Herman Lay

Herman Warden Lay (March 6, 1909 in Charlotte, North Carolina – December 6, 1982 in Dallas, Texas) was an American businessman who was involved in potato chip manufacturing with his eponymous brand of Lay's potato chips. He started H.W. Lay Co., Inc., now part of the Frito-Lay corporation, a subsidiary of PepsiCo.

Early life

Lay was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 6, 1909. His father, Jesse N. Lay, worked for International Harvester, first as a bookkeeper in Charlotte and later as a commercial salesman in Columbia, South Carolina, where the family moved. By 1920, they moved to Greenville, South Carolina. In 1922 his mother died of cancer and his father remarried. He then attended Furman University on an athletic scholarship for two years, but did not graduate.

Career

He began his career at Sunshine Biscuits and was fired because of the Great Depression. He then worked as a traveling salesman for the Barrett Food Company, when he delivered potato chips to his customers in his Ford Model A. His territory eventually expanded and his profits began to grow. In 1932, he borrowed US$100 and founded the H.W. Lay Distributing Company based in Atlanta, Georgia, a distributor for the Barrett Food Products Company, and began to hire employees. He peddled potato chips from Atlanta to Nashville, Tennessee. By 1937, he had 25 employees, and had begun producing his own line of snack foods.