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Herman Lay built Lay's potato chips from street vendor to snack empire.
He started selling peanuts at baseball games, then grew H.W. Lay & Company into a national brand.
In 1909, Herman Lay entered the world in a modest Charlotte home.
While growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, he sold paper bags of peanuts and balanced glass bottles of Coca-Cola at Spinners baseball games.
At ten years old, he walked up and down the wooden bleachers, calling out his wares to sweating fans in the summer heat.
This planted the seeds for his later ventures.
Herman Lay played baseball and basketball at Furman University in 1928.
But the stock market crash forced him to drop out.
He worked as a traveling salesman and delivery driver before buying a potato chip delivery route in Nashville for $100 in 1932.
This delivery route grew into Lay's Potato Chips.
In 1939, Herman W. Lay bought Barrett Food Products, a struggling Atlanta potato chip maker, for $60,000.
He renamed it H.W. Lay & Company and transformed its distribution system.
His salesmen delivered chips directly to grocery stores and restaurants across Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama.
Lay insisted his drivers stock the shelves themselves and remove stale bags, ensuring customers always found fresh chips.
By 1944, the company's annual sales hit $2 million, and their red and yellow bags of potato chips became fixtures in Southern pantries.
In 1944, Herman Lay created dedicated personnel and benefits departments at his potato chip company.
He launched structured training programs that taught salespeople specific techniques for store displays and customer service.
Instead of laying off workers during slow seasons, Lay maintained year-round employment by shifting staff to maintenance and equipment repairs.
Lay taught his sales techniques through direct demonstrations.
He would visit stores with new employees, showing them how to arrange displays, negotiate with managers, and track inventory.
At weekly sales meetings, he shared specific examples of successful pitches and asked veteran salespeople to demonstrate their most effective approaches.
By 1947, employee turnover at Lay's had dropped to 15% — half the industry average.
Sales per route increased by 30% after Lay implemented his training program.
The company promoted over 75% of its management team from within.
In 1961, H.W. Lay & Company merged with the Frito Company in Dallas to create Frito-Lay Inc.
The merger established Lay's as America's first coast-to-coast potato chip brand.
This partnership led to PepsiCo's formation, which now sells chips, snacks, and beverages in corner stores and supermarkets across 150 countries.
After leaving PepsiCo in 1980, Herman Lay invested $2 million to establish business administration chairs at Baylor University and Southern Methodist University.
These endowments funded professors who taught entrepreneurship courses to undergraduate and graduate students.
Rather than retire to a golf course, Lay spent his final years meeting with student entrepreneurs and advising three Dallas-based food startups.
He conducted monthly seminars in SMU's business school until 1982.
Herman W. Lay died of cancer in Dallas in 1982.
Lay's potato chips, which he transformed from a small Atlanta business into a national brand, remain one of America's best-selling snack foods.
Under his leadership, the company pioneered automated production methods and established the first national distribution network for potato chips in the United States.
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