Jell-O was invented by a New York-based cough syrup manufacturer, Pearle B. Wait. He bought a patent for powdered gelatin and added flavoring to the powder and gave the product its present name in 1897.
Two years after the invention, he figured out he failed to market the product, and in 1899 he sold the business to a neighbor, Orator Francis Woodward, for $450.
Woodward initially also struggled to market the product. He and his team at Genesee Pure Food company (which would later became, General Foods, which now had merged with Kraft Foods Inc.) did numerous marketing attempts at popularizing Jell-O, from distributing cookbooks, launching ad with various celebrities, and other innovative things driven to solve the problem of getting traction, and it was not until a decade later that the product began to get traction among housewives and cooks, and sales skyrocketed.
