GENERAL MILLS, INC.

leading American producer of packaged consumer foods, especially flour, breakfast cereals, snacks, prepared mixes, and similar products. Headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minn. General Mills was incorporated in 1928 to acquire Washburn Crosby Company, a flour-milling company formed in 1866, and four other milling companies. Specializing in cereals and flour products, the company grew as a food processor through the years of the Great Depression. Familiar products include Wheaties and Cheerios breakfast cereals, Gold Medal flour, and Bisquick baking mix. During those early years, the company also created one of America's most widely known food advisers, a corporate fabrication named Betty Crocker, and gave the name to a succession of cake and other goods used in baking. When the flour industry encountered difficult times in the early 1960s, the company began to diversify its activities. It sold off a number of unprofitable mills and began to move into such areas as snack foods, children's toys and games, and fashion. By the mid-1980s, however, the company sold off many of the nonfood units it had acquired in the '60s and was restructured. By the mid-1990s the company once again dealt exclusively with consumer foods.