(gentle music) - [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(light bright music) - [Narrator] The familiar snack cracker, a mainstay in vending machines and lunchboxes for decades.

- The invention of the peanut butter snack cracker happened in Charlotte.

- [Narrator] And the Carolina Company that launched it all.

- [Tom] Lance is one of the great success stories of Charlotte and the Carolinas.

- [Narrator] They got their start with a simple twist of fate.

- How it got started?

We were stuck with a load of peanuts they couldn't sell, and what are we gonna do with them?

- [Narrator] The answer?

Roast them and sell 'em at Trade And Tryon, a success that led Philip Lance and his son-in-law, Salem Van Every, to form the Lance packing company.

(gentle music) Grandson, Philip Lance Van Every, was just 29-years-old when he inherited the family business.

- He believed in hard work, he believed in being very frugal, and he believed in growing his people.

Family was very, very important to him.

(light bright music) - [Narrator] Philip Lance Van Every also believed in giving back to the community.

Serving on the Charlotte City Council and two terms as mayor, he wanted to do more.

So with $1,000, he established the Philip L Van Every foundation to support nonprofit work in his community.

- [Granddaughter] His foundation today is worth over $40 million.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] On this "Trail of History", learn how a bit of creative ingenuity and the right ingredients gave rise to Lance.

Meet the man credited with leading the company from a regional staple to a national brand, and learn about the legacy that he left behind.

This is the story of the iconic Lance Cracker, and the family behind it was Charlotte native, Philip Lance Van Every.

(upbeat music) (light bright music) - The Lance Crackers, in my totally unbiased opinion, were a much superior cracker to anybody else's cracker.

- [Narrator] Fresh peanut butter sandwiched between two crackers.

It's a simple treat, but one that put Charlotte on the map in the snack food world.

- [Granddaughter] The key products were Toast Chee, Toasty, Nekot, Nip-Chee, Van-O-Lunch, Choc-O-Lunch, Gold-N-Chees, Peanut Bar, and Captain's Wafers.

- [Narrator] Lance was largely a peanut processor and candy manufacturer up until World War II.

During the war, nationwide sugar rationing meant this key ingredient was very scarce.

The company pivoted away from making candy and focused on expanding its line of peanut butter sandwich crackers and cookies, which required less sugar.

Cousins, Mary Lance McGinn and Quincy Foil White, may actually be a bit biased.

Growing up as part of the Lance family, after all, their late grandfather, Philip Lance Van Every, served as president of Lance Incorporated for 30 years.

- [Granddaughter] My favorite products were Gold-N-Chees and the Peanut Bar.

I really loved those products, but I also loved Lance Peanut Butter.

We'd get it in the jars and you'd have to stir it.

It was really delicious.

- Lance crackers were the only ones that had to go through a process of rising.

They called it proofing the dough.

No other companies did this with crackers, and it made the Toast-Chees, especially to me, that was my biggest memory, is being a really light, flaky cracker, but still was sturdy enough to hold the peanut butter.

- Another early important Lance product was Peanut Brittle.

And during World War I, a soldier at nearby Camp Greene is said to have given Lance a recipe for making this popular candy.

While my grandfather was at Lance, every Christmas we'd go to his house.

We'd get this great big silver tin filled with that delicious Peanut Brittle.

- Going to the Lance plant was one of my very, very favorite things in the world to do as a young child.

It was so clean.

Obviously, being a a food processing plant bakery, even though employees may be covered in flour, the plant itself was kept immaculately clean.

Being able to taste a Captain's Wafer hot off the line is one of the most wonderful experiences you will ever have.

I think the smell, when Lance was baking certain things, all of South Boulevard smelled wonderful.

Wonderful smells coming out of the plant.

(bright upbeat music) - During the depression in 1935, Lance sales were a million dollars.

It was a company that did very well during that period of time, and it's largely because you could get a great pack of crackers for a nickel a pack.

- [Narrator] And it was the Lance Man that delivered those fresh treats.

- The Lance Man was a route salesman, and his job was to sell snacks to all the mom and pop shops, to gas stations, to any kind of smaller venue like that.

And they traveled all over the place.

(bright upbeat music) What's interesting about the Lance Man is they own their own trucks, and they were on a profit sharing plan.

So, you know, they got paid on what they sold.

♪ Good things come from the house of Lance ♪ ♪ To help you over the hungry spot ♪ ♪ It's a happy minute with good things in it ♪ ♪ Made by Lance ♪ ♪ Flaky crackers, golden brown ♪ ♪ With peanut butter, freshly ground ♪ ♪ For tasty snacks in cellophane packs ♪ ♪ Ask for Lance ♪ (light bright music) - [Narrator] In the early days, jars like these could be found on gas station and drugstore counters.

Customers paid using the Honor System.

But in 1954, under Philip Van Every's time at Lance, Vending machines started popping up in schools and in the workplace.

- [Granddaughter] Vending during his tenure accounted for approximately 25% of total sales volume.

That's a lot of crackers.

- [Narrator] For the family, employees, and just about anyone who knows crackers, peanuts, and a host of other treats, it brings back fond memories.

Philip Lance Van Every left an enduring legacy.

- He was somebody who took over Lance in the '40s and built it from a company that had about $8 million in sales to about $80 million in sales.

And something that had been purely regional became a national force in the snack food world.

(lively music) - [Narrator] But before the Lance Man, vending machines and jars on counters, you might wonder how it all got started.

Well, you have to go back more than a hundred years, not to 1913 as folklore would have it, but to 1912.

Woodrow Wilson won the presidential election, Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Guides in Georgia, which later became the Girl Scouts.

And here in Charlotte, textile mills hummed, a one-year subscription to the "Charlotte News" cost about $6, and a shipping error laid the foundation for a very unique success story.

One definitely for the history books, thanks to Philip's wife, Nancy.

- Lance is one of the great success stories of Charlotte and the Carolinas.

The invention of the peanut butter snack cracker happened in Charlotte, and we now take for granted the whole snack food industry.

But, to a large extent, Philip Lance pioneered that, and it was an accident.

- Philip Lance was an entrepreneur.

He was a food broker here in Charlotte.

He specialized in coffee beans sales.

One day when he was picking up an order of coffee beans for a customer, he picked up 500 pounds of raw peanuts instead.

So, what did he do?

He went home to his family kitchen, told his wife, "Well, I've got these peanuts."

She said, "Let's roast them in the oven."

And he sold them for a nickel a bag on the corner of Trade and Tryon Street in uptown Charlotte.

That was very successful.

So it was $60 in his pocket.

He decided he was gonna start a company, and he moved his operations from the family kitchen to College Street, bought a roaster, bought a peanut mill, and started his business.

- [Narrator] By the fall of 1912, business was going so well Philip Lance brought on a partner.

- He went into business with his son-in-law, Salem Augustus Van Every, my great grandfather, and they started Lance Packing Company.

- [Narrator] Lance brought the idea, but it was Van Every who brought the working capital after he borrowed $250 from his Aunt Ruth.

- [Granddaughter] Now the reason it was called Lance Packing Company is because the workers actually packed the peanut butter into jars to sell.

- [Narrator] At first, the company sold roasted peanuts and fresh peanut butter.

But later in 1912, Lance's wife, Nancy, and his daughter, Mary, who was married to business partner Salem Van Every, had an idea.

- [Tom] And they said, "You know what?

We could roast those and make them into peanut butter, spread them on crackers, and we could sell them at the textile mills."

- [Narrator] The snack became the first commercially sold peanut butter sandwich cracker, and the perfect snack of its day.

- This is yet another story where Charlotte's textile heritage has surprising spinoffs because folks had moved from the country to the city, they were working in a hundred mills literally in the Charlotte area and beyond.

And they worked 10-hour days, 12-hour days, sometimes six days a week.

And you were expected to keep the rhythm of the machine.

You didn't have big time breaks like we now have.

And so a cart would come around in the factory with Coca-Cola and the Lance Peanut Butter Crackers.

Ask older folks whose families worked in the textile mills around here, and they'll remember the working in the mill and those little orange crackers that kept you going through that long shift.

- [Narrator] With its success, the company had to expand.

They first moved from 204 South College Street to a location on West 9th.

Then again in 1926 to this location on South Boulevard, which was strategically located along the Southern Railway Line.

But that same year, tragedy struck when Philip Lance died in a car accident.

His son-in-law, Salem Van Every, took the helm, and the Lance Packaging Company morphed, becoming Lance, Incorporated.

And under Van Every's watch, the company added new products, started baking their own crackers, and added tractor trailers to expand distribution.

From the beginning, Lance was a family business.

- Philip Lance Van Every was born December 9th, 1913 here in Charlotte.

His parents were Salem Augustus Van Every and Mary Arnold Lance Van Every.

- [Narrator] He was one of six brothers, and he started working for the family business right out of high school.

- He was 18 when he started at Lance.

He was a trainee.

You know, he had a sales route.

In fact, he had a sales route that took him through Anderson, South Carolina, which is where he met our grandmother, Pinky.

But he worked his way up through the company.

He believed in hard work, he believed in being very frugal, and he believed in growing his people.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In April of 1943, Philip Lance Van Every's life changed when his father and co-founder of the company, 59-year-old Salem Van Every, died unexpectedly.

His passing left the younger Van Every at the helm of the family business.

- Imagine being 29-years-old and all of a sudden the world is put on your shoulders.

Your grandfather has passed away, your father has passed away.

You have been working for the family company for 11 years, straight out of your high school years.

So you don't have a whole, whole, whole lot of experience.

You've started at the bottom, and all of a sudden it's yours.

That is the situation my grandfather found himself in.

Thankfully, he had the wisdom to know that he didn't know how to do it.

So he sought the counsel of others.

- [Narrator] The company's young president and CEO traveled to Maryland seeking advice on how to lead the family business.

- My grandfather went to the McCormick Company in Baltimore and learned about their management style.

He was willing to be innovated.

He didn't like anybody telling him what to do, so he liked the more collaborative method that the McCormick system provided.

- It's just like it is in major corporations today.

It was a new idea back then, but you had managers in various departments.

Each department had a board, you know, and they made decisions, you know, how could they improve processes?

- [Narrator] Common in business today, but in the 1940s, it was a new concept at Lance.

- With that multi-level management, everybody had a buy-in to how successful the company was.

He even started a profit sharing plan that was 100% funded by Lance for his employees.

He wanted everybody at Lance to have ownership in the company.

- McGinn said it worked.

- There were many, many people at Lance who worked 40 and 50 years.

They retired from Lance, their spouses worked at Lance, their children always worked at Lance.

It was a place you felt like you were heard, you were appreciated, and you were absolutely treated like you were family.

(bright upbeat music) - [Narrator] But the management structure wasn't the only big change coming to Lance.

- In the late '50s, Lance management realized that the South Boulevard plant uptown was too small, that they needed a large expansion.

- Philip Lance Van Every had a much bigger vision, and he found money through investors to build an entirely new factory much further down South Boulevard on the other side of the railroad.

You may drive by it today, not know that it's there.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The new and more modern plant opened up on July 1st, 1962.

And according to his granddaughters, and a former employee, Van Every continued working hard to make employees feel valued.

There was an attention to detail from the top on down that impacted employees each and every day throughout the year.

- They had music that played over the loudspeakers, and employees could go request songs.

They instituted prayer twice a day.

They gave weather reports for employees over the loudspeakers.

They had free Thanksgiving dinner in the cafeteria for employees and all the management levels.

Everybody ate together, which was pretty neat.

They didn't have a separate executive dining room, everybody ate in the cafeteria.

He had Christmas parties at the old Carolina Theater.

They were always packed.

- Stories my mother would tell me that her dad, my grandfather Phil, knew the names of everyone in the plant.

He made the janitor feel just as important as an executive vice president.

- The employees knew he deeply cared about them and their success, and the success of the company.

Everybody there was on a first name basis.

If you had an idea that you wanted to share with Mr. Phil, you could just go in his office anytime.

- I think he was far beyond his years in perceiving how people are motivated, and what their needs were.

Their needs were being part of something.

And Lance, he developed another family.

- [Narrator] Ron Melvin worked at Lance 36 years, working all the way up to Senior VP of Operations.

But when he started in 1962- - I was the third person to go through the managed training program, and that gave me training through all the departments.

I had to run the ovens, I had to run the mixing machines, and I had to work all three shifts.

I worked in shipping.

We had a fleet of trucks, and I had to work on the trucks and trailers, et cetera.

So, it took me six years.

(laughs) - He remembers his first time meeting Philip Van Every, and understanding company culture from the very top.

- The first time I met Phil, I was in the mixing room.

I had flour and I was mixing dough, and I had shortening all over me, and I was a mess.

Well, they told me I had to go see Phil Van Every, so I said, "Well, I gotta go change."

He said, "No, he wants to see you right now."

So he said, "So, now."

So I took the towel and laid it on the chair in front of his desk.

He said, "What are you doing?"

And I said, "Well, I came from the mixing room."

He said, "That chair belongs to Lance.

It's meant for everybody to sit in.

Everybody doesn't carry towels around with them."

(laughs) I felt pretty silly - [Narrator] Melvin adds Van Every was not above doing what needed to be done, no matter the task.

- There was peanuts that a lady had spilled through, and he was, had a broom in his hand sweeping.

And this lady asked me on the packer, she said, "Who is he?"

And I said, "He's the Owner, Chairman Of The Board."

(laughs) And I said, "He's concerned about your safety."

(bright music) - [Narrator] Philip Van Every's legacy goes well beyond the footprints of his company at Lance.

He also invested into his community.

- My grandfather very, very much loved the community, loved the areas he lived, and really sought to be of service and the leader in the community.

- Philip Lance Van Every was mayor in the mid 1950s.

Two terms, four years, but it was the four years when what's now the Bojangles Coliseum was dedicated.

It was the largest, you have to say this exactly right, but I think the largest free-span dome in the world.

It was one of the things that made it into the national magazines, that helped put Charlotte on the map.

Independence Boulevard changed the map that was extended way out in the country past that coliseum, and helped with the suburban growth of Charlotte.

Charlotte Memorial Hospital was vastly expanded, that's now Atrium Health.

And things like the Park Road Shopping Center, which is the first big suburban shopping center in Charlotte, 1956.

And so Philip Lance Van Every was head of Charlotte at a really go-go time.

- [Narrator] According to Hanchett's research, Van Every's popularity amongst voters was clear.

He won a second term while traveling in Europe.

His granddaughter, Mary Lance McGinn, said her parents, on the other hand, found that having the mayor in the family to be sometimes a bit of a challenge.

- One of my parents' funny stories is my parents were dating and got married while my grandfather was mayor.

And they used to joke that they couldn't go on a date anywhere in Charlotte without somebody, a policeman or whoever, feeling like they were being spied upon and reported back to my grandfather.

So my parents used to sneak off and go to Concord to have a date so no one knew who they were there.

(laughs) - [Narrator] Philip Lance Van Every took the company started by his grandfather and father from a local success story to national prominence.

Lance employed thousands of people, and became a multi-million dollar empire.

But his most lasting legacy, his family says, was something he put in place in 1961.

- [Granddaughter] Perpetuating giving back to the community was very, very important to my grandfather.

- One of the things that CEOs did in the early 20th Century, in that period when the popularity of the product, the popularity of the the owner were intertwined with the future of the community, James B. Duke had put together the Duke Foundation late in his life in the 1920s.

Philip Van Every did not wait till the end of his life.

- And so in 1961, he started a foundation which bears his name.

The Philip L Van Every foundation.

And at that time, the very first contribution, he put a thousand dollars into that foundation.

And the very first gift was $200 to the Boy Scouts of America in 1961.

His will stated that a hundred percent of his land stock was to fund this foundation.

So when he died in 1980, the foundation was fully funded.

The foundation today is worth over $40 million.

It is one of the hundred largest foundations in North Carolina.

And we are so privileged to give away approximately $2 million a year to worthy organizations that align with the type of things he loved and cared about.

You know, we, our goal, and we are charged with supporting the communities in which he lived and worked, and that is a great honor.

We support human and community service, which represents the largest pool, education, healthcare and rehabilitation, and arts culture in history.

- And in continuing my grandfather's legacy, it is truly my honor to be able to serve on the board of the foundation, and to be able to continue to be able to give back to the community in his honor, and in his memory.

(bright music) - [Narrator] In November of 2019, the Trail of History committee honored Philip Lance Van Every.

The group placed this bronze statue, sculpted by Charlotte artist, Chas Fagan, on the Little Sugar Creek Greenway.

- The artist has done an absolutely unbelievable job.

Not only doing an incredible likeness of my grandfather and what he looked like, but catching his spirit, capturing his spirit, the twinkle in his eye, and the fact that it is sitting on top of a Toast Chee cracker, just, it makes me smile.

- I really think when kids go, or anybody goes, along the Little Sugar Creek Greenway and they look at this man, they need to think, "Gosh, he was 18 when he started at this company.

He had the fortitude to work his way up to the top while being mayor of Charlotte and caring about his community.

And that I can do it too."

I hope that when people, kids go look at this statue that they think about, "Oh gosh, this is this really cool Charlotte brand, and it was started with $60."

- The statue, I believe, is not just for the family.

I have a lot of pride in it, just as a family member.

Most people alive in Charlotte today would not know my grandfather.

So I think it's really important for the community to learn the origins of Lance.

It's a homegrown Charlotte company.

There's not Lance Inc anymore.

It is now under Campbell snacks.

So the fact is that part of Charlotte has sort of faded.

You still have the plant on South Boulevard, but people will be able to learn more about the history of where Lance came from.

And without that statue and without the history behind it, some of that may fade into the background.

- [Narrator] But in the end for these two cousins, Van Every was something much more.

Both describing him as someone they loved, admired, and at times, stood in awe of.

- He was larger-than-life to me.

He was very loving, you know.

He loved all his grandchildren.

He had 14 grandchildren, 11 of us are now living.

- My granddad, big smile.

We affectionately known as Pappy.

To me, if I think of Pappy, he was a larger-than-life character.

He was very charismatic.

I think all of us grandchildren were very much drawn to him.

When I think of him, I think of his big smile, twinkle in his eye.

And to me he was just somebody very, very special.

He was somebody we were drawn to, wanted to be around.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Quincy White shared a quote from her grandfather, one she says sums up the Lance family philosophy.

- "Lance is a story like that of so many other American institutions.

A story of humble origins, intense faith, determination, and, above all, a history of the loyalty of its employees almost beyond description."

That is so fitting, that statement that my grandfather wrote is so fitting for how he led his life, how he ran his company, and how much he deeply cared about his employees.

He was as loyal to them as they were to him.

(gentle music) He did a lot in this community, so he really deeply cared about his family, the Lance family, and the community in which he lived and worked.

What's really important to us as a family is to preserve the Lance history, to preserve the legacy, you know, to preserve and recognize the great things that Phil Van Every and his family did.

His legacy continues through his foundation, which bears his name.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] A trail of detailed and thoughtful bronze statues now stand along Charlotte's Little Sugar Creek Greenway.

The men and women depicted here represent individuals who achieved great success while they were alive, but also left a legacy of good in their community.

Philip Lance Van Every did indeed pay it forward.

He took the opportunity to lead the family company, built it into something larger than anyone could have imagined.

And it all began with a simple idea that evolved into a beloved snack food across the country.

Simple sustenance that built an entire company, and that company built a pathway to do good in their hometown and beyond.

We thank you for watching this edition of "Trail of History".

(light bright music) (light bright music) (light bright music) (light bright music) (gentle music) A production of PBS Charlotte.