A vegetable farmer, too many cucumbers and a family firm.

Claussen is an American brand of pickled cucumbers with its headquarters in Woodstock, Illinois, which English Wikipedia describes as an exurb of Chicago. Its defining trait is in how the pickles are made and sold. Wikipedia says Claussen pickles are uncooked, and that they are typically found in the refrigerated section of grocery stores rather than on the shelf with other jarred pickles.

The business began on a farm inside what is now the city of Chicago. Wikipedia says the company C. F. Claussen & Sons was founded by Claus Claussen Sr. in Chicago in May 1870. Claussen was a vegetable farmer, and Wikipedia places his land at what is today the corner of 51st Street and South Western Boulevard, within the present city limits. One year he had a surplus crop of cucumbers, and, Wikipedia says, he decided to pickle them.

The farm and the factory stayed in the same place for more than a century. Wikipedia says Claussen pickles were produced on that same piece of land until 1976, when the plant moved to Woodstock, Illinois, where Wikipedia says the brand’s headquarters are today.

The family ran the company for several generations. Wikipedia says Claus Claussen Sr. was succeeded by his son, Claus S. Claussen, who went on to serve as president of the company. Wikipedia also names William C. Claussen as a president of what was by then called the Claussen Pickle Company.

Oscar Mayer, General Foods, Kraft and Kraft Heinz.

The family sold the business a century after it began. Wikipedia says the company was sold to Oscar Mayer in 1970. From that point Claussen’s ownership followed the path of a series of larger American food groups.

Oscar Mayer was itself acquired by General Foods in 1981, bringing Claussen with it. General Foods then merged with Kraft, Inc. in 1990 to form Kraft General Foods, which Wikipedia says was renamed Kraft Foods in 1995. In 2015, Kraft Foods and Heinz agreed to a merger, and the combined company became Kraft Heinz. Claussen has been part of Kraft Heinz since 2015, and it sits in the same group as brands such as Kraft Mac & Cheese.

Claussen was also the subject of a federal competition case. In 2002, the economist Timothy Taylor wrote on his blog Conversable Economist in February 2024, the investment firm Hicks Muse, which owned the Vlasic Pickle Company, sought to buy the Claussen Pickle Company, and the Federal Trade Commission blocked the merger.

Wikipedia lists Claussen varieties including Kosher Dills, Deli Style Hearty Garlic, New York Deli Half Sours and Burger Slices, sold in forms that run from whole pickles and halves to spears, mini dills and sandwich slices. Wikipedia also lists a Hot & Spicy variety, sold as spears and as chips, alongside the dills and the half sours. Wikipedia says Claussen also makes sauerkraut, and that it made a sweet pickle relish until production of the relish ended in 2021.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group are all American pickle names. Pickle brands in general reach people through a glass jar more than through any other object: a cylinder of brine, cucumbers and spice that sits on a shelf or in a chilled case, with a paper or printed label and a metal lid. Some pickles are sold shelf-stable in the ordinary grocery aisle, while others are kept refrigerated from the plant to the store, and that choice shapes where a jar is placed, how it is shipped and how the label has to read from a distance.

Because brine and cucumbers look much the same from one jar to the next, much of a pickle brand’s identity is carried by the label, the lid, the colour of the type and sometimes a mascot or a slogan. Many pickle names began as regional brands sold close to the farms and plants that supplied them, and some have since passed to national food companies. The questions worth asking are plain ones: who started it, who owns it now, and where the pickles are packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what a company says about itself, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Crunch on television, cold in the store and pickles in new forms.

Claussen’s advertising has centred on texture. Wikipedia says the brand is advertised as having superior crunchiness to other brands. It describes a 1992 television advertisement in which Claussen pickles were shown snapping under pressure, while unnamed rival pickles merely bent without breaking.

Wikipedia describes the product in two plain terms: the pickles are uncooked, and they are typically sold from the refrigerated section of grocery stores. Those two facts, together with the crunch shown in the 1992 commercial, are the product traits the brand’s advertising has drawn on, as Wikipedia records them.

In recent years the name has also appeared on products made with other companies. Wikipedia says Claussen partnered with Spritz Society in 2023 to release a pickle-flavoured sparkling wine cocktail, and with the Frankford Candy & Chocolate Company in 2024 to release Claussen pickle-flavoured jelly beans.

The brand’s history is also tied to specific places. Wikipedia gives a founding month, May 1870; a founding site, a vegetable farm at what is now 51st Street and South Western Boulevard in Chicago; and a single move, in 1976, to Woodstock, Illinois. The founder’s surname has been the brand name throughout, from C. F. Claussen & Sons and the Claussen Pickle Company to the jar sold by Kraft Heinz today.

The palette in this guide is our own reading of the brand’s facts rather than a set of Claussen colours. We take a cucumber green and a darker cellar green from the product itself, a pale chill blue from the refrigerated case in which Wikipedia says the pickles are typically sold, a brine white for the jar and a dill-seed gold as a warm accent.

For a design guide, Claussen shows how a brand can build its identity on one physical trait, the crunch of an uncooked pickle kept cold, and carry a founding family’s name through more than a century of owners. Compare it with Vlasic, the shelf-stable rival whose owner tried to buy Claussen in 2002, and Kraft Mac & Cheese, a fellow Kraft Heinz brand. For this guide we use cucumber green, chill blue, brine white and dill-seed gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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