The Honey Baked Ham Company


The Honey Baked Ham Company is a food retailer which sells hams, turkey breasts and other pre-cooked entrées, side dishes, and desserts. It was founded in 1957 in Detroit, Michigan, and its headquarters is in Alpharetta, Georgia.

History

According to Honey Baked Ham, Harry J. Hoenselaar opened the first Honey Baked Ham store in Detroit, Michigan in 1957. Harry’s patented a spiral-slicing process which persists today. The Honey Baked Ham Company, LLC has grown to over 200 company owned retail stores and 200 franchise locations across the United States, as well as an ecommerce business. As of May 2017, the company is still owned by the Hoenselaar family.
During the 1930s, Hoenselaar sold honey-glazed hams to drugstores in Detroit and taught lunch counter clerks the proper procedure of slicing it for sandwiches.
Hoenselaar said the idea for the spiral ham slicer came to him in a dream. He built his prototype spiral slicer using a tire jack, a pie tin, a washing machine motor, and a knife.
Hoenselaar's first store was the Detroit shop that employed him as a ham salesman, which he bought from the widow of his previous employer in 1957. When the company expanded nationally, he divided the country into four territories and assigned a territory to each of his four daughters.
The company is presently headed by Hoenselaar's granddaughter, Linda van Rees, who moved the headquarters to Alpharetta in 2015.