Hawkins Cheezies® first immigrated to Canada in the middle of the 20th Century.

On June 27, 1949, W.T. Hawkins Ltd. was incorporated in Canada by Willard Trice Hawkins and the company began making Cheezies®, and other snack products, in its new Canadian factory in Tweed, a small town in rural southern Ontario.

After 75 years of being a favourite Canadian snack, it is clear that Cheezies’s® success is a natural reflection of this family-owned and family-operated business’s past and its decades-long dedication to using only top quality ingredients in its snacks.

Founding owner, W.T. Hawkins and Jim Marker, an inventor-farmer from Dayton, Ohio, had spent years in Chicago in the confectionery industry perfecting their craft. Jim invented the machine that forms the foundation of Cheezies®’s production and W.T. came up with the idea of using an aged Cheddar cheese-based slurry to coat the cooked corn meal “fingers.” Between their natural ingredients, the taste and texture of the snack, and W.T.’s marketing genius, Cheezies® were a resounding hit with Canadian snackers from coast to coast to coast.