Happy Day 12! Thank you for joining us on 12 Days of Cromer's and we hope you learned a lot about what we can do for you in a variety of ways. Whether it be weddings, parties, concessions or just relaxing on the couch at home with a box of popcorn, Cromer's can do it all. 

In honor of our last day, we thought we would end on our history and how we got to where we are 80 years later.

Today isn't about ten lords a'leaping, but it is all about boiled peanuts. Happy tenth day of 12 Days of Cromer's! 

The South is full of boiled peanuts. They have become so popular that they are South Carolina’s state snack.

There is no denying boiled peanuts are a southern staple, along with fried green tomatoes, fried chicken and barbecue, but boiled peanuts have been around longer than any of our other southern food friends. Many tend to think boiled peanuts arrived during the Civil War due to lack of nutritious foods. However, Southerners were eating boiled peanuts long before the Civil War. According to Serious Eats, peanuts were cultivated primarily by African Americans in their own garden patches for their own families' use up until the American Revolution.

When it comes to making and eating boiled peanuts, you could very easily boil your own, but you could also just stop into Cromer’s (we just so happen to be famous for our peanuts).

Our peanuts are boiled, packaged and placed on the shelves fresh every morning. You can often find Mr. Wade, aka Columbia’s Peanut Man, on the sales floor with a shopping cart full of fresh peanuts every morning filling our fridge.

Come in and see us or shop online for your boiled peanuts today! 

The corner of Assembly and Lady Streets, where Cromer’s was located, was always a busy corner and no busier than a Carolina v. Clemson game! How many people remember “BIG THURSDAY?” We would put our sales people on the corner with bags of boiled and roasted peanuts to sell to the people in their cars. Traffic would get so backed up on Assembly Street going to the stadium! Fans didn’t want to get out of line to purchase their peanuts so we went to them. There would be sales people from local florists down the street selling the large chrysanthemum corsages: either white for Carolina or yellow for Clemson. What happy times those were to watch young men purchasing corsages for their wives or girlfriends as they were buying peanuts for themselves!

- Carolette Cromer Turner

Today one of my employees, Wade, received an award for “Employee of the Quarter”. This gentleman has been with Cromer’s 42 years boiling our peanuts. He is actually only one of three men who have ever held this position. The other two were brothers and one of them the uncle of Wade. This job has certainly been kept in the family! I am proud of Wade as I am all of my employees. How many people do you know who have stayed at a job for 42 years?

- Carolette Cromer Turner

Beside my granddaddy’s desk, Vasco Buff bagged boiled peanuts and roasted peanuts all day long for the retail customer. We had two sizes of bags for each: 10 and 25 cents.  We sold boiled and roasted peanuts along with different types of raw peanuts in the shell featured in open bins. The sales counter was really the warming bin for the roasted peanuts accessed by opening two large doors on top. As a young girl when I tried to help out at the store I would inevitably burn myself when standing behind that unit. Today that would never pass code in a retail environment!

-Carolette Cromer Turner

Many people still ask us “what is the difference in a “new crop boiled peanut or green peanut” as compared to the “regular boiled peanut?” The difference is simply the new crop or green peanuts have been pulled from the ground at the end of its growing season and boiled without having been dried before boiling. These peanuts are only available from about May until mid October. At Cromer’s we boil our dry peanuts year round as well as the new crop from May until October.

-Carolette Cromer Turner

In the early days our roasted p-nuts were roasted in large coffee bean roasters which had been outfitted to accommodate peanuts. The boiled p-nuts were boiled in a well ventilated back room over open flames in huge metal tubs. I can still see those tubs and smell those p-nuts boiling. Most of our green p-nuts for boiling came from local farmers who would pull their trucks up in the alley beside our store and come in to negotiate the price of a bushel of green p-nuts with my dad or uncle.

Carolette Cromer Turner