The Brand Formerly Known as 'Aunt Jemima' Becomes Pearl Milling Company

Last year's reckoning with major, systemic issues of racial justice touched seemingly every area of life, and the food world was no exception. Brands like Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima took the opportunity to step back and realize that their names and imagery were outdated relics of a racist past. They pledged to find a new way forward.

More than seven months after Quaker Oats and parent company PepsiCo declared they would ditch the Aunt Jemima iconography, the brand finally has a new name: Pearl Milling Company.

As announced in a press release, Pearl Milling Company gets its name from a St. Joseph, Mo. business founded in 1888, supposedly responsible for the self-rising pancake mix that'd become a hallmark of the product that would become Aunt Jemima's pancake mix. The release also notes that Quaker solicited opinions from "consumers, employees, external cultural and subject-matter experts, and diverse agency partners" during the rebrand process.

Earlier: Quaker Oats to Retire Aunt Jemima Name and Image

Outside of ditching a caricatured black woman whose name and image has its origins in Reconstruction-era minstrel shows, the look and feel of Pearl Milling Company will otherwise be familiar. Red is still the dominant color of its packaging across pancakes and syrup, with yellow used as an accent.

The font for the company's name itself also tracks pretty closely with the font Aunt Jemima used. You should still be able to find it just as easily on store shelves, just without a racial stereotype involved.

Despite the announcement, you still won't see Pearl Milling Company-branded products (a line that includes cornmeal, flour, and grits, in addition to pancake mix and syrup) rolling out until June 2021. That might be disappointing for those who'd hoped they'd work faster to move on from Aunt Jemima, but at least it sounds like the brand will be committing $1 million "to empower and uplift Black girls and women" between now and then.

So if you love the quaker subsidiary's take on maple syrup but don't like what the old brand represents, you'll just have to sit tight for a little while longer. Hopefully there's no dark secret to Pearl Milling Company's history we'll discover 50 years from now.