Uncle Ben’s Rice is a combination of fact and fiction. The company started in 1943, the company was originally called “Rice Products, Inc.”.
The company was renamed in 1946 to “Uncle Ben’s Incorporated”.
The farmer’s name was Ben; hence the name, Uncle Ben’s rice.
The name “Uncle Ben’s” was chosen as a tribute to an African-American rice farmer from Texas named Benjamin Franklin Randolph, who had been a mentor to Harwell and Huzenlaub who incorporated the business originally.
The man was real, but the warm inviting portrait of “Uncle Ben” that Forest used to decorate the box was fictional, based instead on a waiter in a Chicago Restaurant. Who received only $50 for the use.
The picture sold the rice. The perfect blending of fact and fiction.