Lyons Specialty Company celebrating 100 years in business

In its 100 years of life, so much has changed for Lyons Specialty Co.

A Port Allen wholesale distributor to more than 600 convenience stores across Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, Lyons Specialty's product lineup is much wider than when the firm opened in 1923. Its fresh food business has exploded in the last decade. It had to reinvent itself in 2020, moving into personal protective equipment distribution at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And yet, in those same 100 years, so little has changed as well.

Lyons Specialty has moved three times in a century, and it has always stayed in the Baton Rouge area. It still distributes core products that have been around for decades and its business is still growing. The company is in its third generation of family ownership and the fourth generation is learning the ropes with an eye on future succession.

Celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, Lyons Special's ownership credits its enduring growth to a deeply ingrained work ethic, a willingness to adapt and a family commitment to the business’ survival.

"It takes a lot of things to work out a certain way to keep a family business together. Families working together, that can be difficult. That can cause some businesses to break up — or not having anybody who wants to take over the business," said Hugh Raetzsch Jr., the current owner and CEO and the grandson of William E. Davis Sr., who purchased Lyons in the mid-1940s. "Maybe the business just goes out of business. There's so many factors when you think about it. It's pretty remarkable that it's passed this long."

Lyons Specialty's roots trace back to 1923 — a year before Tiger Stadium opened — when the Lyons family opened it at a warehouse on North Seventh Street.

About two decades later, in 1945, Davis formed Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Co., selling 10-cent pecan rolls from his garage. The next year, Davis purchased Lyons Specialty Co., kept the name and took over the North Seventh Street location. His wife and brothers-in-law eventually became partners.

The company moved to a 10,200-square-foot warehouse on Adams Avenue in 1959, staying there for 40 years until moving to its current Port Allen location, off La. 1 about three miles from Interstate 10, in 1999. The Port Allen facility has undergone multiple expansions since then.

The company bought competitors along the way, including Dixie Candy Co. of Hammond in 1983, Wholesale Specialty in 1994 and Ouachita Distributing Co. Inc. in 2009. The Wholesale Specialty purchase allowed Lyons to begin distributing health and beauty care items. Sales steadily grew from $5.5 million in 1985 to $185 million for 2022.

Raetzsch began working for the business in 1993. Davis retired in 1996 and passed the leadership baton to Jane Dunlap, his daughter and Raetzsch's mother. After Davis died in 2009, Dunlap assumed sole ownership. She handed off her stake to Raetzsch in 2012.

Flexibility over the years, particularly in product offerings, has been a key pillar for Lyons Specialty's survival, Raetzsch said.

Early on, the business focused on candy, cigarettes and tobacco products. Those items are still in the lineup, but food service has emerged as a key focus as more convenience stores have begun offering fresh deli options such as sandwiches, pizza, pastries and more. The Port Allen headquarters has a test kitchen for new deli items.

Test kitchen at Lyons Specialty Company, a Port Allen wholesale distributor for area convenience stores, Monday, May 22, 2023. The company, which has been around for 100 years, sees potential to expand the food service end of its business in the future.

"When you look at convenience stores today and the amount of food and things like that that's being sold, we’ve had to evolve into that to the point that we sell fresh chicken, fresh ground beef, a lot of other things that we would have never considered selling even 20 years ago," Raetzsch said.

Raetzsch said the company has also been willing to bring in ideas from outside sources, including from national associations of wholesale distributors. The idea for personal protective equipment distribution came from a webinar Raetzsch watched in early 2020 on ramping up business online at the pandemic's heights. Lyons then began internal discussions on possibilities for digital sales for a business so reliant on face-to-face interaction.

Company executives landed on personal protective equipment as a possibility. The firm eventually teamed up with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber to sell masks, gloves and sanitizer products that were purchased online by local businesses and individuals.

"We started that pretty quick. It just kind of took off," Raetzsch said.

Though it's steeped in history, Lyons continues to eye the future. That's why Raetzsch's three sons have begun making their way into the business. That generational ownership has been paramount to Lyons’ survival, the Raetzsch family said.

The eldest son, Wilson, 24, is a purchasing manager and began working for the company in 2021. Matthew, 23, joined in January and is training to become a food services sales territory manager. Their youngest brother, Nicholas, 20, is still in college but has already spent summers working at Lyons, a rite of passage for the family.

Matthew Raetzsch said he and his brothers began working part-time for the company once they reached high school. They started at the bottom, washing containers in the blazing summer sun and working around the warehouse like their dad did in his college days.

"That's about as low as you can go," Wilson Raetzsch said jokingly.

The sons emphasized the importance of starting their careers at the bottom of the totem pole. They wanted to show they were willing to earn their keep. Their dad has hammered home that every employee will be looking at them to set an example.

"You have a lot of eyes looking at you, that's for sure," Matthew Raetzsch said. "There's a lot of people there that have been there a lot longer than me. There's a couple of people there whenever I started that were there before my dad."

Hugh Raetzsch, CEO of Lyons Specialty Company, a Port Allen wholesale distributor for area convenience stores, Monday, May 22, 2023. The company has been in business for 100 years.

Hugh Raetzsch choked up when talking about his sons working in the business. His friends have seen their children graduate and move across the country. Meanwhile, he gets to work with his family every day. Not to mention he had open positions he needed filled, particularly amid local labor shortages.

"One of the big benefits of obviously being a family business is you come to work and you get to see your kids and you get to spend time with your kids and you get to teach your kids," he said. "And they’re teaching me things along the way as well."

They’ve all had discussions about the future of Lyons, though Wilson and Matthew said those conversations haven't been too in-depth. Dad is still in charge.

But the Raetzsch boys made it clear they’re proud of the family business and are here for the long haul. They couldn't imagine their family being anywhere else for the next 100 years.

"It's a cool opportunity that a lot of people don't really get to have, to work with pretty much their whole family," Wilson Raetzsch said.

Email Robert Stewart at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter, @ByRobertStewart.