When you think of tomato sauce, then you cannot help not to think of Hunts. Hunts is surely one of the most popular brands in the tomato products. The brand is owned by ConAgra Foods, Inc which was founded over a century ago or in 1888 to be exact. The company started out with a base in the Sebastopol, California. Back then, they were known as the Hunt Bros. Fruit Pacing Co. instead of Hunts. From the name, it was sufficient to know that they started out as a fruit packaging company. This company was built by two brothers, William and Joseph Hunt.
A few years later, the two brothers moved to an area near Santa Rosa. They only stayed there for 3 years as in 1985, once again they relocated their company to Hayward. The company then started their canning business and was growing quite rapidly. Because of their rapid growth, they then concentrate to canning all the vegetables and fruit products. After all, during those years, the canning business was a boom. In 1941, the company had already shipped hundreds of millions of juices, fruits, vegetables, soup, etc on yearly basis.
Despite the success of the two brothers, in 1943, a competing firm from the 1930s took over Hunts. The firm’s name was Norton Simon’s Val Vita Food Products. The firm did not change Hunts as a brand, but the two firms which were merged, changed then name to Hunt Foods, Inc. This new firm understood that tomato products were their biggest success and thus they decided to concentrate their business on this product only.
More merges underwent in the later years, namely with the companies such as the Wesson Oil & Snowdrift Company, McCall Corporation, Canada Dry, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. The company’s name changed several times after the merge, although the brand remained the same. Finally in 1990, the company which then named Hunt-Wesson was sold to ConAgra Foods, one of the biggest food companies during the era.
After the last takeover, the brand was even more popular than ever. The Hunts tomato sauce was then developed and now it has four variants. They are:
1. Hunts Tomato Sauce
The tomato is made fresh tomatoes which are vine ripened. The tomatoes are simmered with different ingredients and seasonings to produce the ever popular original Hunts Tomato sauce. This sauce has no sweeteners or corn syrup as it is made of ripe and sweet tomatoes
2. Hunts Tomato Sauce with no Added Salt
3. Hunts Tomato Sauce Garlic, Basil and Oregano
4. Hunts Tomato Sauce Roasted Garlic
