Hormel Foods

Hormel Foods Corporation, doing business as Hormel Foods or simply Hormel, is an American multinational food processing company founded in 1891 in Austin, Minnesota, by George A. Hormel as George A. Hormel & Company. The company originally focused on the packaging and selling of ham, sausage and other pork, chicken, beef and lamb products to consumers, adding Spam in 1937. By the 1980s, Hormel began offering a wider range of packaged and refrigerated foods. The company changed its name to Hormel Foods Corporation in 1993 and uses the Hormel brand on many of its products; the company's other brands include Planters, Columbus Craft Meats, Dinty Moore, Jennie-O, and Skippy. The company's products are available in over 80 countries.

The company was founded as George A. Hormel & Company in Austin, Minnesota, by George A. Hormel in 1891. It changed its name to Hormel Foods in 1993.

Born 1860 in Buffalo, New York, Hormel worked in a Chicago slaughterhouse before becoming a traveling wool and hide buyer. His travels took him to Austin and he decided to settle there. He borrowed $500 and opened a meat business. Hormel handled the production side of the business and his partner, Albert Friedrich, handled the retail. Their partnership dissolved in 1891 as Hormel started his own meat packing operation in northeast Austin in a creamery building on the Cedar River.

To make ends meet in those early days, Hormel continued to trade in hides, eggs, wool, and poultry. The name Dairy Brand was first used in 1903. In the first decade of the 20th century distribution centers were opened in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth, San Antonio, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, and Birmingham.

In 1915, Hormel began selling dry sausages under the names of Cedar Cervelat, Holsteiner and Noxall Salami. Hormel products began appearing in national magazines, such as Good Housekeeping, as early as 1916.

In 1921, when George's son Jay Hormel returned from service in World War I, he uncovered that assistant controller Cy Thomson had embezzled $1,187,000 from the company over the previous ten years. The scandal provided George Hormel with additional incentive to professionalize his company. He did so by arranging for more reliable capital management, by dismissing unproductive employees, and by continuing to develop new products, reportedly with the mantra "Originate, don't imitate". In 1926, the company introduced Hormel Flavor-Sealed Ham, America's first canned ham, and added a canned chicken product line in 1928. Throughout the 1930s, Hormel ads were featured on the radio program The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.

In 1933, workers, led by itinerant butcher Frank Ellis, formed the Independent Union of All Workers and conducted one of the nation's first successful sit-down strikes; the union would later join the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO, later AFL-CIO).

Hormel Chili and Spam were introduced in 1936 and 1937 respectively. In 1938, Jay C. Hormel introduced the "Joint Savings Plan" which allowed employees to share in the profits of the company.