Trades jones crackers with peanut butter
In 1932, the bank hired Walter Richards as president of Huston Peanut. Far from ruined, however, Huston would move to Miami, Florida, where he launched a pet equipment manufacturing company called House of Huston. His attempt to launch a business in frozen peaches failed, the bank holding his notes foreclosed, and Huston lost his peanut company. Huston continued to grow the business into the 1930s, but his inventiveness got the best of him.
The crackers were made by outside bakeries and prepared in the factory by hand feeding into machines for sandwiching. Also during the 1920s Tom's added a line of peanut butter, Red Robin Peanut Butter, and began producing peanut butter sandwich crackers under the Red Robin label. Within two years of the company's founding, Tom's peanuts were being sold around the country, generating more than $4 million in sales, and the company was relocated to its present day site. As a result, Huston was able to improve the peanuts crops he relied on, which led to increased growth and new products. Tom Huston Peanut Company was the only one of its kind to seek Carver's expertise. Huston turned to Carver for advice on improving peanut crops, making a number of trips to Tuskegee. With three employees, he hit the streets of Columbus in April 1925 to sell "Tom's Roasted Peanuts" at a nickel a package. Huston developed his own roasting process, fashioned a toasted peanut log, and invented a narrow cellophane sleeve as packaging. His business would take on the name of Planters Peanuts. In 1906, an Italian immigrant named Amedeo Obici who was selling peanuts at his Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, fruit stand began jobbing two-ounce bags of peanuts. He was not the first to hit upon this idea. Instead they paid him in peanuts.įorever creative, Huston decided to sell roasted peanuts. When Huston invented his shelling machine, however, the peanut was far from an established crop and most farmers could not afford to buy his $5,000 machine, at least not in cash. Carver also developed hundreds of products that could be derived from peanuts, which would become one of the largest cash crops in the South. In addition, the crops would also provide much needed protein to the diets of Southerners. Ironically, it was a man born into slavery, George Washington Carver, through his research at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, who would convince Southern farmers to plant peanuts and soybeans, which -because they were legumes -would restore nitrogen to the soil. After decades of cotton cultivation, southern soil was exhausted and rapidly eroding. Farmers in Virginia were the first to plant peanuts in the United States, but they did not become a popular crop in the Deep South until the 20th century. Peanuts (technically a legume and not a true nut) were originally cultivated in Peru and came to America from Africa by Spanish slave traders who fed them to their captives. With a penchant for invention, a fondness for peanuts, and a dislike for shelling them, Huston as a young man invented a shelling machine.
Tom's was founded in 1925 by Tom Huston, who was born in Alabama, raised in Texas, and relocated to Columbus, Georgia. Although Tom's products are best known in the South, they are distributed in 43 states through company-owned and independent distributors. Tom's maintains manufacturing facilities in Columbus, Georgia Knoxville, Tennessee Perry, Florida Corsicana, Texas and Fresno, California. In the candy category, Tom's sells candy coated nuts, candy bars, hard and rolled candies, and novelty candies. Tom's baked goods include cookies, cakes, and pastries. Tom's chips products include potato, tortilla, and corn chips, as well as popcorn, pretzels, and extruded products like cheese puffs. Peanut butter filled sandwich crackers was another early success and the sandwich category is now supplemented by cheese filled crackers and cream filled cookies. In the 1920s, the company was built on its toasted peanuts, but Tom's now offers a variety of flavored peanuts, cashews, pistachios, and sunflower seeds. Its business is divided among five food categories: nuts, sandwich crackers, chips, baked good, and candy. Tom's specializes in single-serve and vending machine sales.
is a privately owned, Columbus, Georgia-based company that distributes more than 300 snack food products, 250 of which it manufactures. NAIC: 311919 Other Snack Food Manufacturing Incorporated: 1925 as Tom Huston Peanut Company Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Heico Acquisitions