This Southern State Is Home To The World's Largest Peanut Butter Factory

For those of us who can enjoy it, peanut butter probably elicits memories of packed school lunches or holiday desserts, but peanut butter's history is a lot longer and a lot richer than just that. Introduced at the World Fair in 1904, peanut butter quickly rose to become an American favorite. So much so that the largest peanut butter factory in the world is nestled in the heart of Lexington, Kentucky, and produces none other than the largest peanut butter brand in the world: Jif.

J.M. Smucker Company's Jif manufacturing plant is located 767 East Third Street, off of Winchester Road, and sits on 28 acres of property across multiple buildings and yard spaces. It is speculated that the factory produces 250,000 containers of peanut butter per day, though it's also been noted that Americans consume about 270 million pounds of Jif per year, too. Residents say that you can smell roasted peanuts in the air for miles around the city when the factory is up and running, a step that's crucial even in making your own homemade peanut butter. It's a longtime Lexington tradition that's been a novelty of the community for nearly 80 years, since the plant was erected.

Built in 1946 for about $75,000, the modern-day Jif factory in Lexington, Kentucky, was created by William T. Young. At the time, Young owned W. T. Young Foods Inc., which produced Big Top peanut butter, so he created the factory to handle his peanut butter production. In 1955, Young sold the company to Procter & Gamble (P&G), which took control of the factory and rebranded Big Top peanut butter to Jif peanut butter in 1958, a name easy to spell and an important step in the history of peanut butter. In 1981, P&G expanded the factory with renovations, and by 1993, two-thirds of Jif sold around the country was being manufactured within those walls.

Around 2002, the J.M. Smucker Company acquired Jif peanut butter and the Lexington factory in a deal worth nearly $1.3 billion (even if Smucker's arguably makes the worst strawberry jam). After about a decade of owning the brand, Smucker decided to make additional renovations to the Lexington factory, focusing on demolishing old buildings, expanding the plant, and ensuring that operations were as environmentally friendly as possible. The 350,000 square-foot facility is still in the same location today, churning out millions of peanut butter jars and holding its crown as the biggest peanut butter-producing factory in the world.