The Moon Pie: How Kentucky Coal Miners Invented an American Icon
The Moon Pie: How Kentucky Coal Miners Invented an American Icon
In 1917 a travelling salesman called Earl Mitchell Sr walked into a company store at a Kentucky coal mine and asked the miners what they wanted. It is the sort of question that usually produces nothing useful. This time it produced one of the most recognisable snacks in America, and it did so because the miners had already worked out the answer for themselves.
The problem was straightforward. Miners did not get lunch breaks in any formal sense - they ate underground, when they could, out of a tin pail that had been carried down a shaft and knocked about all morning. Whatever they brought had to survive that. It also had to be substantial, because a biscuit is not a lunch.
Mitchell noticed something while he was there. Some of the men were already solving it themselves: taking graham crackers, dipping them in marshmallow, and leaving them out to harden before packing them. The marshmallow set firm enough to travel and the whole thing held together in a pail.
So he asked what they wanted, and one of them held up his hands and framed the full moon. Something solid, something filling, and about that big.
Mitchell took the idea back to the Chattanooga Bakery in Tennessee - a business that had opened in 1902 largely to use up surplus flour from a nearby mill. They added a chocolate coating to the miners' idea and started production. The bakery has made them every working day since 29 April 1917.
It is worth being precise about the credit here. Chattanooga Bakery did not invent the Moon Pie. Coal miners invented the Moon Pie. The bakery industrialised it, which is a different and more profitable thing.
The scale of what happened next is easy to miss. At the time, Chattanooga Bakery was producing around a hundred different lines - the usual range of a regional bakery, biscuits and cakes and whatever else sold.
By the late 1950s they had discontinued all of them.
Every single product except one. The company that had been making a hundred things became a company that made Moon Pies, and it has done nothing else since. It is still family-owned, still in Chattanooga, and still making the same product from more or less the same recipe over a century later. Somewhere north of eight billion of them have been produced.
That is an extraordinary decision to have got right, and it is not the kind of bet a modern business would be allowed to make.
The pairing that made it famous was an accident of arithmetic.
A Moon Pie cost five cents. RC Cola came in a sixteen-ounce bottle, twice the size of its competitors, and also cost five cents. Through the Depression and after it, a dime bought a working man in the American South a lunch that filled him up - and the two brands, which had no commercial relationship whatsoever, became permanently attached to each other in the public mind.
It became known as the working man's lunch. Then it became a song: Big Bill Lister recorded 'Gimme an RC Cola and a Moon Pie' in the 1950s, and NRBQ recorded a different one in 1973. Bell Buckle, Tennessee still holds an annual RC and Moon Pie Festival. Very few products acquire a canonical drink pairing; almost none acquire two songs about it.
Neither company planned any of it. It happened because both things cost five cents.
Strip away the history and the Moon Pie is a technical achievement disguised as a snack.
Two graham cracker rounds, marshmallow between them, the whole thing coated in chocolate. The marshmallow is gelatin-set rather than whipped soft, which is why it holds its shape at room temperature, survives being carried about, and gives the bite its particular resistance - not chewy exactly, but not yielding either.
The Double Decker adds a third cracker and a second layer of marshmallow, which is not simply a bigger version. It changes the ratio. More marshmallow relative to biscuit means a softer, sweeter bite, and it is the format most people mean when they picture one.
The Mini's do the opposite, shrinking it to something you can put out in a bowl. Same construction, different occasion.
In Mobile, Alabama, at midnight on New Year's Eve, a twelve-foot illuminated Moon Pie descends from the top of a thirty-four storey building in front of a crowd of tens of thousands. This has happened annually since 2008.
Mobile takes some explaining. It held the first Mardi Gras celebration in America, before New Orleans, and Moon Pies are a traditional Mardi Gras throw - hurled from parade floats into the crowd, partly because they are cheap and partly because, unlike beads, they do not hurt when they hit you. The city adopted the product, and then adopted it rather more literally than anyone expected.
There is also a giant edible Moon Pie made for the occasion, and a Moon Pie drop countdown. It is a genuinely strange thing for a snack to have achieved.
The Moon Pie sits in an unusual position on a British shelf. It is not a chocolate bar and it is not a biscuit, and there is no domestic equivalent - the nearest British reference point is a Wagon Wheel, which shares the construction but none of the texture or the sweetness.
That unfamiliarity is the selling point. It is a product with a story attached that most customers have never heard, and the story is genuinely good: coal miners, a man framing the moon with his hands, a bakery that killed a hundred products to make one. Sold as a curiosity with the history on a shelf card, it outperforms being stacked as another American snack.
It also travels well in the literal sense, which is what it was built for. Long shelf life, robust packaging, no melting problem. The formats work in different places - Single Deckers as an impulse line, Double Deckers as the flagship, and the Mini's for sharing or a pick and mix adjacent display.
Sweet and Glory stocks the Chattanooga Moon Pie range wholesale for UK retailers, alongside the wider American grocery range.
No minimum order. Free first parcel on orders over £150 ex VAT (additional boxes £7.10 each). Free pallet delivery over £650 ex VAT. Dispatched from Manchester. Create a free account to browse and order.
Who invented the Moon Pie? Kentucky coal miners, in effect. They were already dipping graham crackers in marshmallow and letting them harden so the result would survive a lunch pail underground. A travelling salesman called Earl Mitchell Sr saw this in 1917, asked what they wanted, and took the idea back to the Chattanooga Bakery, who added a chocolate coating. The bakery industrialised it; the miners worked it out.
Why is it called a Moon Pie? Because of how big it is. When Mitchell asked the miners how large the snack should be, one of them held up his hands and framed the full moon. The answer was taken literally, and the name followed.
What is an RC Cola and a Moon Pie? The working man's lunch in the American South through the Depression. A Moon Pie cost five cents and a sixteen-ounce RC Cola cost five cents, so a dime bought both. The two companies had no relationship at all - the pairing happened purely because of the price - and it has been the subject of at least two recorded songs.
Why do they drop a Moon Pie in Mobile on New Year's Eve? Mobile held the first Mardi Gras in America, and Moon Pies are a traditional Mardi Gras throw from parade floats - cheap, and softer than beads when they hit someone. The city adopted the product, and since 2008 has lowered a twelve-foot illuminated Moon Pie from a thirty-four storey building at midnight.
What is the difference between a Single Decker and a Double Decker Moon Pie? A third graham cracker and a second layer of marshmallow. It is not simply larger - the extra marshmallow changes the ratio, giving a softer and sweeter bite. The Double Decker is the format most people picture when they think of a Moon Pie.
What is the UK equivalent of a Moon Pie? There isn't a direct one, though the Wagon Wheel is what most people reach for. The two are cousins rather than equivalents. A Moon Pie uses graham crackers — a slightly honeyed, wholemeal American biscuit with no British counterpart — while a Wagon Wheel uses a plain sweet biscuit. The marshmallow differs too: the Moon Pie filling is denser and less aerated. And a Double Decker Moon Pie has three biscuit layers and two of marshmallow, a construction the Wagon Wheel has never attempted. The other difference people mention is size, since the Wagon Wheel is widely held to have shrunk over the years while the Moon Pie has stayed as it was.
What flavours do Moon Pies come in? Chocolate is the original and still the largest seller, alongside vanilla and banana. Banana is the one that surprises British buyers, and it is worth knowing it tastes of the artificial banana developed decades ago rather than of fresh fruit. Beyond the core three the range extends into blueberry, mint and seasonal editions that rotate through the year, mostly in the Double Decker format. Availability moves with each shipment, so check the brand page for what is currently in.
Where can I buy Moon Pies wholesale in the UK? Sweet and Glory stocks the Chattanooga Moon Pie range wholesale from Manchester with no minimum order. Create a free account to browse and order.
Related guides: American sweets older than your grandparents · Retro American candy: the 80s and 90s · Best American sodas in the UK · Candy to Can: sweets and drinks · Why American chocolate tastes different
Sources
Chattanooga Bakery company history - Earl Mitchell and the 1917 origin
Contemporary US press coverage of the RC Cola and Moon Pie pairing
Manufacturer ingredient declarations - checked per product, not per brand
Written by Sharon Wilson, Sweet and Glory. Sweet and Glory has imported American and world confectionery into the UK from Trafford Park, Manchester, since 2015.
In 1917 a travelling salesman called Earl Mitchell Sr walked into a company store at a Kentucky coal mine and asked the miners what they wanted. It is the sort of question that usually produces nothing useful. This time it produced one of the most recognisable snacks in America, and it did so because the miners had already worked out the answer for themselves.
The Miners Had Already Invented It
The problem was straightforward. Miners did not get lunch breaks in any formal sense - they ate underground, when they could, out of a tin pail that had been carried down a shaft and knocked about all morning. Whatever they brought had to survive that. It also had to be substantial, because a biscuit is not a lunch.
Mitchell noticed something while he was there. Some of the men were already solving it themselves: taking graham crackers, dipping them in marshmallow, and leaving them out to harden before packing them. The marshmallow set firm enough to travel and the whole thing held together in a pail.
So he asked what they wanted, and one of them held up his hands and framed the full moon. Something solid, something filling, and about that big.
Mitchell took the idea back to the Chattanooga Bakery in Tennessee - a business that had opened in 1902 largely to use up surplus flour from a nearby mill. They added a chocolate coating to the miners' idea and started production. The bakery has made them every working day since 29 April 1917.
It is worth being precise about the credit here. Chattanooga Bakery did not invent the Moon Pie. Coal miners invented the Moon Pie. The bakery industrialised it, which is a different and more profitable thing.
They Bet the Whole Company on It
The scale of what happened next is easy to miss. At the time, Chattanooga Bakery was producing around a hundred different lines - the usual range of a regional bakery, biscuits and cakes and whatever else sold.
By the late 1950s they had discontinued all of them.
Every single product except one. The company that had been making a hundred things became a company that made Moon Pies, and it has done nothing else since. It is still family-owned, still in Chattanooga, and still making the same product from more or less the same recipe over a century later. Somewhere north of eight billion of them have been produced.
That is an extraordinary decision to have got right, and it is not the kind of bet a modern business would be allowed to make.
An RC Cola and a Moon Pie
The pairing that made it famous was an accident of arithmetic.
A Moon Pie cost five cents. RC Cola came in a sixteen-ounce bottle, twice the size of its competitors, and also cost five cents. Through the Depression and after it, a dime bought a working man in the American South a lunch that filled him up - and the two brands, which had no commercial relationship whatsoever, became permanently attached to each other in the public mind.
It became known as the working man's lunch. Then it became a song: Big Bill Lister recorded 'Gimme an RC Cola and a Moon Pie' in the 1950s, and NRBQ recorded a different one in 1973. Bell Buckle, Tennessee still holds an annual RC and Moon Pie Festival. Very few products acquire a canonical drink pairing; almost none acquire two songs about it.
Neither company planned any of it. It happened because both things cost five cents.
The Marshmallow Is the Point
Strip away the history and the Moon Pie is a technical achievement disguised as a snack.
Two graham cracker rounds, marshmallow between them, the whole thing coated in chocolate. The marshmallow is gelatin-set rather than whipped soft, which is why it holds its shape at room temperature, survives being carried about, and gives the bite its particular resistance - not chewy exactly, but not yielding either.
The Double Decker adds a third cracker and a second layer of marshmallow, which is not simply a bigger version. It changes the ratio. More marshmallow relative to biscuit means a softer, sweeter bite, and it is the format most people mean when they picture one.
The Mini's do the opposite, shrinking it to something you can put out in a bowl. Same construction, different occasion.
They Drop One Off a Building Every New Year
In Mobile, Alabama, at midnight on New Year's Eve, a twelve-foot illuminated Moon Pie descends from the top of a thirty-four storey building in front of a crowd of tens of thousands. This has happened annually since 2008.
Mobile takes some explaining. It held the first Mardi Gras celebration in America, before New Orleans, and Moon Pies are a traditional Mardi Gras throw - hurled from parade floats into the crowd, partly because they are cheap and partly because, unlike beads, they do not hurt when they hit you. The city adopted the product, and then adopted it rather more literally than anyone expected.
There is also a giant edible Moon Pie made for the occasion, and a Moon Pie drop countdown. It is a genuinely strange thing for a snack to have achieved.
For UK Retailers
The Moon Pie sits in an unusual position on a British shelf. It is not a chocolate bar and it is not a biscuit, and there is no domestic equivalent - the nearest British reference point is a Wagon Wheel, which shares the construction but none of the texture or the sweetness.
That unfamiliarity is the selling point. It is a product with a story attached that most customers have never heard, and the story is genuinely good: coal miners, a man framing the moon with his hands, a bakery that killed a hundred products to make one. Sold as a curiosity with the history on a shelf card, it outperforms being stacked as another American snack.
It also travels well in the literal sense, which is what it was built for. Long shelf life, robust packaging, no melting problem. The formats work in different places - Single Deckers as an impulse line, Double Deckers as the flagship, and the Mini's for sharing or a pick and mix adjacent display.
Buy Moon Pie Wholesale
Sweet and Glory stocks the Chattanooga Moon Pie range wholesale for UK retailers, alongside the wider American grocery range.
No minimum order. Free first parcel on orders over £150 ex VAT (additional boxes £7.10 each). Free pallet delivery over £650 ex VAT. Dispatched from Manchester. Create a free account to browse and order.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who invented the Moon Pie? Kentucky coal miners, in effect. They were already dipping graham crackers in marshmallow and letting them harden so the result would survive a lunch pail underground. A travelling salesman called Earl Mitchell Sr saw this in 1917, asked what they wanted, and took the idea back to the Chattanooga Bakery, who added a chocolate coating. The bakery industrialised it; the miners worked it out.
Why is it called a Moon Pie? Because of how big it is. When Mitchell asked the miners how large the snack should be, one of them held up his hands and framed the full moon. The answer was taken literally, and the name followed.
What is an RC Cola and a Moon Pie? The working man's lunch in the American South through the Depression. A Moon Pie cost five cents and a sixteen-ounce RC Cola cost five cents, so a dime bought both. The two companies had no relationship at all - the pairing happened purely because of the price - and it has been the subject of at least two recorded songs.
Why do they drop a Moon Pie in Mobile on New Year's Eve? Mobile held the first Mardi Gras in America, and Moon Pies are a traditional Mardi Gras throw from parade floats - cheap, and softer than beads when they hit someone. The city adopted the product, and since 2008 has lowered a twelve-foot illuminated Moon Pie from a thirty-four storey building at midnight.
What is the difference between a Single Decker and a Double Decker Moon Pie? A third graham cracker and a second layer of marshmallow. It is not simply larger - the extra marshmallow changes the ratio, giving a softer and sweeter bite. The Double Decker is the format most people picture when they think of a Moon Pie.
What is the UK equivalent of a Moon Pie? There isn't a direct one, though the Wagon Wheel is what most people reach for. The two are cousins rather than equivalents. A Moon Pie uses graham crackers — a slightly honeyed, wholemeal American biscuit with no British counterpart — while a Wagon Wheel uses a plain sweet biscuit. The marshmallow differs too: the Moon Pie filling is denser and less aerated. And a Double Decker Moon Pie has three biscuit layers and two of marshmallow, a construction the Wagon Wheel has never attempted. The other difference people mention is size, since the Wagon Wheel is widely held to have shrunk over the years while the Moon Pie has stayed as it was.
What flavours do Moon Pies come in? Chocolate is the original and still the largest seller, alongside vanilla and banana. Banana is the one that surprises British buyers, and it is worth knowing it tastes of the artificial banana developed decades ago rather than of fresh fruit. Beyond the core three the range extends into blueberry, mint and seasonal editions that rotate through the year, mostly in the Double Decker format. Availability moves with each shipment, so check the brand page for what is currently in.
Where can I buy Moon Pies wholesale in the UK? Sweet and Glory stocks the Chattanooga Moon Pie range wholesale from Manchester with no minimum order. Create a free account to browse and order.
Related guides: American sweets older than your grandparents · Retro American candy: the 80s and 90s · Best American sodas in the UK · Candy to Can: sweets and drinks · Why American chocolate tastes different
Sources
Chattanooga Bakery company history - Earl Mitchell and the 1917 origin
Contemporary US press coverage of the RC Cola and Moon Pie pairing
Manufacturer ingredient declarations - checked per product, not per brand
Written by Sharon Wilson, Sweet and Glory. Sweet and Glory has imported American and world confectionery into the UK from Trafford Park, Manchester, since 2015.
