Swanson
brand of frozen and canned foods
Swanson is a brand of TV dinners, broths, and canned poultry made for the North American and Hong Kong markets. The former Swanson Company was founded in Omaha, Nebraska, where it developed improvements of the frozen dinner. The TV dinner business is currently owned by Conagra Brands, while the broth business is currently owned by the Campbell Soup Company. TV dinner products currently sold under the brand include Swanson's Classics TV dinners and pot pies, and the current broth lineup includes chicken broth and beef broth.
History
Carl A. Swanson (1879–1949) was a Swedish immigrant who worked on a farm in Blair, Nebraska, until he moved to Omaha. There, he worked in a grocery store where he came into contact with John O. Jerpe, who owned a small commission company, in which Swanson would become a partner in 1899. Initially, the Jerpe Commission Company purchased eggs and cream from local farmers. In turn, they processed the eggs, made butter from the cream, and sold these products to distributors and charged a commission to the farmers. With Swanson as a partner in the company, it began to expand. The Jerpe Commission Company began to sell chicken, turkey, and other meat.
The public source identifies “Swanson” as brand of frozen and canned foods. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Swanson, brand and frozen.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7653729. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1949 and 1899.
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This entry incorporates text from “Swanson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.