Tom’s was founded in Columbus, Georgia in 1925, when a young mechanical inventor named Tom Huston received peanuts from farmers in payment for some of his mechanical inventions. Huston then designed a mechanical peanut sheller and a roasting process for shelled peanuts. He then put the roasted peanuts into a narrow cellophane package. This narrow cellophane package received a patent in 1926.
Tom’s Foods was purchased in 2005 by Lance, Inc., which merged with Snyder’s of Hanover in 2010 to become Snyder’s-Lance, Inc. Today, peanuts are still roasted and packaged at the facility in Columbus. The facility also includes a bakery for crackers and cookies, and a candy factory for brittle, etc.
