After 117 Years, Minnesota’s Salted Nut Roll Maker Is Shutting Down

(KNSI) – The company that gave Minnesota the Salted Nut Roll and the Nut Goodie is closing its St. Paul plant.

Pearson’s Candy Company, operating as St. Paul Candy Company, has notified the state it will permanently close its facility and lay off roughly 80 workers effective September 28th, 2026. The notice went to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development’s State Rapid Response Team under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires large employers to give 60 days’ warning before a plant closing.

The reason given is blunt. The company said it lacks the financial sustainability to keep operating.

Some workers are represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, Local 22. The notice states there are no bumping rights, meaning senior employees cannot displace junior ones to hold onto a job.

According to the company’s website, P. Edward Pearson started a confectionery distribution firm in Minneapolis in 1909 with help from his four brothers. The Nut Goodie arrived in 1912 as one of the company’s first manufactured products, and sales climbed through the 1920s. The Salted Nut Roll followed in 1933, introduced during the Great Depression at a price built for lean times. Competitors tried to copy it.

The company crossed the river to St. Paul in 1950. It bought Trudeau Candy the following year, picking up a manufacturing facility along with the Mint Patties and Seven Up Bar brands. In 1959, its 50th anniversary year, Pearson’s moved from downtown St. Paul to a new plant on West Seventh Street.

Ownership changed hands repeatedly after that. The company’s own timeline notes a couple of sales during the 1970s, when the Seven Up Bar was discontinued, before two longtime employees, Larry Hassler and Judith Johnston, bought the business back in 1985. The Bun Bar joined the lineup in 1998. Connecticut-based Brynwood Partners bought the company in 2011, and Minneapolis-based Spell Capital acquired it in 2018. Bit-O-Honey came aboard in 2013 and was sold off in 2020.

In December 2022, Spell sold the business to California’s Annabelle Candy Company and separately sold the building and land to Arizona-based Tenet Equity Funding for $8.5 million, with Pearson’s staying on as a tenant. The company had about 150 employees at the time.

In October 2023, Annabelle, Pearson’s and Seattle Gourmet Foods merged with Edward Marc Brands under the Promise Confections umbrella, part of Promise Holdings.

Then came a warning sign. In July 2024, Annabelle announced it was closing its own manufacturing plant in Hayward, California. Production of Annabelle’s brands moved to other Promise facilities.

Rumors about Pearson’s have circulated since. This past May, after speculation spread online that the St. Paul plant had already shut down, the union confirmed it was still running and Promise told reporters that Pearson’s was still on its longtime four-day production schedule turning out the Salted Nut Roll. The notice makes clear that production will end this fall.

The notice does not say what becomes of the Salted Nut Roll, Nut Goodie, Mint Patties or Bun Bar after September. When Promise closed the Annabelle plant in 2024, it kept the brands alive by shifting production elsewhere in its network. Whether it does the same for Pearson’s has not been announced.

For now, the Salted Nut Roll remains on shelves. But what is ending is a part of Minnesota’s history.

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