Call Number:

SCRC 625

Repository:

Temple University Libraries: Special Collections Research Center

Extent:

• 11 linear feet (17 boxes)
• 0.0002 gigabytes (1 .eps file)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Tasty Baking Company Records, SCRC 625, Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Date:

1914-2008 (inclusive) and 1980-2003 (bulk)

Creator:

Tasty Baking Company

Form:

Audiocassettes, Correspondence, Negatives, Photographs, Publications (documents), Sound recordings, Floppy disks, Born digital, video recordings (physical artifacts), Administrative records, Books, Clippings, Color transparencies, Drawings, Legal documents, Mailing lists, Minutes, Newsletters, Objects, Pamphlets, Periodicals, Phonograph records, Photocopies, Posters, Press releases, Radio scripts, Reports, Scrapbooks, Slides, Souvenir programs, Speeches, and Transparencies

Abstract:

Based in Philadelphia, the Tasty Baking Company is one of the oldest and largest baking companies in the United States. The success of the company revolved around the use of high-quality ingredients and individually wrapped snacks, a unique approach at the time. The company motto from its earliest beginnings was "The cake that made mom stop baking."

Pittsburgh baker Philip J. Baur and Boston egg sales representative Herbert T. Morris founded the Tasty Baking Company in 1914. They borrowed a total of $50,000 and set up shop in a two-story former foundry at 24th Street and Sedgley Avenue in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. The company was a success from the start, netting $28 from cakes priced at ten cents each on their first day of business. Tasty Baking Company would go on to gross $300,000 by the end of 1914. The trademark Tastykake horse and wagon became a familiar site on the streets of Philadelphia. In 1916, the company bought its first trucks, Model T Fords, to go with the fourteen wagons it had on the street.

In 1922, the company moved its main headquarters to Hunting Park Avenue in North Philadelphia where it would remain for nearly ninety years. The facility was state of the art for its time using a gravity fed ingredients system. Popular treats included the Tastykake Junior (1917), Krimpet (1927), Tansy-Kake (1931), and the TastyKake fruit pie (1930s).

By the 1980s, Tasty Baking Company had expanded its distribution beyond Philadelphia to include sales markets along the East Coast and as far west as Ohio. In 2009, the company moved its operations to the Philadelphia Navy Yard in South Philadelphia. The company remains a Philadelphia food tradition along with the cheesesteak, hoagie, pretzel, and scrapple.

The collection documents Tasty Baking Company's nationwide activities to market, advertise, and distribute company baked products. Records include annual reports, company histories, correspondence, news clippings, publications, sound recordings, film, and memorabilia. The collection also includes bound volumes of company news articles compiled by various press clippings services dating from 1984 to 2001, photographs and negatives of employees, snack products, and miscellaneous company activities, as well as 33 1/2 rpm sound recordings of company activities, in particular the Tasty Baking Company Christmas Hour from 1952 to 1955.

The collection is arranged into 6 series as follows:

Series 1: Administrative records, 1937-2008, bulk 1984-1999

Series 2: Marketing and advertising records, 1914-2008, bulk 1940-2000

Series 3: Published materials,1920-2003, bulk 1950-2000

Series 4: Audiovisual materials, 1914-2006, undated, bulk 1952-1999

Series 5: Memorabilia, 1942-1958, undated, bulk 1942-1958

Series 6: Website versions in Archive-It, 2000-2019