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Learning more about Southwest's Famous Peanuts

lmacandrew
Employee
Employee

 

Michael with with King Nut Companies, President and Chief Executive Officer,  Marty KananMichael with with King Nut Companies, President and Chief Executive Officer, Marty Kanan

Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a day with King Nut Companies, President and Chief Executive Officer,  Marty Kanan, who welcomed me to Solon, Ohio, for a tour of the King Nut manufacturing facilities.  My expectations were simple; I assumed an employee would scoop peanuts or pretzels into a bag, have the bags sealed, and Southwest Airlines would then receive the peanuts.  Boy, was I wrong! 

 

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King Nut Company packages peanuts, pretzels, snack mixes and trail mixes for multiple airlines, retail stores, and convenience stores across the country in several manufacturing facilities a suburb about 20 minutes outside of Cleveland.  On the day I visited the facilities, the machines were producing our delicious honey roasted peanuts.  After the peanuts were honey roasted, the peanuts were weighed, inspected for quality, and then packaged into individual bags by high speed machines.  The bags were then placed in a clear plastic bag, which holds 25 small bags in each larger bag.  The next step was putting the bags into a box, and finally the boxes were stacked on a pallet. The pallet, which held 36,000 bags of peanuts, was the final step before the honey roasted peanuts were shipped to their distribution center.  From there, the peanuts were combined with the pretzels they also produce for Southwest into a semi truck and shipped to our distributor.  From there the distributor delivers to our provisioning stations and then boarded on our planes.  What King Nut roast and packages on a Monday may very well be consumed by our passengers on the next Friday!

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The tour of the facility was interesting and King Nut Companies staff and CEO, Marty Kanan, were very hospitable.  Mr. Kanan was proud to show me his wall of letters from Colleen, Herb, and Gary.  It is obvious that the relationship between King Nut Company and Southwest Airlines is one that is successful and good for both sides. One last note of interest: each year, Southwest Airlines rotates between honey roasted or lightly salted peanuts, and King Nut produced over 106 million individual bags of peanuts for Southwest Airlines in 2016.