Amos, Wally (1936-2024), was an American entrepreneur (business developer) and a former talent agent. He founded the Famous Amos chocolate chip cookie company. Amos later went on to establish other cookie companies and write a number of books.
Wallace Amos, Jr., was born on July 1, 1936, in Tallahassee, Florida. After his parents separated, he moved to New York City to live with his Aunt Della. She often baked chocolate chip and pecan cookies. Amos studied the culinary (cooking) arts for two years at the Food and Maritime Trades Vocational High School in New York City. He served for four years in the United States Air Force. In 1957, Amos returned to New York. He worked at the department store Saks Fifth Avenue, and then got a job in the mailroom at William Morris, a talent agency.
Amos worked his way up at the agency. In 1962, he became the company’s first Black talent agent. Amos contracted the singing duo Simon and Garfunkel (see Simon, Paul). He eventually became the head of the agency’s rock music department. There, he worked with such famous Black singers as Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, and Diana Ross.
In 1967, Amos moved to Los Angeles, California, to open his own talent management company. Without much business, he began baking chocolate chip cookies. He set out to open a cookie store using a version of his Aunt Della’s recipe. Amos got a loan from Marvin Gaye and the singer Helen Reddy. He staged a large advertising campaign and a grand opening gala to launch his cookie business. In 1975, he opened the first Famous Amos cookie store in Los Angeles. Soon afterward, he opened two more stores on the West Coast of the United States and one in the Bloomingdale’s department store in New York City.
In 1985, Amos began selling off parts of Famous Amos. In 1988, an investment group purchased the company and repositioned the cookie as a lower-priced snack food. Amos launched the Wally Amos Presents Chip & Cookie company in 1991. He was sued by the owners of Famous Amos for infringing on the brand and forbidden to use his own likeness to sell food products. In 1998, the Keebler Company purchased Famous Amos. Amos returned to the brand as a spokesperson.
In 1993, Amos and the distributor Lou Avignone launched the Uncle Noname Cookie Company. It became Uncle Wally’s Muffin Company in 1999. In 2005, Amos started the Chip & Cookie company. In 2016, Amos appeared on the television reality show “Shark Tank” in an effort to secure funding for a new company, the Hawaii-based Cookie Kahuna. However, none of the investors on the show gave Amos money, and the company later went out of business.
Amos wrote many books, including the memoir The Famous Amos Story: The Face That Launched a Thousand Chips (1983, with Leroy Robinson). He also wrote two inspirational books with Stu Glauberman—Watermelon Magic: Seeds of Wisdom, Slices of Life (1996) and Watermelon Credo: The Book (2010). Amos died on Aug. 13, 2024.
