Old El Paso is a brand of Tex-Mex-style foods from American food producer General Mills. These include dinner kits, tacos and tortillas, taco seasoning, sauces, condiments, rice, and refried beans.
Old El Paso products are marketed across the globe. The brand is owned by General Mills. Pillsbury acquired it in 1995, when its then-parent company Grand Metropolitan bought Pet, Inc., which had itself taken over the brand in 1968 from the Mountain Pass Canning Company.
General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company originally gained fame for being a large flour miller. It is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.
Today, the company markets many well-known North American brands, including Gold Medal flour, Annie's Homegrown, Lärabar, Cascadian Farm, Betty Crocker, Nature Valley, Totino's, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs, as well as breakfast cereals under the General Mills name, including Cheerios, Wheaties, Chex, Lucky Charms, Trix, Cocoa Puffs, and the monster cereals.
Pet, Inc., was an American company that was the first to commercially produce evaporated milk as a shelf-stable consumer product with its "PET Milk" brand. While evaporated milk was popular before refrigerators were common in homes, sales peaked in the 1950s and it is now a niche product used in baking and as a cooking ingredient.
PET anticipated this change and starting in the 1950s became a multi-brand food products conglomerate through a series of acquisitions. This gave it ownership of consumer brands like Old El Paso Mexican foods, Progresso soups, Whitman's chocolates, Underwood canned meats, and others. Pet was a subsidiary of multi-industry conglomerate IC Industries between 1978 and 1991 when it once again became independent.