In 1903, Richard Hellmann emigrated from Vetschau, Germany, to New York City, where in August 1904 he married Margaret Vossberg, whose parents owned a delicatessen.
[1] In mid-1905 he opened his own delicatessen at 490 Columbus Avenue, where he developed his first ready-made mayonnaise, dished-out in small amounts to customers.
It became so popular that he began selling it in bulk to other stores, constantly improving the recipe to make it avoid spoilage longer.
[2] In 1913 after continuing sales success he built a factory to produce his mayonnaise in even greater quantities, and began selling it on September 1 under the name Hellmann's Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise, seeing sales greatly increase after switching from hotel-size large stone jars to customer-size clear glass jars that could be reused for home canning after selling them a rubber ring for one cent.
In February 1916 the company was incorporated as Richard Hellman, Inc., after which he briefly tried other products, such as horseradish and pumpernickel bread before deciding to concentrate on mayonnaise and expand distribution outside the New York area.