Failure™ Magazine

Fruitcake

Forget the jokes, fruitcake is serious business.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Business, Life

What comes to your mind when you think of fruitcake? Is it “soft, succulent cake filled with delicious fruit and nuts”? Or is fruitcake just another word for “doorstop.” While it’s true that the fruitcake has had an image problem for what seems like forever, its public approval rating reached an all-time low in the early ’90s when Johnny Carson mocked it on late night television. Still, despite public perception, the fruitcake industry is thriving, with millions of pounds sold commercially around the world each year. With the holidays and peak fruitcake-giving season upon us, Failure visited Claxton, Georgia—arguably the fruitcake capital of the United States—to get the inside story on the current state of this love it or hate it food.

Fruitcake Capital, U.S.A.
Claxton, a small town of four-thousand people 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, is best-known for its three primary industries—fruitcake, chickens and inmates. While the poultry factories and various correctional facilities provide most of the town’s jobs, it’s the fruitcake industry that brings in the tourists who come from far and wide to stock up on the creations of the Georgia Fruit Cake Co. (GFCC) and the Claxton Bakery. According to Elizabeth Hallman, administrator for the Claxton Chamber of Commerce, the fruitcake industry is vital to the community. “We would definitely see a decline in our economy if it were not for the fruitcakes,” she says.

Ira S. Womble Jr., 70, and his son John, 44, are the second- and third-generation owner/operators of the GFCC, and have been around long enough to have heard every fruitcake joke imaginable. “Everybody’s gotta have something to kick around,” notes John. “As long as they don’t call me by name it doesn’t really bother me, because I feel like we make a good product that is important to a lot of people.” While GFCC doesn’t reveal how many pounds it sells annually most of its customers buy in bulk. “Our core customer has always been the military,” says John, who reports that a government commissary once placed an order for 65,000 cakes.

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