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Hawkins Cheezies® first immigrated to Canada in the middle of the 20th Century.
On June 27, 1949, W.T. Hawkins Ltd. was incorporated in Canada by Willard Trice Hawkins and the company began making Cheezies®, and other snack products, in its new Canadian factory in Tweed, a small town in rural southern Ontario.
After 75 years of being a favourite Canadian snack, it is clear that Cheezies’s® success is a natural reflection of this family-owned and family-operated business’s past and its decades-long dedication to using only top quality ingredients in its snacks.
Founding owner, W.T. Hawkins and Jim Marker, an inventor-farmer from Dayton, Ohio, had spent years in Chicago in the confectionery industry perfecting their craft. Jim invented the machine that forms the foundation of Cheezies®’s production and W.T. came up with the idea of using an aged Cheddar cheese-based slurry to coat the cooked corn meal “fingers.” Between their natural ingredients, the taste and texture of the snack, and W.T.’s marketing genius, Cheezies® were a resounding hit with Canadian snackers from coast to coast to coast.
Jim originally intended his extruder to be a means of preserving cattle feed throughout the winter. He was, in effect, feeding uncooked, naked Cheezies to cattle in the Dayton, Ohio area. But they had a higher and better use.
Cheezies® themselves had been born in Chicago, a few years before their reincarnation in Canada, to W.T.’s previous company “Confections, Inc.” which, at the time, was the world’s largest maker of snack foods and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The company’s move to Canada in 1949 was the result of a confluence of events:
Accordingly, in 1949, Confections Inc. became W.T. Hawkins, Ltd, now Inc., and moved to Tweed.
A disastrous fire in the Tweed factory precipitated the Hawkins move to Belleville in 1956. The story goes that it took Jim Marker and Shirley Woodcox, Jim’s second-in-command and the company’s general manager, only 30 days from the day the Tweed fire was extinguished to get the Belleville plant – which had previously been used to manufacture a variety of products – up, running and making Cheezies®. In his latter years, W.T. used to comment that there was considerably less red tape back then.
W.T. Hawkins Inc. has been run, since its inception, by the Hawkins family: founder Willard Trice Hawkins; his son, Willard Western (Web); and, most recently, his grandson, Kent. Kent’s son, Travis, will be the fourth generation of Hawkins to run the company.
Each generation of the Hawkins family has made his own indelible mark on the company’s 75 years of success. W.T. recognized and exploited Cheezies’s® appeal as a popular snack and developed the aged Cheddar Cheese slurry.
Web brought in Old Dutch as a major customer that distributes and sells Cheezies® in many parts of Canada. He also is known for buying a fleet of branded Hawkins Cheezies© trucks to serve simultaneously as vehicles for both delivering and advertising Cheezies®. Several of his unique marketing innovations are still in use by the company.
Under Kent’s direction, the company has made great strides in improving process efficiencies and increasing production in the existing factory but the manufacturing facility has its limitations. More than 100 years old, it is getting to be an old and tired plant.
The company has recently purchased, from the City of Belleville, land in a new industrial park, with the intention of building a more modern, more efficient Cheezies® factory, with greater capacity, to help meet the continually growing demand for Canada’s favourite crispy, crunchy, cheddar cheese-coated, extruded corn meal snack.
Hawkins Cheezies® first immigrated to Canada in the middle of the 20th Century.
On June 27, 1949, W.T. Hawkins Ltd. was incorporated in Canada by Willard Trice Hawkins and the company began making Cheezies®, and other snack products, in its new Canadian factory in Tweed, a small town in rural southern Ontario.
After 75 years of being a favourite Canadian snack, it is clear that Cheezies’s® success is a natural reflection of this family-owned and family-operated business’s past and its decades-long dedication to using only top quality ingredients in its snacks.
Founding owner, W.T. Hawkins and Jim Marker, an inventor-farmer from Dayton, Ohio, had spent years in Chicago in the confectionery industry perfecting their craft. Jim invented the machine that forms the foundation of Cheezies®’s production and W.T. came up with the idea of using an aged Cheddar cheese-based slurry to coat the cooked corn meal “fingers.” Between their natural ingredients, the taste and texture of the snack, and W.T.’s marketing genius, Cheezies® were a resounding hit with Canadian snackers from coast to coast to coast.
Jim originally intended his extruder to be a means of preserving cattle feed throughout the winter. He was, in effect, feeding uncooked, naked Cheezies to cattle in the Dayton, Ohio area. But they had a higher and better use.
Cheezies® themselves had been born in Chicago, a few years before their reincarnation in Canada, to W.T.’s previous company “Confections, Inc.” which, at the time, was the world’s largest maker of snack foods and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The company’s move to Canada in 1949 was the result of a confluence of events:
Accordingly, in 1949, Confections Inc. became W.T. Hawkins, Ltd, now Inc., and moved to Tweed.
A disastrous fire in the Tweed factory precipitated the Hawkins move to Belleville in 1956. The story goes that it took Jim Marker and Shirley Woodcox, Jim’s second-in-command and the company’s general manager, only 30 days from the day the Tweed fire was extinguished to get the Belleville plant – which had previously been used to manufacture a variety of products – up, running and making Cheezies®. In his latter years, W.T. used to comment that there was considerably less red tape back then.
W.T. Hawkins Inc. has been run, since its inception, by the Hawkins family: founder Willard Trice Hawkins; his son, Willard Western (Web); and, most recently, his grandson, Kent. Kent’s son, Travis, will be the fourth generation of Hawkins to run the company.
Each generation of the Hawkins family has made his own indelible mark on the company’s 75 years of success. W.T. recognized and exploited Cheezies’s® appeal as a popular snack and developed the aged Cheddar Cheese slurry.
Web brought in Old Dutch as a major customer that distributes and sells Cheezies® in many parts of Canada. He also is known for buying a fleet of branded Hawkins Cheezies© trucks to serve simultaneously as vehicles for both delivering and advertising Cheezies®. Several of his unique marketing innovations are still in use by the company.
Under Kent’s direction, the company has made great strides in improving process efficiencies and increasing production in the existing factory but the manufacturing facility has its limitations. More than 100 years old, it is getting to be an old and tired plant.
The company has recently purchased, from the City of Belleville, land in a new industrial park, with the intention of building a more modern, more efficient Cheezies® factory, with greater capacity, to help meet the continually growing demand for Canada’s favourite crispy, crunchy, cheddar cheese-coated, extruded corn meal snack.
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