Warehime’s pretzels and the Snyders’ kettle chips.

Snyder’s of Hanover is a pretzel brand from Hanover, Pennsylvania, a southern Pennsylvania town, and its name carries a second family. The company traces its history to 1909. Its own timeline says that in that year Harry Warehime began producing Olde Tyme Pretzels, and English Wikipedia, citing the company and a corporate history of Hanover Foods, describes a bakery formed in Hanover by Harry Warehime in 1909. The Baltimore Sun, reporting on the company in July 2010, likewise said Snyder’s traces its history to 1909.

The Snyder name came from a separate business. The company says that in the early 1920s Eda and Edward Snyder began frying potato chips in a kettle at their summer home and sold them door to door, at fairs and at farmers’ markets; English Wikipedia dates the start of their chip sales to 1920. Their son William V. Snyder and his wife Helen were baking angel food cakes for local shops at the same time. In 1924, the company says, the family joined forces as Snyder’s Bakery, making goods that ran from cakes to fresh noodles before automated snack production took over.

In the 1940s, according to the company’s timeline, Snyder’s built a new plant on Lafayette and Granger Streets in Hanover with an automated fryer, pushed its distribution south into Virginia, west to Pittsburgh and north to New York, and packed chips in aluminum-foil bags so they would keep on longer journeys. It also built a plant in Berlin, Pennsylvania, in Somerset County, to keep up with demand.

That plant became the root of a separate company. English Wikipedia says the business split in 1950 into Snyder’s of Hanover and Snyder of Berlin; the company’s timeline says the Berlin plant was sold that year to William Snyder’s sister Edith and her husband, Clair Sterner. English Wikipedia adds that Snyder’s of Hanover is no longer associated with Snyder of Berlin, and that its packages say so.

The Warehime and Snyder stories met in 1961. According to the company, William L. Snyder sold the Hanover plant that year to Hanover Canning, the vegetable canner headed by Alan R. Warehime; English Wikipedia also gives 1961 for the purchase and notes that Hanover Canning later became Hanover Brands and then Hanover Foods. In 1963, the company says, it bought the Bechtel Pretzel Company, founded in 1947 by Bill and Helen Bechtel, and folded it into Snyder’s Bakery.

Olde Tyme, Sourdough Hard and the flavored pieces.

The products that carry the name today are mostly pretzels, in many shapes. The company says its Olde Tyme Pretzels were made by H. V. Warehime in 1909, and that Bill Bechtel developed the recipe for the Sourdough Hard Pretzel, which came to Snyder’s with the Bechtel purchase in 1963. Its website now groups the range into traditional pretzels, flavored pretzel pieces, twisted sticks, rounds, braided twists, pretzel sandwiches, seasonal sweet pretzels and gluten-free pretzels.

The company’s timeline marks how the range widened. It says Snyder’s added California-style corn tortilla chips in 1984; launched flavored pretzel pieces in 1992, with Honey Mustard & Onion followed by Buttermilk Ranch and Cheddar Cheese a year later; introduced milk chocolate and white chocolate pretzel Dips in 1998; added Pumpernickel & Onion pretzel sticks in 2004; introduced certified gluten-free pretzel sticks in August 2010; and launched Pretzel Spoonz in 2014 and Pretzel Poppers in February 2015. The Baltimore Sun noted in 2010 that, although the company was known for pretzels, it also made other snacks such as potato chips.

The Hanover bakery has had its own history. The company says that on 2 December 1989 its flagship Hanover pretzel bakery burned down after an overhead heater malfunctioned in the warehouse area, that no one was injured, and that pretzel production carried on at its Granger Street facility while the building was rebuilt and later expanded. In 1998, it says, it developed a plant in Goodyear, Arizona, and completed a new headquarters.

The leadership of those years came from the Warehime side. The company says Michael Warehime, Alan Warehime’s youngest son, joined in 1966, was named president and chief executive in 1972 and became chairman of the board in 1990. When the merger with Lance was announced in 2010, the Baltimore Sun reported that Michael A. Warehime, then chairman of Snyder’s, would chair the new company.

The name on the bag ties a pretzel line begun by a Warehime to a chip business started by the Snyders. English Wikipedia says the packages also carry a note separating Snyder’s of Hanover from the Snyder of Berlin name.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group sit on three different shelves of the grocery aisle: olive oil, pancake and baking mix, and the salty snacks of pretzels and potato chips. Each category has its own packaging habits, and a brand’s identity is often carried less by the food itself than by the tin, bottle, box or bag that holds it, and by the name printed across the front.

An olive-oil tin or bottle tends to lean on a family name, a place and a sense of origin. A pancake-mix box is built around a front panel that has to be read at a glance, with a picture of the finished stack and instructions on the side or back. A pretzel or chip bag has to work as a flat, printed surface that is folded, sealed and stacked, so colour, a wordmark and a window or photograph of the contents do much of the work.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the business, who owns it now, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Hanover Foods to Camden, New Jersey.

The snack business left Hanover Foods again around 1980. The company’s timeline says the Warehime family spun the Snyder’s of Hanover snack operation off from Hanover Brands in 1980 so that each company could concentrate on snacks or vegetables; English Wikipedia gives 1981 for the spin-off. In December 2007, according to a press release cited by English Wikipedia, Snyder’s of Hanover acquired the Chicago snack maker Jays Foods out of bankruptcy and planned to keep making its snacks.

Merger plans followed. In October 2009, the Baltimore Sun reported, Snyder’s announced a merger with Utz Quality Foods, a potato-chip maker also based in Hanover, but the two companies gave up the plan a month later when it appeared the deal faced a long and costly review by the Federal Trade Commission. On 22 July 2010 the paper reported that Snyder’s, then privately held, would combine with Lance Inc. of Charlotte, North Carolina, in what the companies called a “merger of equals.” The combined company was to be named Snyder’s-Lance and based in Charlotte, with Lance’s David V. Singer as chief executive. Lance, the paper noted, already owned the Cape Cod and Tom’s brands.

Snyder’s-Lance itself was sold. English Wikipedia says the agreement with Campbell Soup Company was announced on 18 December 2017, and Campbell said in a press release dated 26 March 2018 that it had completed the acquisition of Snyder’s-Lance and formed a new US snacking unit, Campbell Snacks, led by Carlos Abrams-Rivera. Campbell has owned the Snyder’s of Hanover brand, through Snyder’s-Lance, since 2018. English Wikipedia says Campbell announced in January 2023 that the Campbell Snacks offices in Charlotte and in Norwalk, Connecticut, would close, with operations consolidated at its headquarters in Camden, New Jersey, and that the parent company has been known as The Campbell’s Company since November 2024. The separate Snyder of Berlin business was sold to Utz, CBS Pittsburgh reported on 24 October 2019.

The brand’s website today still speaks for the bakery in Hanover. It says Snyder’s of Hanover has been “satisfying snack cravings since 1909” and that its range runs from classic pretzels in many shapes to flavored pretzel pieces. Its timeline says the rebuilt Hanover facility houses processing, packaging, warehousing and a research and development laboratory, and that the company built a solar field in 2011.

For a design guide, Snyder’s of Hanover shows how a family name can outlast the family’s ownership: the Snyders sold the Hanover plant in 1961, yet the bag still carries their name under Campbell. Compare Pepperidge Farm, another bakery brand owned by Campbell’s, and Ballreich’s, a family chip maker from Ohio. For this guide we use bag red, baked brown and salt white with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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