The Pecan Turns into the Focal point of Stephanie Stuckey’s Challenge to Revives Southern Roadside Chain Stuckey’s

Stephanie Stuckey stepped into the position of CEO of Southern street commute chain Stuckey’s in 2019, the corporate her grandfather, W.S. “Sylvester” Stuckey Sr., first based in 1937 as a roadside pecan stand in Eastman, Georgia. Because the 0.33 era to steer the industry, Stuckey is continuously at the street, giving a presentation in Houston one week and attending the Goodies and Snacks Expo in Chicago the following, all whilst sharing her travels on behalf of the corporate on social media.

Not like her grandfather after which her father, who keen on maintaining the interstate shops and eating places horny to vacationers, Stephanie Stuckey is taking a special solution to drumming up industry and profitable new consumers. The previous Georgia state consultant and legal professional purchased a brand new sweet manufacturing unit in 2021, teamed up with a brand new corporate president, and is operating to restore the 85-year-old Southern trip emblem for nowadays’s street trippers, focused on one key element: the pecan.

Stuckey’s Company

Stuckey doesn’t have many reminiscences of her grandfather. However there may be person who has caught together with her over time, like molten caramel in pecan brittle earlier than it cools. She recollects strolling throughout the corporate’s authentic Eastman sweet plant with him when she used to be 8 years previous. Recognizing Stuckey’s well-known pecan brittle being made, she watched the gooey combination hit an ice-cold marble desk, instantly solidifying. It flattened and began to crack from the temperature alternate as plant staff broke it up into bite-sized items with hammers. Stuckey says she plucked one from the desk as she handed through.

“I simply commit it to memory being so scrumptious,” she says. “I nonetheless remember the fact that nowadays.”

When Stuckey took over as CEO in 2019 — the one one in her circle of relatives who sought after to shop for again into the industry – she became her consideration to the long-lasting Georgia nut, ramping up manufacturing of the corporate’s well-known pecan log roll, a nougat sweet with maraschino cherries dipped in caramel and rolled in chopped Georgia pecans.

“The core of the whole lot we’ve completed has been the pecan, which is the one snack nut local to this nation,” Stuckey says of the corporate’s historical past.

Stuckey not too long ago returned to the shuttered plant in Eastman, which nonetheless properties the previous brittle-making apparatus. “I want I may have revived that plant,” she says, “but it surely’s in horrible form.”

Stuckey’s Company

Ahead of opening his first location, her grandfather, Sylvester, purchased pecans from native farmers and neighbors who had pecan timber on their belongings, promoting the nuts at his roadside stand in Eastman. Stuckey’s grandmother, Ethel, used one of the most pecans to make pralines, divinity (pecan-covered nougat sweet), and pecan log rolls, now the corporate’s hottest sweet merchandise.

Other folks would pull over to buy baggage of pecans and chocolates for the street. Stuckey says her grandparents quickly discovered there used to be a marketplace for what they have been promoting, and for different roadside facilities. They started to increase their pecan treats industry into fuel, souvenirs, and restrooms, construction the primary standalone Stuckey’s shop in Eastman a few 12 months after opening the roadside stand. As the corporate grew, Stuckey’s grandfather sooner or later purchased the sweet plant in Eastman.

Carrying bright-teal roofs, Stuckey’s become street commute locations. At its height within the Nineteen Sixties, the corporate had over 350 places in 40 states and 1000’s of freeway billboards reminding vacationers the place they might “Loosen up, Refresh, & Refuel.”

Each and every shop had a way of position: A Florida Stuckey’s would possibly have had kitschy alligator heads and wind chimes created from shells, whilst a Virginia location would possibly have offered souvenirs keen on U.S. historical past.

Tim Hollis, 59, grew up going to Stuckey’s whilst at the street for circle of relatives holidays.

“I got here from a circle of relatives that believed in retaining issues,” says the Birmingham, Alabama, local. “My dad used to be the one who after we went on holiday journeys, he stored completely the whole lot — each and every brochure, each and every postcard, each and every roadmap. The humorous factor is, he saved the ones issues in empty Stuckey’s sweet packing containers.”

Stuckey’s Company

As an writer of a number of books on Southern tourism historical past, Hollis even wrote a e-book at the roadside chain, mentioning Stuckey’s as some of the iconic companies to return out of the street commute technology within the Southeast.

“Although that they had places in almost each and every state, when other folks bring to mind Stuckey’s, they take into consideration journeys to Florida, they take into consideration journeys to Georgia,” he provides. “This is truly the place it got here from, and that’s what it is going to at all times be related to — the ones Southern holiday journeys.”

However as instances modified, so did the corporate. Sylvester Stuckey merged the industry with Puppy Milk, Inc. in 1964, and over two decades, it handed thru a number of company homeowners, frequently declining, till Stephanie Stuckey’s father, W.S. “Billy” Stuckey Jr., a five-term Georgia congressman, purchased again the industry in 1984.

He propped it up with the cash constructed from his different companies, specifically Dairy Queen. He had the franchise rights to the fast-food eating places off the interstates within the continental U.S., so he added Stuckey’s to a couple of the ones Dairy Queen places, jumpstarting the Stuckey’s Specific other folks nonetheless see nowadays. This store-within-a-store type created approved Stuckey’s stores which come with a piece devoted to the emblem’s pieces, however aren’t standalone Stuckey’s. There are most effective about 15 previous roadside stores closing from Stuckey’s grandfather’s time, most commonly scattered around the South.

After Stuckey’s father retired and left the industry to a handful of commercial companions, it wasn’t sufficient to stay the corporate stable. With the Eastman sweet plant offered, the basis that when supported the corporate used to be long past, Stuckey says.

“All we had used to be a rented warehouse with some stock in it and 68 places that we don’t personal or function anymore,” Stuckey says of the approved shops. “That used to be no longer bringing us sufficient earnings to stay the operations afloat.”

She made up our minds the times of depending at the Stuckey’s shops — whether or not approved or standalone — have been over. As an alternative, she shifted the corporate’s focal point to meals gross sales, but in addition leveraged her historical past with the emblem to stay the old-time Stuckey’s nostalgia alive. In six months she used to be turning a benefit. From 2019 to 2021, sweet and nut gross sales greater about 35 %. Now, midway into 2022, Stuckey estimates that quantity is rising nearer to 50 %.

Whilst she doesn’t have a background in industry, Stuckey credit her time as a state consultant and public defender with instructing her to be a robust suggest for profitable reasons and to respond to tricky questions — talents she takes together with her as she pitches traders, applies for financing, and secures gross sales.

Her talent to barter with traders whilst advertising nostalgia for the emblem has been key to the rejuvenation of Stuckey’s and its pecan chocolates during the last 3 years, says corporate president R.G. Lamar. Stuckey hawks pecans, brittle, and log rolls on Instagram and Twitter, or even supplies some way for other folks to proportion their fondest Stuckey’s reminiscences by the use of an on-line visitor e-book.

Lamar is Stuckey’s industry spouse and a third-generation farmer at Lamar Pecan Corporate in Hawkinsville, Georgia, which has controlled the Stuckey’s pecan orchard for 20 years. He joined Stuckey’s after the corporate got his pecan snack corporate, Entrance Porch Pecans.

Eric Ellis

“We noticed very a lot eye-to-eye at the alternative to advertise pecans as a snack, so we simply made up our minds to more or less throw our hats in in combination,” he says.

He and Stuckey bought a brand new sweet plant and pecan-shelling plant in Wrens, Georgia, in 2021. What used to be as soon as six figures of debt is now value over $2 million in earnings for the corporate.

“It’s as a result of [Stuckey’s is] a really perfect emblem,” she says. “We’ve a singular product, and we’re specializing in what’s running — and that’s the meals.”

This implies sourcing pecans from Georgia growers to make candy and savory snacks that enchantment to other folks searching for less-processed meals whilst at the street, and promoting other parts of the pecan, like uncooked nuts, nut items, and pecan meal. Her objective is to be the “go-to emblem of pecans” — just like Planters peanuts or Blue Diamond almonds — through getting Stuckey’s pecans into grocery shops, comfort shops, and nowadays’s roadside eating place and nation shop chains like Cracker Barrel.

Down the road, she hopes to sooner or later personal a handful of Stuckey’s interstate shops to restore the unique premise at the back of the corporate as a “roadside oasis” whilst proceeding to building up the pecan aspect of the industry to protected its long term for some other 85 years.

Despite the fact that nostalgia makes an established Stuckey’s fan like Hollis want he may just see all of the previous shops reopen, he understands the industry wishes to conform to stick afloat. Hollis says he’s watched many manufacturers from his early life fade away, so it makes him satisfied that Stuckey’s continues to be round for a brand new era to find on street journeys thru Georgia and the South.

“It will’ve been horrible if the similar factor had came about to Stuckey’s, if there had no longer been any of them for other folks nowadays to peer,” Hollis says. “We might’ve misplaced a little bit little bit of historical past.”

Kris Martins is a Brazilian-American journalist exploring the intersection of the eating place business and meals tradition. Her paintings has seemed in Eater Atlanta, the Atlanta Magazine-Charter, Atlanta mag, and MyRecipes. When she’s no longer writing, she’s visiting a farmers marketplace, sharing a amusing bottle of wine, or cooking a brand new recipe at house.