Fruitcake capital of the world

In 1910, Italian immigrant and pastry maker Savino Tos opened a bakery in the small southeast Georgia town of Claxton. Townspeople flocked there for homemade ice cream and baked goods, particularly Tos’s specialty fruitcakes—pound cake mixed with sun-ripened raisins, Georgia pecans, candied pineapple, and other fruits and nuts—which he offered each fall for the holidays. In 1945, Albert Parker bought the Claxton Bakery and began mass-producing the popular fruitcakes. Soon, people across the country were familiar with the seasonal treat.

• During its first year of mass movie in the late 1940s, the bakery produced more than 45 thousand pounds of fruitcake. Today, it whips up four million pounds of fall orders.
• In 1948, a second fruitcake operation, Georgia Fruitcake Company, opened its doors in Claxton, cementing the town as the “Fruitcake Capital of the World.”
• In 1964, Claxton Fruit Cake took the global stage as an exhibitor at the 1964 New York World’s Just. Other notable draws included “Bel-Gem” waffles sold at the Belgian Village as well as the first incarnation of Walt Disney’s “It’s a Small World” ride.
• During the 1960s and seventies, Claxton girls rode fruitcake fl

  A City Full of Fruitcakes

  Gunning it down I-45 halfway between the bustling metropolis of Dallas and traffic-choked Houston, the only thing enticing a detour into tiny Corsicana is a billboard touting Collin Street Bakery’s world-famous fruitcake. Yeah, fruitcake. Take your foot off the accelerator, turn onto rural State Highway 31 W, and set your watch back one hundred years. There’s more to this out-of-the-way town, and its fruitcake, than you’d expect.

  The skinny rural road passing cattle farms and grain silos crosses a maze of train tracks on the outskirts of town. Steel rails lining what once was one of the country’s busiest crossroads lay frozen in time. Rusted relics of a famed oil boom squat silent. Further up, a lonesome antiquated train car sits across from a sign rising in an arch over Beaton Street announcing, “Historic Corsicana.” 

  If the sign doesn’t connote the historic district, the sound of your tires rumbling over the original brick streets will. The shady oak-lined lanes’ well-preserved 19th-century buildings, quaint boutiques, and antique shops are a testament to Corsicana's reverence for its past. 

  Further evidence can

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  The Quality & Value of Claxton Fruit Cake

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  The Fruitcake Capital of the World

  Publication Title

  Journal of Business Cases and Application

  Abstract

  Two different fruitcake companies in the same small town are discussed and their widely different strategies are presented. Each of the entrepreneurs began working with a “master baker” as little boys but later followed different paths to develop a successful fruitcake business. A brief history of the fruitcake is offered as evidence that the product has been around for hundreds of years and will likely not go away anytime soon in spite of the ridicule and humor that has surrounded fruitcakes during the past twenty-five years.

  Recommended Citation

  Grimes, Sara J., Michael P. McDonald, John Leaptrott. 2013. "The Fruitcake Capital of the World." Journal of Business Cases and Application, 8: 69-76: Academic and Business Research Institute (AABRI).
  https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/management-facpubs/45

  Copyright

  Publisher Statement:

  All manuscripts published in AABRI journals are published online, open access. Manuscripts are available to the readers at no cost. Readers may read, download, and use the manuscripts and information therein