Stanford biochemist Patrick O. Brown invented the DNA microarray, co-founded the Public Library of Science and founded Impossible Foods.
Ethan Brown left fuel cell and energy policy work, met plant-protein researchers in Missouri in 2009 and founded Beyond Meat.
Hamdi Ulukaya bought a defunct upstate New York yogurt plant in 2005 and grew Chobani to over $1 billion in annual sales in less than five years.
Fred DeLuca borrowed $1,000 from family friend Peter Buck at 17 to start a sandwich shop and grew Subway into the largest franchise in the world.
Paula Deen built a Savannah restaurant, The Lady & Sons, with her sons, wrote fifteen cookbooks and became a Southern-cooking television personality.
Forrest Mars founded a rival Mars company in Slough, England, created the Mars bar and Maltesers, launched M&M's in 1941 and Uncle Ben's Rice, and took control of his father's company in 1964.
W. K. Kellogg began by selling brooms in Battle Creek, helped manage his brother's sanitarium and founded the Kellogg Company, then endowed the Kellogg Foundation with $66 million in 1934.
William Wrigley Jr. arrived in Chicago in 1891 with $32, sold soap and baking powder, and found his fortune when the free chewing gum premium outsold everything else.
C. W. Post, a former Springfield, Illinois farm-machinery inventor with a plow, harrow and hay-stacker patent, founded the company that became Post Consumer Brands.
John Harvey Kellogg ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium and developed Granose and cornflakes as breakfast foods, though he also co-founded the eugenics-promoting Race Betterment Foundation.
Henry J. Heinz co-founded the Pittsburgh food company that bears his name and helped secure passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.
Milton Hershey left school after fourth grade, learned candy-making as a teenager and made milk chocolate an affordable staple with the Hershey bar in 1900, building the company town of Hershey, Pennsylvania.
