The Quaker Oats Company was born in 1901, when several American oat processing pioneers merged:

The Quaker Mill Company, which Henry Parsons Crowell had established in Ravenna, Ohio. He registered the now-famous "Quaker" trademark, and sold Quaker Oats in two-pound paper packages with directions printed on the back.
A huge cereal mill operated in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, by John Stuart, his son Robert, and their partner, George Douglas.
Schumacher’s German Mills American Oatmeal Company.

Robert Stuart became the chief executive officer. Generation after generation of the Stuart family ran Quaker Oats until William Smithburg took over in 1979. Quaker operated as an independent company for 100 years. And it diversified, selling many other products in addition to oatmeal. They include ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, snacks, pancake syrups, flavored rice and pasta products, pet foods, and Gatorade sports dink and thirst quencher products. In 1970, Quaker Oats stopped production in Akron and moved its headquarters to Chicago.

In 2001, Quaker merged with PepsiCo, Inc., the Purchase, New York-based food and beverage company, and became a PepsiCo division. The merger produced the world’s fourth-largest consumer-goods company.