Flowers Baking Company: Established-1919

Brothers William Howard Flowers & Joseph Hampton Flowers Jr. opened Flowers Baking Company, the first commercial bakery in Southwest Georgia, on this site on November 4, 1919. The following morning, 500 loaves of "Flowers Quality Bread" were sold in Thomasville. The bakery was capable of producing 30,000 loaves of bread a day and was hailed at the time the most modern bakery in the state of Georgia. Following the death of W. H. Flowers in 1934, his son, W.H. Flowers Jr., at the age of 20, took over the bakery. During World War II the Bakery's ovens ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week supplying bread to U.S. military camps in the southeast. Through acquisitions and expansions, W. H. Flowers, Jr. & his brother Langdon S. Flowers transformed the bakery into a regional baking company. In 1968, after nearly 50 years of operation, Flowers Baking Company became Flowers Industries, Inc. The Thomasville bakery today operates as Flowers Baking Company of Thomasville, Inc., a subsidiary of Flowers Industries. Although the interior of the bakery has been modernized, the exterior walls of the original 1919 bakery are still standing.