Baked beans are an ancient dish native to the Americas, so popular that original ceramic “bean pots” are still found in antique shops around the Northeast.
Every Upstate New Yorker of a certain age knows about Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans, but most probably don’t realize it’s a regional brand, established in Oswego County during the Great Depression. Others may not realize the company no longer exists.
According to local news reports, Lulu Manning Brown was born in Dansville, NY in 1875 and later moved to Mexico, NY were she attended the Mexico Academy.
A schoolteacher, she married Earl Brown in 1896. He spent time as a manager at the Ontario Biscuit Company in Syracuse, and later owned a store in Mexico, NY, before entering the merchandising business.
In 1937 Lulu and Earl begin selling her baked beans for extra income, they had been popular at community events.
Lulu Brown was by then in her 60s, but she began with two small oil-burning stoves in a summer kitchen behind her dress shop. Her husband and her son Robert E., then in his early 20s, delivered the beans around Mexico in large pots, and soon into Oswego.
Earl died on Christmas Day of 1938, but Lulu Brown partnered with Richard Whitney and her son to form BRB Foods, Inc. The business expanded it regional distribution and operations were moved to the second floor of what is now Mexico Public Library.
Over the first ten years the beans were distributed to grocery stores in large pots and there are still a few New Yorkers who remember buying Grandma Brown’s Baked Bean at the butcher counter of their local supermarket.
Robert E. Brown became President of the company in 1941. It wasn’t until 1947 that the company put their products in cans, in a new plant built that year. Three years later Grandma Brown was dead at 75.
During the early 1950s the company had booth at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, and claimed 71,000 customers bought 5-cent baked bean sandwiches. Tradition has it that the hot dog and hamburger vendors threaten to pull out.
Advertisements at the time promoted the company’s bean sandwich with “Cobakco [Cortland Baking Company, which operated from 1896 to 1960] country style bread.”
Bean sandwiches are still eaten in some quarters, with butter or mayonnaise spread, and topped with ketchup, mustard, onion and vinegar.
Robert E. Brown died in 1974 and his wife Loretta Culp Brown, the daughter of a minister, took over leadership of the company. She served as President until March of 1990. She died in 2003 at the age of 90.
During her tenure the Grandma Brown Foundation provided funds to establish the Mexico Public Library which was dedicated to Lulu J. M. Brown and Robert E. Brown.
The Grandma Brown Foundation also provided college scholarships; contributed to area arts organizations; and promoted medical services at hospitals in Central New York.
When Chuck D’Imperio included Grandma’s in his book A Taste of Upstate New York (2015) he visited the factory. A simple sign marked the facility that read “Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans.”
According to WSYR-TV, the current owner is Lulu Brown’s granddaughter, and Loretta Brown’s daughter, Sandra L. Brown.
She’s in her 80s, notoriously reclusive about the company, and reluctant to restart the factory since it closed during the COVID-19 Pandemic, despite multiple offers to help.
Illustrations, from above: Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans on still on store shelves in 2016; and the 1947 manufacturing plant in Mexico, Oswego County, NY, ca. 2016 (courtesy Tom The Backroads Traveller).
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