by Greg Edwards
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme . . . and, oh yeah, cumin and black pepper, too.
A stroll through the C.F. Sauer Co. distribution warehouse in downtown Richmond nearly overwhelms the senses with the aroma of a rich variety of spices from exotic places around the world.
Sauer, one of the nation's top producers of spices, flavoring extracts and other food products, celebrates its 120th anniversary this Saturday.
Only a few Richmond businesses have been around longer than C.F. Sauer Co.
Sauer's anniversary celebration promises to be a low-key affair, in keeping with the character of the Richmond-based company, whose offices have been at 2000 W. Broad St. since 1911.
While the company has a tradition to build on, it has its eye to the future.
A major rebranding, which Sauer is not yet ready to discuss, is planned for launch within the next few months. Sauer also is seeking to continue the export business that it entered with the purchase of Bama food products from Welch Foods Inc. in 1996.
Sauer has been under continuous family ownership since 1887.
Conrad Frederick Sauer, a 21-year-old pharmacist, noticed that vanilla dispensed from a bulk container was one of the best-selling items in the drugstore where he worked. Soon after, his new company was selling vanilla extract in small bottles to housewives.
Mark Sauer, current executive vice president for sales at C.F. Sauer Co. said his great-grandfather recognized an opportunity when he saw one.
Among the hundreds of products that the Sauer company sells, vanilla extract is Mark Sauer's favorite.
"We are the last company in America that makes vanilla the way they used to make it," he said. "We've never changed."
Vanilla beans come from the Bourbon orchid, a tropical vine native to the Mexican Gulf Coast. Most of the world's vanilla supply now comes from Madagascar, an island off the African east coast.
Sauer keeps the beans, which cost about $20-$30 a pound wholesale depending on the variety, in a vault in the basement of the company's Richmond plant. During processing, the beans are cleaned and immersed in pure grain alcohol. After several days of maturation, the liquid is drawn off and mixed with sugar and pure water to reduce the alcoholic content of the final product.
Vanilla is one of many products packaged at Sauer's Broad Street plant. The company's buildings occupy about 14 acres around Broad Street and Hermitage Road, with some operations in a former Sears store.
Plastic boxes, bottles and tops to contain Sauer's spices are molded at the company's Metrolina Plastics Inc. subsidiary across Hermitage Road from the manufacturing plant.
The Sauer company has 900 employees nationwide and had sales of about $300 million last year. By comparison, Maryland-based McCormick & Co., the nation's largest spice maker, had sales nine times that amount.
Sauer operates six plants:
two in the Richmond area, including the margarine and liquid-butter-substitute plant of its Dean Foods subsidiary (not to be confused with Illinois-based Dean Foods), in Sandston; a plant in Orlando, Fla., to serve commercial foodservice operations; a plant to produce mayonnaise and similar products at its Duke's Products Co. subsidiary near Greenville, S.C.; a gourmet spice plant of its Spice Hunter subsidiary in St. Luis Obispo, Calif.; and a mayonnaise and margarine plant outside New Century, Kan., near Kansas City.
Sauer also has a real-estate business, whose properties include the Libbie Place and Cary Court shopping centers in Richmond.
Sauer has owned 92-year-old Pleasants Hardware, which Mark Sauer describes as the Ukrop's of hardware chains because of its customer service emphasis, since 1989.
Mark Sauer jokes that he owes his very existence to the Sauer company's acquisition of Duke's Products in 1929.
Duke's, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, got its start when Mrs. Eugenia Duke began a successful business of selling sandwiches at Camp Sevier near Greenville, S.C. Her mayonnaise recipe made the sandwiches popular.
C.B. Boyd, an employee of Eugenia Duke, convinced her that he could sell the mayonnaise to grocery stores if she would bottle it. Boyd remained with Duke's after the Sauer company bought it in 1929.
C.F. Sauer Jr., who took over the company following his father's death in 1927, invited Boyd and his family to his vacation home in what is now North Myrtle Beach, S.C. in the summer of 1941.
It was there, Mark Sauer recalled, that his father, Conrad F. Sauer III, preparing to enter his first year at Virginia Military Institute, met Boyd's daughter Barbara. After World War II, she would become his wife.
C.F. Sauer III and Barbara had five sons, four of whom are involved in the family business. Conrad F. Sauer IV was elected president of the company in 1993. Besides Mark in sales, Bradford is vice president of Sauer Properties, and Tyler is in charge of plant scheduling. Matthew, who held numerous jobs with the company, died of cancer this year.
The Sauer children were expected to work and familiarize themselves with the business, Mark Sauer said. He began working at the Richmond plant when he was 13.
"That was your education . . . your MBA degree,he said. "You have to know how the plants operate."
Family businesses often get sold or close after the younger generation decides it had no interest in running them. For the Sauer company, however, the fifth generation is waiting in the wings, Mark Sauer said.
Besides generations of Sauer children, generations of employees have worked for the company, Sauer said. The average tenure of a Sauer worker is about 25 years.
Its employees have been responsible for the company's success, Sauer said. You hire the best people you can find and let them do their jobs, he said.
"The root of all evil," Sauer said, "are bosses that want to be involved in every aspect of their businesses."
Being a private company presents its challenges. For example, the stock market is not an option when the company needs capital for a new project or expansion. And family shareholders, like any shareholders, have to be kept happy by management.
But the adjective private when applied to Sauer goes beyond the type of ownership. It has been a relatively quiet company.
"It's the way we were raised," Mark Sauer said. "We always tried not to blow our horn. The products are what they are."
Even in its charitable giving the company has maintained a low profile. "My father used to say [giving] the gift, itself, is all the reward you need," Sauer said.
As for the future, Sauer said the company is constantly looking for opportunities. Its last major acquisitions were in 1999 when it bought Mrs. Filbert's Mayonnaise and The Spice Hunter, a California-based marketer of exotic spices and all-natural food products.
"What we really do a lot of right now is export," he said. The company's products are big in Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, but African countries are its biggest customers.
When Sauer bought the Bama label from Welch's in the mid-'90s it gained an export business. Bama, the most popular mayonnaise brand in Alabama and Mississippi, now sells to 20 countries around the world and will ship 2 million cases this year to customers in Africa, Sauer said.
