to try and offer a 20 per cent stake in The Cookie Kahuna.
Unfortunately, the panel of investors all passed.
Despite all the hardships, Wally still remained positive.
"Being famous is highly — very, very, very highly — overrated," he told Honolulu magazine in 2014.
"I am fortunate that, through all the tribulations, all the ups and downs that I’ve experienced, I still make a cookie that tastes good."
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