Stuckey's (CONT’D FROM PAGE 24)
“Buying the company, I learned the story behind the brand and how my grandfather built this company from nothing, and this story is complete with lessons of change.” Hard Times Fuel Resilience Like Stuckey’s, most of the great companies — Micro- soft, IBM, Target, Airbnb — were founded during economic hard times, Stuckey said. For her grandfather, it was the Great Depression. He didn’t have money, there wasn’t any work, but one thing that was plentiful in Georgia was pe- cans, so he started selling them on the side of the road. One day a family pulled over and asked if there was a re- stroom or anything to eat. He had nothing to offer them, but it sparked an idea that would change his life. “What do entrepreneurs do? They solve problems that people have, and he was an entrepreneur. We all need to
Most of the Stuckey's were shuttered decades ago.
think like an entrepreneur,” she said. In a few years, he was able to put some money togeth- er to open his first Stuckey’s store and the seed was plant- ed for what would become the world’s first roadside retail chain. Embrace Change
Then there was a new crisis that gripped the nation — World War II. By that time, Mr. Stuckey had several stores and they were doing well, but with food rations, he couldn’t buy sugar and he could no lon- ger make candy. He was forced to close his stores and file bankruptcy. “So, what did he do? He evolved, he pivoted,” she said, by securing a contract with Department of Defense to make can- dy for the troops. “The lesson I learned from that is when times are hard, embrace change, you have to,” she said. “And see it as an opportunity.” In his new role, he picked up some skills that would be useful down the road. He learned how to scale and mass produce; he learned about food safety and preser- vation, and how to package and ship his product. He completely reinvented his business. When the war ended, life in American had changed as well. It was a better econ- omy, and everyone was driving and going on vacations. The era of the road trip had begun, so Stuckey’s was back on the road again and thriving on the Jefferson High- way, the Lincoln Highway, and Route 66. Crisis Strikes Again Things were going well until the Inter- state Highway System of 1956 was passed with backing from President Dwight D. Ei- senhower. Its construction would provide jobs to former soldiers looking for work, serve the national defense during the Cold War, support population growth and pro-
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