Holsum Bread is an American brand of packaged sliced white bread. The Holsum name was being used by many retail bakeries, independently, around the country by the early 1900s. In 1908, the W. E. Long Company of Chicago acquired exclusive national rights to the name and formed a cooperative of bakeries to market a single recipe under the brand name Holsum in various cities.
One of the largest, earliest, and longest-lasting of the Long Company member bakeries was the Phoenix Bakery, which was renamed the Holsum Bakery in 1929 after then owners Lloyd Eisele and Charles Becker purchased from the Long Company the rights to use the Holsum name for their bakery and its bread .[1]Flowers Foods, one of the southern U.S. region distributors, bought Holsum Bakery in 2008.[2]
The Long Company[3] was named after its founder William Edgar Long. In 1928, Long created and pioneered the concept of packaging sliced bread two years before the Wonder brand of packaged sliced bread appeared on store shelves. The Holsum brand name remains a registered trademark of the Long Company cooperative, which has expanded across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.
