Friends No More

Victor Alonzo Friend was a well-known Boston-area businessman whose company produced Friend's® Brick Oven Baked Beans.

Victor was born in the small coastal town of Brooklin, Maine to Robert Alonzo and Alona Blanche (Mirick) Friend. His father, a storekeeper, also owned boats for fishing and transporting lumber. By the time Victor went to public school the family had relocated to Fitchburg, Massachusetts. After High School he attended Bates College, then transferred to the Portland Maine Business College. He graduated in 1892.

Friend worked for several months for a wholesale grocery concern in Portland, saving his money. Then, with his brother Leslie, he moved to the Boston suburb, Melrose, Massachusetts, where they established a bakery. They baked beans and delivered them to their customers by a horse-drawn wagon. Using what they considered an "authentic New England recipe" allegedly based on a fellowship recipe of Pilgrim (and ancestor) Hester Friend, they founded their business on the longstanding Puritan tradition of preparing baked beans in advance to be eaten on the Sabbath, a day when worked was prohibited. They also began experimenting with canning.

Victor's other brother, Robert, entered the business and the brothers were later joined by Robert and Leslie's sons as well. Eventually they were able to can their beans without sacrificing flavor, which revolutionized the baked bean industry. In 1921 the firm was organized as Friend Brothers, bakers and canners, and in 1928 it was incorporated as Friend Brothers, Inc. They became one of the largest canners in the United States. They had factories in Melrose, Malden, Lynn, and Lowell and ran Friendly Food Shops in forty Greater Boston communities. The "brothers" also processed other New England specialties: cranberries and brown bread. Through the 1950s they nearly monopolized the New England market for their product. Victor was president until his death.

In 1973, his heirs sold the business to the William Underwood. Co (of canned deviled ham fame) and they shut down the Malden cannery in 1974, consolidating operations with their B&M® bean cannery in Portland, ME. After changing hands several times, in 1999 the Friend's brand was sold to B&G Foods, in an acquisition from Pillsbury that also included the B&M® brand.

It appears that B&G Foods has since abandoned the Friend's brand in favor of the B&M® brand, which they consider to be the more well-known/popular of the two.