Monday, September 09, 2013

This is Hormel



Tonight I watched a YouTube video of the Hormel company which was probably filmed in the early 1960's. It's about 30 minutes long, so you may not be interested, but I'm pretty sure my brother will watch it. I thought some of my friends would like to listen to the first few minutes where you will hear two local boys pronounce the company name "HOR-mul," while watching a freight train pass by including several Hormel cars. As the video continues, the narrator pronounces it the way some marketer came up with years ago: Hor-MELL.

As you know, I worked at the Hormel plant for 10 years. Most of those years I was the accounting clerk in the sliced bacon department. About half way through the video, this department is shown - from the pork bellies coming out of the smokehouse on rails to the machine that molds the pork sides into uniform, oblong blocks. Next the bacon is shown coming through the automatic slicer and being put into one pound packages.

Things have changed since this filming—everyone wears a hard hat, hair net, and beard net, if one has facial hair. The biggest changes are there are no longer tours and the old buildings have been replaced by a new, state-of-the-art large single building. Hormel Foods is a Fortune 500 company with a huge number of products under its label, including the newly acquired Skippy Peanut Butter.

One other tidbit - the Hormel labels have always included a sprig of parsley.

2 comments:

MamaD4 said...

Mmmm...bacon.

I Love Barbershop said...

I listened to the entire thing also. Thought it was very interesting.