Hormel was born in Austin, Minnesota, in 1892. He was the son of George Albert Hormel and Lillian Belle Gleason Hormel.
An early imitator of his father's entrepreneurial example, Jay Hormel bypassed the usual leaf-raking and lawn-mowing routine of his peers, and instead earned money as a contract painter of automobile gas cans and as a house-to-house collector of grease to be sold for soapmaking.
His introduction to the meatpacking business began at the age of twelve. He assisted his uncle, Herman Hormel, in the Hormel Provision Market and learned by-product manufacture from the lard room of the plant.
He was more formally educated in the Austin public schools, at Shattuck Military School for Boys in Faribault, Minn. , and at Princeton, where he ran a successful laundry business. He was an indifferent student, and after three years of college, in 1914, he was recalled by his father to Austin.
Beginning as a foreman, he soon became plant superintendent and in 1916 was made first vice-president. When the United States entered World War I, Hormel enlisted in the army. He served as a first lieutenant with the Quartermaster Corps in France. After the armistice he returned to the family business.
During the 1920's it became evident that Hormel had talent commensurate with his opportunities in management. After he discovered that "Cy" Thompson, a trusted accountant, had embezzled more than a million dollars from the company, nearly forcing it into bankruptcy, he and his father persuaded Chicago bankers to extend the company's credit and to float a $1. 5 million bond issue in order to redeem its debt. He also initiated the Hormel Company's executive training program, which systematically sought to attract young potential leaders to the management level. Hormel assisted his father in clarifying and simplifying the lines of managerial authority, and as a member of the newly created executive board he successfully pressed for the channeling of funds into scientific product and marketing research.
In 1928 his father retired, and in 1929 Hormel assumed the presidency of the company. Under his direction (from 1929 until his death), the Hormel Company repeatedly set the pace for its larger, more sluggish competitors. Hormel diversified its beef and pork business to include canned chicken, spiced ham (Spam), luncheon loaf, canned ham, and chili con carne, which were duplicated by the bigger packers only after Hormel had demonstrated their commercial viability. To distinguish the Hormel line from those of larger imitators, he pioneered in imaginative and even playful marketing campaigns; in 1935, to ballyhoo his new chili con carne, he organized the "Hormel Chili Beaners, " a twenty-member troupe of Mexican song-and-dance girls. To market Spam he sponsored the Burns and Allen comedy radio show, featuring the beloved pig "Spammy. " He launched all-male crews to peddle "Spamwiches" and milk throughout Chicago and tempted the more hesitant with one- and two-dollar bills. During World War II he shipped Spam to the troops in such quantity that they joked of being "all Spammed up. " After the war Hormel yoked commercialism to patriotism in launching Austin's all-female American Legion SPAM Post #750, which served as the recruiting ground for his singing caravan of "Hormel girls. "
He also made a more substantial contribution in the field of wage-labor practices when he introduced the "straight time" plan, by which seasonal fluctuations in labor schedules were evened out by constant pay schedules providing greater job security. At first resisted by the workers, who in 1933 had organized the only strike in the company's history, the plan was sweetened to include a system of incentive pay which included a year-end bonus for the volume of work done above a budgeted amount. By the late 1930's, it had become a working model for firms within and outside the industry. In 1938 Hormel followed up these successes with a joint earnings plan which enabled workers to supplement regular income with employees' stock that earned dividends on the same basis as common stock. Paid annually, these dividends supplemented the regular wage and tied worker earnings to company profits.
In 1945 Hormel became chairman of the company's board. Freed from routine administrative tasks, he concentrated on long-range planning and development, undertaking an ambitious national expansion and diversification program which moved the firm into by-product manufacture and such new lines as frozen foods and spreads. He also supported and promoted innovative local and state agricultural improvement programs.
He died in Austin, Minn.
In 1922 he returned to France briefly to marry Germaine Dubois, daughter of a miller in La Vernelle, whom he had met during the war. They had three sons.
