Slim Jim

Slim Jim is an American meat snack brand sold globally and manufactured by Conagra Brands. They are widely available and popular in the United States, with 2015 revenues of $575 million. About 569 million of Slim Jims are produced annually in at least 21 varieties. History Jack Comella invented the first Slim Jim in 1929 in Philadelphia, although he and his partner, Adolph Levis, subsequently hired a meatpacker to develop the product for production in the 1940s. He later sold the company in 1967 for about $20 million to General Mills, which moved the operations to Raleigh, North Carolina, and merged them into the meatpacking operations of their recently-acquired Jesse Jones Sausage Co. to create Goodmark Foods. Ron Doggett moved to Raleigh in 1969 as he was named corporate controller of the newly-formed entity, and was later the company's Vice President of Finance. In 1982, General Mills put the company up for sale, and Doggett and three other GoodMark executives acquired the company; Doggett assumed the offices of president and chief operating officer. ConAgra bought Goodmark in 1998. Until 2009, the former Jones Sausage plant in Garner, North Carolina was the only facility in the world which produced Slim Jims. The product Levis created is different from the one produced since the 1990s, with Lon Adams (1925–2020) developing the current Slim Jim recipe while working for Goodmark. Production was interrupted after an explosion and fire on June 9, 2009, heavily damaged the plant in Garner, killing three workers and a subcontractor worker. ConAgra reopened the plant six weeks after the incident. Since it could only produce at about half of its original capacity, ConAgra arranged for other facilities to produce Slim Jims including facility in Troy, Ohio. On May 20, 2011, the facility in Garner closed, the same day that the company's former spokesman "Macho Man" Randy Savage died.