Beyond the Turducken: Larry Avery’s Path to Building a Louisiana Food Legacy | Manufacturing Series

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Larry Avery, the managing partner at Big Easy Foods. Founded in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Big Easy Foods provides authentic Louisiana flavor through stuffed meats, seafood, and other traditional dishes, aiming to bring hearty southern meals to homes everywhere. Larry also serves on the board of directors for the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board and co-founded Crying Eagle Brewing Company, highlighting his commitment to promoting local tastes and traditions. With years of experience in the food industry, Larry has helped Big Easy Foods grow its product line while staying true to its mission of delivering convenient and delicious meals. For nearly three decades, he has guided his company’s expansion into online distribution of gourmet and frozen products.

His leadership reflects a passion for celebrating the cuisine and culture of Louisiana, making him a true champion of southern hospitality. Today we’ll hear about how Larry and his team have built a successful brand and how he’s navigated challenges in a very competitive market. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company, and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. All right, back to our guest today, CEO, co-founder of Big Easy Foods, Larry Avery. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Larry Avery: Well, thank you. Glad to.

Anthony Codispoti: OK, so Larry, maybe take us back a ways. Where did the idea to start Big Easy Foods first come from?

Larry Avery: Well, we have to go back a little further than that. My wife and I started a company, a company called Aquatec Engineering Supply, that grew out of our garage to eight offices around the country. And then in 1995, we sold it to a public company in Chicago. And I stayed on a couple of years. And then that’s the contract. So my contract was up. My wife and I moved back to this laterals area, and we began.

Anthony Codispoti: Sorry, Larry, before we move on from that, say a little bit more about what that company did.

Larry Avery: The Aquatec Engineering. Yeah. OK, so we did flow through filtrations and we cleaned up our biggest claim to fame. We were the biggest in the country cleaning up UST, Underground Storage Tanks. That’s where the service stations that had been business for 60 years, tanks began to leak, contaminate in the groundwater underneath their fields. So they would we would put up our equipment, remediate the ground, service the equipment and then bring the ground back to to clean and where they could use it further. So we cleaned up probably a thousand sites. But the other thing is we also built equipment for people like Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola and Coors and pharmaceutical companies and all that.

So it’s just going to grow and grow. And then and I guess in about 1994, three or four, something like that, we approached by Shell Oil Company to do some some help them with their offshore division. So we they but prior to those years, they were allowed to go in, shut a well in, acidize the formination, send it to acid down, then bring it up and put it overboard. Fish can detect pH change. What they can’t detect is the hydrocarbons. So the government said, OK, you can throw the acid overboard, but you got to get all hydrocarbons out of it.

Well, that was very hard for anybody to do. And they asked me, of course, being a young entrepreneur, we said, well, I’ll tell you what, send us a sample. We’ll run it through our labs. And I called back two days later and said, we can’t we don’t have any more time. What’s the answer?

And I said, the answer is, I don’t know. But what I’ll do is I’ll send a crew out there with our equipment. If we clean it up, you pay me this.

And if we don’t, you pay me this much lesser. And they said, come on. Well, it worked. So we patented and. I figured that these big companies would would. Have a workaround within 18, 24 months. So that’s not the case. It’s still probably over close to half a billion dollars worth of the sales for the company that I sold to now. So.

Anthony Codispoti: And were you the one who came up with the actual science, the tech behind it that was able to do this?

Larry Avery: Well, I suppose that would be right to say. But of course, we all have teams. I don’t do anything by myself. OK, we do. We contemplate. We do things. So we use that same technology to clean up some of the ground waters that were contaminated with heavy hydrocarbons and things like that. So we did. We did it on land.

Now we’re doing it offshore. And it was very lucrative business. But also at that point, and that they were doing a tremendous amount of roll ups in that environmental space and. At that point, I had hired somebody just to handle the offers, you know, you get a lot of offers for your company. And so we. We just move forward, growing the business and let somebody else do it.

Anthony Codispoti: He brought me an offer. Kind of the breakthrough in that tech. Is it something you can talk about?

Larry Avery: The breakthrough was that you were able to figure out what others were. Well, we use the media that we that we had secured through the company that actually ended up buying us. That was their media. It’s a clay based. Media that. It’s used in a lot of things, but we used it with anthracite coal in. And it just worked. So the science behind it, you’re probably going to have to ask somebody else. But I’m fair enough. It worked.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s all it meant. OK, so you built this company up. You had this patent technology. Yeah, exit to Shell is the one who ultimately bought it. No, no, is.

Larry Avery: Am call, who’s now been bought out by somebody else. You know, they were. Less than a billion dollar company and they were growing to a billion. And so we became part of it. Eventually, I had to move to Chicago for two years, run the company. They had bought two other companies they put under me and. We grew it until my contract was up.

And I just said it was time for us to go back south. I had built a self storage and. And that was going to my retirement. So I was 42 years old and sold my company. So we had some money and. I put me a little tiny office in my self storage company. We’d opened up here in the late Charles area and.

Sort of playing golf and doing other things well, after about three months. It was. Plus, I met the country club where everybody at that point was 70 years old.

And there I was 40 had nothing in common with him. So I said I was going to build a self storage company. And that’s where my partner comes in, Mark Abraham.

So Mark and I got together and decided to build 10 self storage. He had a small sausage and boot in company. In the neighboring town that he was.

He was looking for somebody to come in and help him. But that it was very small, less than a million dollars a year in sales. Wasn’t too profitable. So anyway, I spent some time in his business. At his request and found out he was needed some tuning up and he asked if I would be part of it. After about three or four months of that, I broke down and said, sure, I’ll be.

Part of it, but I don’t know part of what you got going on. I will build a nice new, save the art facility, buy a few companies, put them together. And flip it in about six years. That was the plan. And 25 years later, we’ll still buying companies and put them together.

Anthony Codispoti: So anyway, what was it that you saw in sort of his seedling of an idea that, you know, it was there, it was running along, not making a lot of money. What did you see that you thought, OK, let this be my next thing?

Larry Avery: Well, that’s well, his plant manager was stealing from me. His bookkeeper was stealing from me. He had 14 employees doing the work of seven, six. And so I told him that and he goes, you’ve got to come and take care of this. I said, I don’t know part of that. And like I just said, took three months to convince me. And so we did.

We got together and started at that point. It was called French market foods. And then we bought a few companies, seasoning company, stuffed chicken company and things like that. And then on the entry and then we focused on a turducken. You made with the dragon and John Madden and all that.

Go ahead and tell for the audience. Well, it’s a turkey that we de-bone. We leave the legs and the wings out there for shape.

But we stuff it with a boneless duck, boneless chicken and various dressings. It became very popular. We had a good ride right up in Wall Street Journal and just tons of other newspapers and things. So so we became the biggest in the turducken business.

Anthony Codispoti: So why were you guys the biggest? Were you the first?

Larry Avery: We were. Well, we bought our company from Paul, one of our companies from Paul Pradone. And he’s the one kind of founded Turducken and he had a good following. The only thing about Chef Paul, he didn’t want anything frozen. OK, he developed this product and it was a great product. Good for big events and things like that. But the real market for that product is in the frozen. You know, we could put it in grocery stores around the country. And we did. We put it in grocery stores around the country and. Did.

Bought the biggest turducken in reckoning turducken.com. So we had a good presence in the in the e-commerce business. And that, you know, it became it’s very labor intensive. And it, you know, it started dwelling on John Madden passed away.

He meant, you know, he brought every Thanksgiving he had at that football game. So it was. But then after he passed, you know, it was a smaller end. And by that time we had we’re doing other stuff. So we. We didn’t mind stepping aside that moving the turduckens to the side.

Anthony Codispoti: So Larry, as we’re hearing about some of your experiences here, I’m trying to sort of weave the common thread. Because, you know, you’re, you know, sort of this well wastewater cleanup and, you know, a patented tech there. And then, you know, you obviously very successful. You built that up and exited. And then, you know, you get into the food business, which you previously hadn’t had a background in, but, you know, you’re very quickly acquiring companies. And sounds like at least you planned on.

I don’t know if you move forward with the self storage companies. And so if I want to try to, you know, put Larry Avery in a box, are you a great leader? Are you a great salesman? You know, great at spotting opportunities like help us understand.

Larry Avery: What to me, I think businesses, believe it or not, are about 90 percent transferable. So what you learn in this business and transfer in the other, what does that mean? That means give a good quality product, give good customer service customer relationships and surround yourself with great people.

Now, the other 10 percent, there’s a whole lot of difference between cleaning up wastewater plants to build in a food company. Those are the things you got to learn. But again, it’s all about surrounding yourself with just fantastic people and keeping them. You know, you spend a lot of time investing in new people, I believe, and not enough time with keeping the good people you have.

So we’ve done that. So my chief operating officer, he’s been with me out of 25 years. He’d been here 24 years. So he started once he got his MBA and came in and he was a good friend of my son. I knew him very well and he got his MBA, wanted to come work. I said, tell you what, I got an inside sales job that pays 24,000 a year. It’s 24 years ago, buying you, OK?

He goes, I can’t take that. I’m making 40 selling insurance. I said, well, if it’s all about money, then you probably need to stay over there. But if you want to come help build something, and we’ll all succeed together. I said, go and think about it.

Talk to your wife. And he did. I think two days later, he signed up and he’s been here ever since. But that’s just one. I’ve got the production manager. He’s been here 20-something years.

Logistics lady, she’s been through everything, but now she’s logistic. 20-something years. So we’ve got a lot of people that’s been here from 15 to 20 years. And we don’t really train a lot of people because people don’t leave.

Anthony Codispoti: And so what’s the secret to keeping them?

Larry Avery: You know, I always said our motto here is we’re going to make money and have fun. OK, it has to be in that order. But, you know, and if we could win that, we’re probably going to sell. Because I believe you should have a good time. Or this is a serious business and we take it very serious. But again, we like to laugh a little bit.

I bring my little puppy to work and runs around and plays with people. And an hour later, it gets taken off. But that’s just one of the things we did.

Anthony Codispoti: But I mean, say more about the have fun part of it, right? I mean, every business, yeah, you’ve got to make money. You’re not running a charity that’s table stakes to keep the doors open. But what’s it look like sort of there behind the scenes? How are you guys having a good time?

Larry Avery: My job to me, I remember I’ve got great people in place. So my job is to be the biggest cheerleader, encourage them, be their listener, being the guy that does the providing the resources that they believe in them, support ideas they come to you with.

Not all of them, of course, but a lot of them come to you with some really incredible ideas and we just go together and we do work on it, make it a success. But people like that, they like to be able to walk in at any time in my office and talk to me. And I’ll walk in in their office and talk to them. And the other plants we have around, we show up and have a good time.

And I’ll feed everybody. And we’ve had a Christmas bonus for 25 of 25 years. And even the years we lost money, we gave bonuses out because a lot of times it wasn’t their fault that we were making money. What my fault either, just circumstances takes you.

Anthony Codispoti: Sometimes things out of your control. Yeah, a lot of time. What were the COVID years like for you guys? Up, down, big struggle.

Larry Avery: COVID, well, you know, we own the self storage company and the brewery and took it on the chin. Food company, our business went through the roof. We couldn’t keep up. Okay. Prices went up.

Everything. It was just, we’ve made some good friends and we made some enemies in our business because, you know, these grocery stores were selling more. They couldn’t keep on the shelves because people couldn’t go to the restaurants. And so we, we saw a lot of product. And a lot of times we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the orders. And that’s where you get people upset. So, but all in all, it was good growing experience for us. And we’ve made up to all those people that got upset.

Anthony Codispoti: So people who are upset, they’re just upset because you guys couldn’t keep up with the demand. You couldn’t supply enough product to them. Yeah. Exactly. Tell us more about the products. You’ve acquired multiple companies along the way. What, what are you guys producing now? What are your capabilities?

Larry Avery: Well, we do. Okay. So we’re the biggest in the domestic shrimp business while domestic shrimp out of out of the Gulf into grocery stores. Okay. There’s two dimensions of food. And once food service, which restaurants and things like schools and prisons, that we do very, very little business there. We focused years ago on grocery stores.

And so we’re mostly grocery driven company. So we, we offer the shrimp all different ways, but P and D, Pilden Devane, cooked, all natural things like that. So that’s shrimp and then catfish. We do domestic catfish in the retail space and we’re the biggest guys in that business too. So, and we’re in a lot of the major chains. Okay.

A lot of them. And it’s just grown. And then the other third is the Louisiana cuisines. So that’s like boneless stuff. Chickens, it’s like sausage, boot and we do entrees, which are heat and eat entrees, the small single serve gumbo’s, A2 phase, Creoles, all the things. And we sell it all over. And then we make, we make these little bacon poppers, which are jalapenos, stuffed with either Creole sausage, cream cheese or anything like that. And then we put this, the bacon wrap and we do about, we make about 50,000 those a day and sell them out. So, and when the price of bacon goes up, cause it’s big. What, or in the case we’re going with now is jalapenos.

We buy our jalapenos from a region in Mexico where they grow them to the BTU specs that we like. Okay. Which means not too hot. We want a good jalapeno flavor, but we don’t want anybody burning up with them. So there’s a section in Mexico, we buy everything they grow and every year they grow in more and more because we buy more. So, so we’ve got a good name in that business and we sell a lot of those.

Anthony Codispoti: And so they’ve got a specific strain of these peppers that they grow and they know that the BTU rating is going to come out sort of in this range. Because of the soil conditions and what that variety, what that strain is like. And that’s perfect for your client base.

Larry Avery: Yeah. And we want to keep that relationship growing. So if they put a tariff on Mexico, that’ll affect us. We figured that’s something that would, of course, we can work around anything.

Anthony Codispoti: So what would be the plan if those tariffs come through? I mean, you just have to increase your prices.

Larry Avery: Well, we would 25% tariff. It would be around two cents per popper. Okay. So 50,000 pops a day, $1,000 a day cost me. So, have to pass on the two cents. So it’s just business.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s how business works. That’s how math works. If your costs increase, those get passed on down the chain. What happened? There you go. Sorry. So what is it that has allowed you and these food companies to be so successful? Are you guys investing more in the production technology? Do you just have really great distributor relationships and fantastic sales people that are opening up all these doors at the different retailers? What do you attribute this to?

Larry Avery: I believe it’s the quality of the product, the uniqueness of the product. And of course, the fact that we believe highly in the customer service aspect. My sales team is moderately, it’s very moderate. We’ve only got a few in the sales force. We work through a nationwide network of brokers. But my sales team do the headquarters calls so we keep the relationship with the customers.

So if there’s a problem, they call us directly and we deal with it. So and we don’t try to get ahead of our skis and try to oversell and things like that. We know we want to grow every year, but we’re not going to grow 30% or 40%. It’s just a lot of our products are man made.

So we have to understand labor is an issue with everybody, but certainly in our business. We continually invest. Every year we invest a great deal of our revenues in new production equipment, freezing. There’s somewhat transportation that’s a much, I just bought a truck yesterday. That’s why it comes to mind.

Anthony Codispoti: You talked about making the office environment, they’re fun and have some really key folks that have been with you for a long time. And production facilities, tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m going to presume there’s a bit more turnover there is traditional in those kinds of environments. Are the things that you’ve tried and found success with that helps with recruiting and retaining folks in that type of environment?

Larry Avery: Again, it is about the management in the production plants that they have to take the same type management style that they see in the office here and bring it to our production plants.

Okay. And they realize that we’re it’s not a fun and game thing. But again, get your job done.

We are highly appreciated and well rewarded. We don’t try to hire people at minimum wage. We pay quite a bit more than minimum wage because it’s just not worth the minimum wage. People tend to change jobs quite a bit. So that’s the last thing we want is people that’s going to stay for a while. And we promote with the end. So if somebody’s been working in a room for a long time, he’s got a chance to move up to room supervisor and then maybe head this part of production plant.

Eventually, he may end up running a wipe guy and runs our plant down one of our plants down east that yeah, he started just like that. It came out of college, came to work. He was a QC guy. Now he’s director of operations managing a whole team of people.

Anthony Codispoti: So your products, we can find them at most of the major grocery chains out there. Are they, do they have the big easy name on them? Are they private labeled or are we going to find these under sort of different brand names?

Larry Avery: Several years ago when the European chains started coming in here, the Lodai, the Trader Joe’s, they really focused on private label. And of course, the bigger change started changing over to private label, thinking that was the wave of the future. And for the most part, a lot of the big change, they take our shrimp, they take catfish, or we take and put their brand on our product. So you’ll find it great value in Walmart. You’ll find other chains have their own labels. So, but.

Anthony Codispoti: Any of the products available for people to purchase direct online?

Larry Avery: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, we sell online products. That’s not a big part of our business. We really got into online when we had the Trudykins years ago and in Promotem. But you know, we get a lot of calls from your customer. My customer is one of the major chains, Sam’s or Walmart.

And they go, hey, you’re competing. You’re cheaper than I was. And all like I said, which I wasn’t, but they, you know, I mean, sure we wouldn’t have, but again, you get a little, you realize where you’re real bread, butterfruits, I mean, it comes from major chains, not individuals.

So we backed away. Now, some of our biggest accounts today are home delivery companies, you know, like, I’m not going to mention those. Well, I guess I can butcher block is one of our great, wonderful accounts. Very high end meat and products. And we’re glad to be part of it because they’re on cutting edge of quality and things like that. And we’re like that too. So we believe in the all natural, Kim free products. And we support that.

Anthony Codispoti: Are you handling order fulfillment for them? You shipping direct to the client like a drop ship or they’re holding their own inventory and then fulfilling?

Larry Avery: They’re doing that. We just send truckloads products to them.

Anthony Codispoti: Much easier for your model, especially because I would imagine a lot of these foods, you know, if they’re being shipped through the mail, maybe not all of them, but most of them, you know, need some kind of refrigeration as they’re traveling.

Larry Avery: Yeah, all of them that we sell, you know, shrimp and all that’s all frozen.

Anthony Codispoti: I didn’t know if any of these sausages were maybe cured meats that didn’t need to be refrigerated, but it sounds like they need to be as well.

Larry Avery: Well, we don’t do too much sausage, but yeah, I mean, the sausage and boot and more that that gets frozen too. And then you saw it out.

Anthony Codispoti: So what is the future of big easy foods look like? What what plans do you guys have for growth?

Larry Avery: We’ve got we’re continuing to build on all of the platforms. Entrace are doing very, very well for us. As we take on new parts of the country, new chains, grocery, grocery outlet on the west coast, just picked up all our entrees and shrimp. So all of our platforms are doing well, but we just opened a new platform where we put a big easy chaos in convenience stores. You know, convenience stores focused on selling gasoline and cigarettes and beer and as that has all tapered down, they’re looking for new ways of making revenue and they realize quick and easy grab and go food is one way to make that. So we’re setting big easy kiosks in C stores, convenience stores and it’s going very well for us.

We we see a lot of runway in that direction. So that food is hot and ready to go or yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s brought in frozen and we have a particular oven that we use to we do a lot of the prep here. We par fry everything. So when it gets there frozen, they take it out, they put it in our oven for seven minutes and it’s ready for the customer.

So it’s a major big commercial oven, but it’s developed for our product line and it’s just it’s wonderful. So there’s no grease in the stores or anything like there’s no frying like that. But it’s and we have breakfast out of galaches with our sausage and boot ends and we’ve got the rolls, which has our sausage and egg and things like that, all that and then all the way up from the entrees for lunch, but you can also get an order of the shrimp fried shrimp with with french fries and roll and and catfish fries rolls and the chicken.

Chicken tenders with it’s just it’s just great. The we’ve worked on the products for about a year now and it’s just started rolling out since first year. So we’re excited about it.

Anthony Codispoti: So Larry, when you when you call it a kiosk, is this like like I see a subway store sometimes attached? Like is it like an actual like a food counter where somebody goes up in orders and they wait a couple of minutes and it’s it’s prepared hot for them right there?

Larry Avery: Yes, a lot of times they prepare a little of an advance, okay, but but the neat things about ours, it’s frozen to hot in just a few minutes. So but yes, it’s like a subway. It’s behind the glass type thing, but we also have some we just slipped up and grab and go. You want to catfish dinner, you just grab it and go. We’ve prepared some of them and it’s just great. we’re really excited about that and yeah, it’s we’ve got the whole marketing scheme. I mean down here we have the hotch pizza.

We have crispy crunch. These are some kiosks that they put in the stores in the convenience stores. So we’re alongside of them a lot of times and sometimes we’re it’s just our kiosk.

Anthony Codispoti: So and and is it branded big easy or the each of the convenience stores branded there? It is under the big easy.

Larry Avery: It’s all big easy branded and you know there’s over a hundred thousand convenience stores in this in this country. So there’s a lot of runway for you. So we’re excited.

Anthony Codispoti: So this is still pretty new. I’m up at you guys are in Louisiana. I’m up in Columbus, Ohio. I’m probably not seeing any of the big easy kiosks up here quite yet.

Larry Avery: Oh no, no, you’re only going to see it in Louisiana. Remember we just started this the last couple of weeks. Oh, this is brand new brand new. Okay, but we believe it’s you know it’s it’s it’s going to be a big part of our business in the days and months and years to come.

Anthony Codispoti: Any other exciting growth opportunities there big easy that you want to give voice to?

Larry Avery: Uh, you know we we do believe that this country is focusing more and more on their health and we believe to be you know we’ve got some great products that fall in there like our all natural shrimp great protein and totally kimp free no preservatives and things like that. So we’re we’re excited to uh to be into that and then we’ve got some some other things that are out there in that level but it’s just great flavors people love a lot of people love Louisiana cuisine and we just like bringing Louisiana flavors to you know all over the country.

Anthony Codispoti: So tell me about the work that you and your son Eric are doing with Crying Eagle Brewing Company.

Larry Avery: Well it’s you know we started that about eight years ago on bringing craft beer there was there was only a few craft breweries in the state of Louisiana they were lagging way behind so we decided to do this and Eric who you know he’s got a master from LSU and things and he knows these these ideas we come up with. Like when I said I want to bring a craft brewery to Lake Charles area and he goes wow okay well how much that’s gonna cost.

I said what’s gonna cost me? He goes okay well let me go check it out. So he goes with his parties and they go check out craft brewery and talk to him.

He comes back about three weeks later and said okay I’m all in let’s do it and so and pretty much he knows that he’s gonna have to run it and do everything because he does out. We have an well we had an archiving company which file storage like destruction all that okay he ran that and he ran the sell self storage. We just sold the self storage company in December after what 29 years and then he runs the Grine Eagle but you know and we’re building a new one Lake Charles like it says we have a lake here and it’s right on it in it in the one that goes from Los Angeles to Florida goes right through Lake Charles and we have over building one of our Grine Eagle brewing over there but it’s more of a sit-down food but it’s all in the lake it’s beautiful like I said and we’re gonna we’re gonna bring all that to Lake Charles so that’ll be our second one.

Anthony Codispoti: So both locations are a combination like a restaurant a bar and a brewing facility?

Larry Avery: Well we don’t like the term bar because we close at 10 o’clock at night. We’re more about a tap room and entertainment venues at one of them that’s the existing one. We have outdoor stages and beer gardens and all that okay and live entertainment three or four days a week. We have a nice bistro there it’s got upscale pub food we call it and a lot of it’s be easy believe it or not but and then the next one it’s gonna be a more sit-down venue where I have a table service so in the process of hiring the general manager now or interviewing general managers and things like that so it’s much bigger investment much bigger place 16,000 square foot so it’s big.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s a large facility. Yeah so here are the the craft beers are they just available on premise are they being sold to other bars or grocery stores, convenience stores where people find the product.

Larry Avery: Okay so in Louisiana we have every state had some craft beer laws but in Louisiana we sell just on premise but you can take our can beer. We can beer and you can take it we go but most of the things was consumed but we sell everything we spell wine and spirits and all that so cocktails and things like that.

Anthony Codispoti: Is the plan to kind of leverage some of the relationships you have with the big retailers around the country to get some distribution for crying eagle?

Larry Avery: Well we did that we started as a production brewery okay we had a big tap room big production you know and we went in the grocery stores all over okay that model is an expensive way I mean you have to sell people you know you have to sell wholesale you do all that kind of things so when COVID hit and we knew we were going to build the one on the lake and we knew we needed to have more than just beer because if your production brewery and you’re selling to stores you can only sell beer your beer in your tap room okay and that’s what we did we sold food we sold our beer and so we as we stand there in a empty tap room during COVID we said we know we need to change our model so we converted in June of 20 at the beginning of that to what they call the micro brewery where you can offer everything but you couldn’t sell in the stores anymore but our biggest market at that time and distribution was New Orleans and we did very well in there but we realized or we believed okay that it would take years for New Orleans to come back from a complete shutdown then it really did it took years before they were and they still probably aren’t as busy as they were with conventions and stuff so anyway it’s been a good thing because you know our sales in our tap room you know went up five times because now you’d be able to bring your wife if she likes wine all the cocktails or anything like that

Anthony Codispoti: so so you like the distribution model that you guys have now where you’re not in the grocery stores but you’re able to have more of a full service several options there available

Larry Avery: to all the full service and the model is to bring them to the provide really fantastic we have a six-month concert summer concert series that goes for six months now that we bring in some nice bands and things like that and I mean we’ll have sometimes a thousand people more at our brewery over there but we’ve got six and a half so we got a lot of room

Anthony Codispoti: that’s a good plot of land a lot of outdoor space so tell us about the beers like what do we find there the stuff that you guys are making well we

Larry Avery: you know we have it’s all kind of Louisiana theme stuff now we we have a award-winning brewmaster so this guy’s won national honors and things like that so it does great product but he we sell everything from lagers to sourced IPAs and all the things that it’s good product great product

Anthony Codispoti: let’s shift gears for a moment Larry and would like to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life either something personal or professional maybe it’s a combination of the two what was it like going through that and what have you learned coming out the other side

Larry Avery: you know twice in my 43 years of running my own business that we’ve had major layoffs okay because a big downturn industry is usually and you know it’s very very difficult to go in and lay off a lot of people you’ve had sure you know their families you that been working for you a long time it’s very hard to do but we try to take care of them and then that’s happened the last time it we we idle to plant on the end of 23 shifted that production 200 miles north because it’s we were on the coast in Louisiana and we just kept getting hit by hurricanes and and insurance became almost impossible to get and so as hard as it was to walk away from a plant we bone for almost 20 years it was the best business decision because you know it is about continuing growing and making money and getting out of harm’s way I guess so

Anthony Codispoti: it did many folks make that move with you up north

Larry Avery: we we at that point that planned around 60 something employees and probably 20 of them relocated the rest of them took a severance and wouldn’t found other things to do

Anthony Codispoti: Larry you strike me as the kind of guy with the the track record and the success that you’ve had that probably have a lot of people coming to you for advice valuing your opinion that you know that wealth of experience that you’ve had you put together who in your career have you been able to go to and say man I’m in a bad place I’m dealing with something tough like I need to talk this through I need some advice

Larry Avery: well for one my wife has been by my side the whole time and she’s a very smart lady and I love being able to discuss business with her now she’s here on make it all about business but our afternoon discussions is one again a great banker a great attorney and a great CPA these are the people that are just imperative you know when I had the environmental company my CPA he I mean I knew very little about business that I read you know I went school in study biology thought I wanted to be a doctor but that wasn’t near thing I wanted to do so so I had to learn all that stuff the business stuff and so you just get really good people around you and and bankers you know they see you know really good bankers you know that manage decent size portfolios they they see all kind of business they see mistakes people made more than they see you know all the successes so they’ll kind of guide you in some of those ways but my dad was my dad was an entrepreneur he started several companies none of them got very big but he was he’s all about customer service things like that quality products so

Anthony Codispoti: that’s kind of where you learned some of your foundational things I’ve heard you repeat over and over again customer service quality product sounds like a lot of those lessons came from your father

Larry Avery: yeah yeah you and he was a hard worker I mean just travel things like that travel for business

Anthony Codispoti: has your wife been actively involved in the business ventures that you’ve been involved with

Larry Avery: my life we all started the first company going back to the environmental coming else tell you the genesis of that we we she was going to go to be a nurse okay which cost money I was a maintenance supervisor at one of the local all refineries in this area so I was to make extra money I would install in home water softener’s okay you may water softener’s and yeah okay so it’s down here before they put in a lot of the municipal water they get by have water well so they put water softener’s on there because we have a lot of iron things like that so and then she graduated and we it switched rather rapidly from costing money to making money and I said I want to start my own water softening company and that’s where we brought in and she goes yeah let’s do it and we brought in water softener’s bottom and put them together and I installed them and six months after I got started a real estate was important in anything you do and so I called the guy that I work for who was the biggest water softener guy in this area he said I’d like to buy you out and he goes but I have no money so I need you to finance it for me so he goes okay it was an old man and so I went from being a very small potato to a decent size guy in water softening business and it just and then you know one day I got a call from one of the chemical plants and I said you put in water softener’s right I said oh yeah and he said come take a look at this project and it was a water softener which flow through filtration for one of his bowlers so it’s like 150 gallon a minute now I’m used to deal with eight gallon a minute home you know so it’s a different scale yeah and he said can you can you make a water softener for me and of course young and dumb Larry said oh yeah knowing my older brother was a genius engineer he was laid off that was tough times for the oil industry back in those days when interest rates were extremely high and very difficult time so it moved back from Houston was working out my little tiny office sending out his resumes and I went back the oven said Billy can you come up with a control package for water softener oh yeah so problem oh call my friend who had a well in shop hey can we build these vessels that are now 8 foot in diameter instead of you know the small oh yeah we do that and then so we built it installed it put it in and then the next one come along in the next one pretty soon you’re doing work for other float like again is flow through filtration and that includes air so we got calls by a landfill that would take wastewater from different places stored and injected down to injection wells so that was a way back in the 80s so but when they when they took it in their tank the exhaust out of the top of that tank was had a lot of VOCs while to go so they filtered to activated carbon so we they call us and said can you all do that we said yeah so we started building those and then one day got a call from Exxon and said hey can you do some remediation work for so we did then six months later they called in said hey we’d like you to do a nationwide program for us there we are a company here in the late Charles area and Exxon wants us to do stuff for them all over the country and I said yeah so we put in a bid we were competing against two big public companies well we won the bid so I went in one Saturday called my managers around I said okay we got all we got to open the office in Philadelphia I want you to go take care of this I want you to go down to Florida I want you to go over to LA I want you to go up Seattle so we offered we opened four offices in in two or three months got them up and running rented space rented forklift rented trucks hired people ship the stuff up there and

Anthony Codispoti: that’s a lot of cash outlay for a small company to be you know expanding into so many locations all at once with was the customer fronting you any of this money were you just

Larry Avery: no in fact when I asked the head of the family with Exxon I said how much business you’re talking about and he goes well it’s a lot but we don’t know I said so you can’t explain what a lot is he goes no I can’t go it’s just so scattered out well I calculated with we could do 250 thousand dollars with him first year I could support those four offices and the first year we did way over a million with just Exxon and as soon as Exxon comes on a BP and the rest of them they start just calling you and then pretty soon you’re the biggest guy in the business doing it all over and

Anthony Codispoti: so so there’s a couple of things that I I hear you saying over and over again one is you know you’re asked hey can you do this sure and then you go and you figure out how to do it which I love sort of that gumption and the other thing you keep saying is and then we got a call from this person and then we got a call from that person and then we got a call from this person and are you getting these calls without sort of that outgoing like marketing and sales this is just somebody heard through the grapevine like you’re doing this thing and you did good work

Larry Avery: well yeah I mean you focus on a couple of industries one was of course the oil industry you know in gasoline service station companies spa and of course their engineers talk and all of them want to solve the problem that Exxon wanted which means somebody to manage the whole program for them and that’s what we did so I had an engineering department that designed the vessels and things and then we had our own manufacturing facility and when we put it in we did all the right stuff we built robotic welding machines and all the latest CAD for engineering and then I traveled and met with a lot of people and and then what what really was that those two companies that were bidding against us at the first business I called them up and said hey I have this service center up there do you guys need some service on your equipment so we became I mean our competitors became some of our biggest customers and to this day that’s what we do business with other shrimp processors and other catfish people because we find that because they’re a competitor doesn’t mean you can’t do business with them it just dictates the way you do business with them so

Anthony Codispoti: so you may be able to provide some part of the finished product that maybe they’re not equipped to do very well yeah yeah

Larry Avery: other shrimp companies they want to offer some of the products the other products we had we’ll do it with them and if we we outsell our shrimp capacity we’ll buy us from other quality manufacturers so same with the catfish

Anthony Codispoti: so something else I want to go back to is you know you’re starting out in the the water softener business go out on your own for a few months you know you’re doing all right and but hey I recognize now that scale is really important so after being on your own for I think it was just six months you took the really bold move of calling up your employer and saying hey I’d like to buy you which I think is just like great gumption but then the response back was sure and yeah and I’ll finance it like what was sort of the dynamic there to where that that happens so easily

Larry Avery: well it one his service guy left the guy that his head service got me left okay that left pretty big hole that I knew and he was struggling to he was probably my age now okay so you know he had been in he was looking for exit yeah and he was ready to go and sometimes it’s very difficult to monetize something as service oriented is water softening but that makes a lot of sense you know it’s good for almost 10 years that we started that company my wife is a nurse I continued to work at the old refinery I were but my job at the old refineries was maintenance oversee maintenance when all the big dogs were home so nights and you know so the evening shift in the midnight to seven ship that’s where my off where I bet there was four of us at that job we rotated through it so I let me a lot of time during the day so for about 10 years I was able to you know your body doesn’t necessarily need eight hours sleep you know when you’re younger now I need eight to nine but back then I did four hours and I was good it’s good quality hard sleep and just kept keep going but so you do that oh but I don’t want to go back to that but you do what you do I mean you had the key your credit good you couldn’t let the business get ahead of the money I mean it just you just can’t so him finance it the business was an easy out for me I could have never that point gone to a bank and get them to finance that deal so I learned to buy to read balance sheets and operating and you know eminatories very early on and so as we were growing the environmental business and things like that we just bought we bought eight to ten companies during that time anywhere from two three four hundred thousand dollars in revenue to a few million dollars in revenue and we would just kind of roll and tuck them into what we did and

Anthony Codispoti: mostly what you were requiring are their customers as well as their their service pros right or were you getting like additional skill sets that you didn’t have

Larry Avery: oh always we had a particular way of what we grab what we believed how to buy okay so right here is what I do this is what we did it my circle was this big and that’s what we did so I look for somebody right outside of my circle okay but some of what he did is what I do okay so he I knew their business well enough because business they hit but when I bought him my circle became bigger because I got to pick up some of this other stuff and that’s how we got into doing business with cores and coke and Pepsi and even the pharmaceutical companies we did a lot of work in Puerto Rico back

Anthony Codispoti: and now you can take that core service and offer it to more clients and you get more clients that you know

Larry Avery: you find your existing clients need those services to now you can bring to so you know one call does it all

Anthony Codispoti: Larry sometimes what appears to be a giant mistake in the moment later on in life we look back on you’re like well it’s the best thing that happened because it taught me this or it steered me in a different direction can you think of a moment like that for yourself

Larry Avery: well you know I think when things don’t go bad it’s not a failure it’s just a lesson to me it’s I just learned a lesson okay it cost me a lot maybe but it cost me a lot to send my son they’ll shoot but hey it’s a lesson but but I’ll tell you let’s dial the clock clock back 20 some years ago when when my son was young you know out of school he’s running self-stories but it friends get into rental properties you know and they were buying these trailers and fixing them up rent them out comes dad want to get into rental properties that’s really okay so what are you talking about and they told me what he’s doing what are you thinking about doing it’s a son I said that didn’t sound like something that’s well I don’t think that’s a great idea let those guys do that why don’t we go get in a resort property so Destin for me with Destin Florida you know it’s on the Panhandle beautiful white beaches blue water all the things let’s go and buy a condo in Destin movie in the real property who gets somebody to manage it but when it’s not it but when it’s empty we can go down there and try it oh he still has to and then my wife has this very artistic design quality about her too so we’ve bought our first property in Destin under early 2000 we we put 10% down $308,000 property for 38,000 we went in there took a took a condo right on the beach and it was all white and all this cheap furniture a lot we we go and paint it and put mirrors and all the things that make it look brilliant and we rented out whenever I had it putting more money in cash flip positive 13 months later we sold it for 589,000 so our 38,000 dollar invested turned in 200 so we took the 200 rolled it into three more okay and did the same thing over again so that went on for a good while he makes good money kept rolling it into other properties and bigger properties nicer and things like that and then let’s say 2006 7 whatever it stopped and

Anthony Codispoti: because of the economic downturn

Larry Avery: well yeah housing coming in was just up and I mean it went from let’s say you know really nice properties were selling for around 800 square foot this is a long time ago that they went all the way down to like $400 square foot things like that so we had five properties high in properties and so we held on to them for a while thinking we’re going to see a recovery and of course it didn’t happen right away I mean it’s back now but it’s been many many years and then I had to teach my son a little bit about learning how to use the right awesome things that grow on it stuff he goes what are we gonna do I said we’re gonna sell them it’s selling we can’t lose all this money I said you understand we rolled all the stuff in there but we captured all these losses lost carry ford’s because these were passive income if you don’t you have to have a passive losses as a run so the only way we could recover these losses is actually selling so I call my really good CPA and ask him what the losses carry forward and it was a lot so we began selling our condos for a loss and took the ride off and it became turn those losses into cash so he used the money you had tucked away and and tax losses to recapture and we were able to get out of kind of but it taught me to not to get ahead of your skis on on some of these opportunities so anyway

Anthony Codispoti: I wouldn’t too much sorry go ahead just a lesson learn yeah powerful one the best lessons are ones learned as I like to put it on the job it’s one thing to learn about it in the textbook but when you learn it with your real your own money in real life those lessons you don’t have to try to recall they’re just sort of baked into you at a cellular level

Larry Avery: do you know what I’ll tell you the thing is we are very blessed we’re a Christian company I keep it very Christian company and we believe that God has guided our steps all along the way and when you bring a problem to him and say God can help me with this because this is bigger than me and yeah it just comes to you how to solve a problem and but you gotta realize that it wasn’t anything I thought of he just put it in there so

Anthony Codispoti: so say more about that what it means to be a Christian company and I’m particularly intrigued by you know when you’ve got this big problem you go to prayer you have a conversation with God you ask for help and how’s that work

Larry Avery: I’m gonna give you another example on early on in the shrimp business we were we were scaling up but shrimp business is one of the worst cash flow business there is okay picture deaths the boats come in you unload your shrimp you pay them that the float on that check is 20 minutes until they can get to the bank and cash it that’s how much float so it’s got and then I have to take that shrimp process it freeze it sell it wait seven to 30 days on my money so I’m I’m out about 45 days on cash well what there’s a really really and look I had it early on had a relatively small line of credit and it was just in the shrimp was coming in and we were buying everything we could get and selling it and and and the float and first thing you know you go into that now this this is not allowed today but it was allowed 20 years ago was you go into overdraft the bank and you just paid an overdraft fee I’ll get $30 or whatever probably still a case we just don’t have you know I don’t this spate in overdrafts anymore but it became such a big thing for our company that it became a line item on my P &L statements overdraft ease 65,000 I remember last line item over so my banker caused me he goes Larry and it was huge I mean shrimp is huge because Larry you’re in overdraft almost three-quarter of a million dollars he said it can’t go to a million dollars you’ve got to stop it I said all right all right Jim looking to this was like on a Tuesday and so I said God you’re gonna have to help me with this I’ve got to raise a million bucks here in the next couple of days and so I went and told ourselves guys I said you call all these customers and tell them we will sell them the shrimp they’re looking for at 25 cents a pound but they need to wire the money in that didn’t come from me okay all of them they stored calling their customers and Friday comes alone my banker called me Larry what are doing about the overdraft I said Jim you have you pulled up of our account you know I said pull it up he goes Larry you got a quarter million dollars and how did that happen I said wouldn’t meet him I said well I did tell you you can always sell shrimp everybody will buy shrimp at the right price I said so this what we did but it was a good thing learned a good lesson never got that deep in debt didn’t deep overdraft again but

Anthony Codispoti: and that idea came to you through prayer

Larry Avery: yeah it was just God help me out of this thing and he did believe you

Anthony Codispoti: asked and at some point the idea just appeared in your head yeah it felt right this is what we’re gonna do and it worked

Larry Avery: and it worked but see that what God did was was put it on our customers heart to take the deal okay

Anthony Codispoti: so you said 25 cents a pound how much of a reduction was that

Larry Avery: well that by you made a dollar a pound okay so you’re giving up 25% your profit which is you know hey shrimp commodity products are nickels and dimes and quarters and things like that so that guy knew he’s gonna sell it and he’s gonna pick up another quarter so if he buys four truckloads of shrimp hundred something thousand dollars gonna pick up $25,000 so he just pulls on his line of credit pays me and

Anthony Codispoti: cash flow situation there yeah Larry it’s got one more question for you but before I ask it I want to do two things everyone listening today I know that you love the show Larry’s been a great guest go ahead and hit the follower subscribe button on your favorite podcast app so you continue to get great content like this Larry I also want to let people know the best way either to get in touch with you directly or to continue to follow your story or that of the companies that you’re involved with what would that be

Larry Avery: well we I mean we have big easy foods big easy foods calm calm yeah you want to call us give us a call get some great people that’ll answer your calls and talk to you about what we do I’m here almost all the time I’ve got very few hobbies other than work so you know I like to play a little golf do a little fishing stuff skiing stuff like that but I also like to come to the office talk to these great people at work here

Anthony Codispoti: there we go so big easy foods calm folks and last question for you Larry as you look to the future what exciting changes do you see coming to your industry

Larry Avery: yeah I think people are really starting to look at the foods are eat okay and they’re looking for where they come from okay so if they’re looking for more by American and I couldn’t be more excited about that because that’s what we sell so and I think the government that we’re operating on today believes the same thing so we’re excited about it

Anthony Codispoti: all right well Larry I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today I really appreciate it well I

Larry Avery: appreciate it all right we’re quicker than I thought so

Anthony Codispoti: that’s a good sign yeah folks that’s a good one