Amos often baked his Aunt Della's chocolate chip cookie recipe as "a hobby to relieve stress" while working at William Morris, according to his son Shawn who wrote
Cookies & Milk.
"I'd go to meetings with a record company or movie people and bring along some cookies, and pretty soon everybody was asking for them," Amos told The New York Times in 1975, after launching his first Famous Amos store in Los Angeles with help from celebrity investors
Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy who donated $25,000.
The Famous Amos Cookie Company sold $300,000 of the home-made and preservative-free product, packaged with the image of Wally Amos in a Panama hat and embroidered cotton shirt, in its first year and was making $12 million seven years later. Packaged Famous Amos cookies could be found in grocery stores and Famous Amos cookie stores across the country.
