NEW ORLEANS — Blue Runner Foods, Inc. celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Blue Runner, famous for its canned Creole Cream Style Red Beans, is proud to celebrate its history of being a locally owned family business. The company continues to uphold the values instilled since 1918, to provide high quality, consistently delicious and authentic New Orleans Creole foods.
Blue Runner Foods began canning fresh fruits and a variety of other items in 1918, moving to its current production facility in Gonzales, LA in 1946. Four years later the company introduced its now famous Creole Cream Style Red Beans using a long held family recipe. This recipe, slow-cooked in large batches, is still the recipe used today.
In 1992, the company was purchased by Richard Thomas, a New Orleans native. Richard was the food broker representing Blue Runner when the brand came up for sale. He believed in the product so strongly he left his father’s brokerage firm to take the helm at Blue Runner.
Thomas, president of Blue Runner Foods, is continuing the tradition of building Blue Runner as a local family company, and today works with two of his children in the business. Together, they are excited to usher the company into its second century.
Blue Runner sets to enter this new era of its history with a full brand revamp, from modernizing their iconic labels to a completely new marketing campaign championing Blue Runner’s history and present as a local New Orleans product.
“I’m very proud of what the brand has become and how deeply the people of New Orleans feel connected to the brand,” said Thomas. “I cannot wait to see what the next hundred years has in store for Blue Runner.”
