Q: Fruit cakes were always around our house at Christmas. Wasn’t there a company in Georgia that made them? Is that company still in business?
A: Dale Parker laughs along with all those tired fruit cake jokes.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “Why does fruit cake make the perfect gift?” Punch line: “The post office hasn’t found a way to damage it.”
That said, Parker’s family is serious about the much-maligned desert.
The Parkers have owned Claxton Fruit Cake since Albert Parker, Dale’s father, bought Claxton Bakery from its original owner in the 1940s.
They make the fruit cakes that helped the small southeast Georgia town of Claxton gain renown as the “Fruit Cake Capital of the World.”
“We have a very strong reputation across the country as being a very high-quality fruit cake,” Parker said. “Obviously, there are a lot of fruit cakes out there that warrant the jokes, but we feel like ours is one that’s based on quality.”
Georgia has several Christmas traditions and ties to the holidays.
There’s the annual lighting of the Great Tree that once towered over the downtown Atlanta Rich’s and now is at the Macy’s at Lenox Square.
The Pink Pig also started downtown and later moved to Lenox.
Folks visit the Bethlehem post office so their Christmas cards will have a seasonal postmark.
And even the candy cane earned its stripes in Georgia, thanks to Bob McCormack, whose Albany company produced 1.8 million canes a day in the 1950s.
Claxton Fruit Cake increases production and adds employees in September to prepare for its busy season.
Parker said the company produces 86,000 pounds a day so its fruit cakes can hit grocery stores en masse in October. Civitan clubs, boy scouts and church groups throughout the United States and Canada sell Claxton Fruit Cakes as fundraising projects.
“Our sales this year have been very good,” he said. “We’ve had a very successful season.”
Albert Parker transformed the company after buying the bakery from Savino Tos, an Italian who settled in Claxton about 100 years ago. Albert had begun working there when he was 11.
Claxton Fruit Cake remains a family business, with his children and grandchildren now running things.
“It’s a family affair, that’s for sure,” Dale said.
The company makes and sales other items, such as candy, preserves and pecans, but fruit cake is its namesake.
“We’re a real Southern fruit cake,” he said. “We feel like it’s one of the real great ones.”
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