Prego facts for kids
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Prego's "Sauce of the year"
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| Type | Pasta sauce |
|---|---|
| Owner | Campbell Soup Company |
| Country | U.S. |
| Introduced | 1981 |
| Markets | Worldwide |
Prego is a popular pasta sauce brand. It's made by the Campbell Soup Company. The name "Prego" means "You're welcome!" in Italian. This sauce first came out around the world in 1981.
Contents
Discover Prego Pasta Sauce
Prego offers many different kinds of pasta sauce. You can find nineteen traditional flavors. These include marinara, classic traditional, and roasted garlic Parmesan. There are also flavors with mini meatballs or zesty mushrooms.
Organic and Hearty Choices
Prego also has an Organic line. Two flavors, Organic Mushroom and Organic Tomato and Basil, use all organic ingredients. For those who like a richer sauce, there's the Hearty Meat sauce line. It comes in flavors like Meatball Parmesan and Authentic Italian Sausage. There's also a Three Meat Supreme flavor.
Another line is called Chunky Garden Pasta Sauce. This includes flavors like Garden Combination and Mushroom Supreme. You can also find Mushrooms & Green Pepper, and Tomato, Onion & Garlic. In some parts of Asia, Prego even has special local flavors. For example, you can find Tom Yam sauce in Thailand and Malaysia.
How Prego Sauce Was Made
In the 1970s, Campbell's Soup wanted to make more products from tomatoes. They had already made a lot of soup. Their goal was to create a new product. Campbell's scientists and Chef Werner Schilling worked together. They found a way to make thick tomato sauce in large amounts. This sauce would not "weep," which means the water would not separate from the solids.
Other big pasta sauce companies used starch to make their sauces thick. This made their sauces less like homemade ones. Because Prego found a way to avoid weeping, their sauce tasted more like it was made at home. This new idea and smart marketing helped Prego become very successful. It was one of the most popular new food products in the early 1980s.
Making the Taste Just Right
In 1986, Prego's sales growth slowed down. Campbell's Soup then worked with Howard Moskowitz. He was an expert in understanding how people taste things. He helped them try out different amounts of ingredients. Testers would rate how much they liked the sauces. This helped create a model to make the sauce taste the best. It also helped keep costs low.
This work helped improve the original recipe. Just before Prego launched, the sauce was made sweeter. This was because people were starting to like sweeter flavors more. This change helped Prego become a huge hit right away.
Smart Marketing for Prego
Prego did amazingly well in its first year. It sold over $100 million worth of sauce. It also gained 28% of the market share. This was a huge success for a new food brand. Especially since it was entering a market that already had many brands.
Besides the new product ideas, Prego's marketing was also special. Laurel Cutler helped with the marketing plan very early on. Herb Baum, a marketing director at Campbell's, also pushed for a strong marketing effort. He helped launch the product widely, even when some other leaders had doubts.
The Clara Peller Ad
Prego was part of a small controversy because of one of its ads. The ad featured an older woman named Clara Peller. She was shown holding a giant jar of Prego meat sauce. She said, "I finally found it!" This was a nod to her famous line, "Where's the beef?" from ads for Wendy's Restaurants. Wendy's had not given permission for her to be in the Prego ad. Because of this, Wendy's stopped using Clara Peller in their own campaigns.
Prego on the History Channel
In March 2024, the History Channel shared Prego's story. It was featured on their show, "The Food that Built America." This was the first episode of season five. The episode was called "All American Marinara."
