Which Company Owns Velveeta Cheese?

Velveeta is a creamy processed cheese that's perfect in your favorite queso, au gratin potatoes, or even as an unexpected ingredient in creamy fudge. It's iconically bright yellow, and been around for more than 100 years — probably longer than you thought. It was invented back in 1918 by Emil Frey before it was later purchased by Kraft in 1927. Today, the Velveeta brand is still owned by Kraft.

Frey was hired by the Monroe Cheese company, based in Monroe, New York, back in 1888. The Monroe Cheese company was later purchased by a man named Jacob Weisl from New York City, and he kept Frey on staff. While the Monroe company's cheese was being produced, it was leaving behind a lot of whey that ultimately went to waste, and Frey was determined to find a solution. He added whey back into cheese over heat, and a smooth-as-butter texture was formed. He named it Velveeta. By 1923, Velveeta was its own separate company under Weisl's ownership. For the next few years, the company produced Velveeta until it was eventually sold to Kraft.

Within a little more than a decade of purchasing Velveeta, Kraft switched out the ingredients from real cheese to the chemicals that turned it into the processed product we know it as today. It ultimately led Kraft to market the cheese as a diet alternative to standard cheese, likely due to the change in its nutrition facts. Its other benefits, including that it didn't need to be refrigerated the way other cheeses did, helped it fly off store shelves.

Velveeta consumption peaked in the 1990s, but as people began to care more about whole foods, Velveeta's sales started to decline. After all, it's not even labeled as processed cheese anymore, but rather as a "cheese product" alongside items such as American cheese. Sales grew again as inflation rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it led to Kraft going with new marketing techniques for the cheese that focused on the joy it brought to consumers more than anything else. Today, Velveeta is still a household name, with plenty of variations on store shelves.