From peanut sheller to snack king

The last two estate sales we have had contained beautiful old country store jars for Tom’s Peanuts. I thought maybe our readers would enjoy a brief history of this southern staple. Tom’s and Lantz items are still very collectible and I hope you enjoy the article!

The story of Tom’s Foods begins not with a bag of snacks, but with a peanut sheller. In the early 1900s, peanuts in the South were largely hog feed. But when the boll weevil devastated the region’s cotton crops, farmers turned to the hearty legume as a new source of income. It was a perfect storm for a young Texan named Tom Huston. He had a passion for peanuts and a talent for invention, and by 1912, he had perfected a mechanical peanut sheller.

This invention brought him to Columbus, Georgia, where he partnered with Clarence Medley to build a manufacturing plant. While the sheller was a success, Huston’s true breakthrough came when he found the right formula for a snack. Working with a Texas partner, he discovered that frying small Spanish peanuts in coconut oil at 350 degrees created a delicious, crunchy treat.

In April 1925, the Tom Huston Peanut Company opened its doors, selling just one product: the toasted salted peanut. Huston patented a tall, narrow, single-serving glassine bag that became an instant icon. The product was an overnight sensation. With an initial investment of $5,000, first-year sales reached over $25,000, and by the next year, they had skyrocketed to over $400,000. Huston, hailed as “the boy farmer who became peanut king” by Time Magazine, was on top of the world. He even forged a relationship with famed scientist Dr. George Washington Carver, who consulted with the company for a decade to improve its production.

Huston’s meteoric rise was followed by an equally swift fall. In 1929, he secured a major loan from the Trust Company of Georgia for an ambitious peach freezing project. But the onset of the Great Depression and a lack of refrigeration made the venture a spectacular failure. In 1931, the bank foreclosed, and Huston was removed as president of the company he founded. He rejected an offer to stay on as chairman, started a competing business that also failed, and left Columbus, never to return in his lifetime.

The company was handed to Walter Richards, who became a stabilizing force in the tumultuous years that followed. Richards skillfully led the company out of debt and through the Depression, serving as president until his death in 1961. Under his leadership and with the loyalty of a network of independent distributors, Tom’s continued to grow, expanding its snack lines and embracing new trends like vending machines.

Richards’ era began a long period of corporate ownership changes. In 1966, Tom’s was sold to General Mills, which owned it until 1983. It then passed through the hands of Rowntree-Mackintosh of England, TF Acquisition Corporation, and Heico Acquisitions, which saw sales plummet and the company declare bankruptcy in 2005.

The storied brand was acquired by Lance Inc. in 2005 for $37.9 million, and in 2018, it was purchased by Campbell Soup. Just five years later, the Columbus plant—a staple and a major employer for nearly a century—will cease operations. While the company’s future remains uncertain, its legacy is etched in the community, built on the ambition of one man and the power of a simple, salty peanut.  Happy Collecting!