Snack sticks are meat snacks featuring sausage that has been stuffed into smaller diameter casings. These snacks started as an easy way for people to carry a good source of protein with them but have blossomed into a multi-billion-dollar industry in the past few years.

Almost two billion dollars’ worth of snack sticks are sold in the U.S. every year, and the industry continues to grow with each passing year. No wonder so many people take the time to celebrate National Snack Stick Day—a holiday observed annually on September 23rd. For anyone not familiar with snack sticks, this is the perfect day to learn more about them.

The History of National Snack Stick Day

This holiday was created in 2016 by the Klement Sausage Company. As you might have imagined, this company is known for making beef snack sticks, honey ham snack sticks, and hot snack sticks. They also sell other sausage products, but those aren’t particularly relevant to this holiday.

Of course, this company wasn’t the first to make snack sticks. To find out who invented snack sticks, we have to go back to the end of the 1920s. Adolph Levis invented Slim Jim in Philadelphia in 1929. That’s where it all started, and why there are hundreds of different snack sticks on the market today.

Observing National Snack Stick Day

This holiday is a great day to enjoy snack sticks in all their forms. There are tons of different brands available, so all a person has to do is choose the one they like best. Once they have their meat stick in hand, they can use the hashtag #NationalSnackStickDay to spread the word about this holiday to everyone looking for something to do on the internet.