J. S. Bachman founded The Bachman Company in 1884 at Reading, Pa. Bachman baked pretzels in one small oven and had one horse-drawn delivery cart. The product was hand made and packed, and the sales were a few thousand dollars. In the early 1930s, Art and Ray McGonigle bought the Bachman business and built it into one of the top five snack companies in the country. A Bachman engineer invented the first automatic pretzel-twisting machine. Through the 1950s and 60s, Bachman expanded its products to a variety of snack foods that include pretzels, Jax cheese curls, potato chips, popcorn and tortilla chips.