Fremont: the home of Gerber baby food

The little city of Fremont has a claim that reaches every grocery store in the country. It’s the birthplace and headquarters of Gerber, the baby food company, and proudly calls itself the Baby Food Capital of the World.

The story began in 1927, in a family canning business that had been packing local fruits and vegetables since the turn of the century. A young Fremont mother named Dorothy Gerber was worn out from hand-straining food for her baby daughter, and she suggested to her husband, Dan, that the family’s cannery could do the work instead. They tried it, the plant workers started asking for jars for their own babies, and a new kind of food was born. Within a year, strained peas and prunes from Fremont were selling all over the country, and the soft sketch of a wide-eyed baby, drawn for an advertising contest, became one of the most recognized faces in the world.

Almost a hundred years later, Gerber is still headquartered right here in Fremont. The town celebrates its sweet, slightly unusual heritage every July with the National Baby Food Festival, a week of parades, games, and good-natured fun — including, yes, a baby food eating contest. Not bad for a small town in the Michigan woods.