Spilling The Beans on The Bush Brothers

Chestnut Hill, Tennessee, a tiny community in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, is home to one of the nation’s most iconic businesses. It started in 1897, when local teacher and businessman A.J. Bush founded a general store and, later, a tomato cannery. Bush Brothers & Company grew from one generation of the family to the next, developing its signature baked beans along the way. Bush’s Best Baked Beans eventually became a nationally known brand celebrated by its famous canine spokesdog, Duke.

Andrew Jackson “A.J.” Bush was born in Chestnut Hill, Tennessee, on October 27, 1867, where he lived for most of his life, leaving only to attend nearby Carson-Newman College. In 1891, he married Sarah “Sallie” Ketner and they had four boys and two girls. Both had a deep interest in their community, where Sallie acted as a midwife and A.J. had been a schoolteacher and an elected school board representative.

Looking for ways to help residents further, A.J. developed an interest in the trade business. He decided to serve both by establishing the A.J. Bush & Company General Store, which provided a convenient location for the barter of goods that were not locally produced, while ensuring a livelihood.

However, his family and the people in his community who needed jobs inspired him to open a hosiery factory to provide decent living wages. As the construction process unfolded, Stokely Brothers Tomato Cannery, in Newport, Tennessee, got word of A.J.’s plans and approached him with an offer. If he provided the building and staff, they would supply the equipment to open a cannery instead of a hosiery mill.

In 1904, the partnership evolved, and the cannery opened, providing much-needed jobs for the Bush family and the Chestnut Hill community. Four years later, he bought out the Stokely Brothers partnership interest and formed a new one with his sons, Fred and Claude, forming Bush Brothers & Company. The general store served the community as a mercantile and social center where the locals gathered around the wood fire stove, sharing tall tales.

The cannery was prosperous, and the first decade saw many improvements. With the installation of steam-powered seamers and fillers, cans were no longer soldered and filled by hand. A.J. also improved the distribution system, upgrading from mule-drawn wagons designed for the railroad station in nearby Newport, and began working with distributors in Knoxville, Asheville, North Carolina, and Greenville, South Carolina.

The world intrudes

The onset of World War I gave Bush Brothers & Company another economic boost, as the government’s demand for canned food supplies increased. Except for Sundays, the tomato cannery worked around the clock, and 85 percent of the company’s products were set aside for government distribution.

The end of the war meant a drastic decrease in the demand for canned goods, including tomatoes. While the Bush Brothers financially survived, other canneries went out of business. In 1922, A.J. took out a $925 loan on his life insurance policy and used his bank line of credit to incorporate the family business. He turned the management over to his sons so he could concentrate on the general store. The cannery thrived, and by 1930, the company produced and distributed various canned products to market across the southeast.

The Great Depression provided the next challenge to the Bush Brothers as they sought to find affordable products to offer an economically challenged country. Pork and beans, hominy, and sauerkraut were some of the commodities that filled that bill nicely. In 1928, a second cannery was built in Oak Grove, Tennessee.

At the same time, the Tennessee Valley Authority created Douglas Lake to power a hydroelectric dam to meet the need for electricity. This flooded a lot of prime farm land, fields Bush Brothers used to produce most of their crop, and also claimed their Oak Grove plant, reducing the company’s ability to meet production demands. In 1944, Bush Brothers acquired a canning company in Blytheville, Arkansas, and the company was able to increase production once again.

While Bush Brothers once canned various vegetables, their focus narrowed to beans and hominy, consistently the two top sellers. Bean shipments arrive from North Dakota and Michigan, and were seasoned, cooked, and packed on-site at Chestnut Hill and a manufacturing plant in Augusta, Wisconsin.

In 1947, Bush Brothers’ board of directors chose a new identity, Bush’s Best, and the double-B logo they developed became a trademark known across the southeast for decades to come.

Focus on baked beans

Bush Brothers was more than 60-year-old before it introduced the signature product that defined its success at the start of the 21st century. The product was baked beans, which first emerged after a change in the company’s senior management, according to General Manager Scott Schroeder, who was the source for this company history.  In 1965, Fred Bush’s younger brother, Claude, was named chairman, and C.J. Ethier, the husband of A.J. Bush’s daughter, Lena Maye, was appointed president and chief executive officer. Fred Bush and C.J. Ethier, with the help of A.J.’s grandson, Condon Bush, put the Bush family recipe for baked beans on the market in 1969. Baked beans debuted under the Bush’s Best Original label, a new brand name for a new product.

Ethier was named chairman in 1978, the same year Condon Bush was elected president of the company. Under their stewardship, two new varieties of baked beans were introduced. Steadily, Bush Brothers climbed to the number three position in the baked beans market, trailing only corporate giants ConAgra Foods and Campbell Soup Company by the end of the 1980s. But Bush Brothers greatest gains were yet to come. The company’s aggressive and ambitious approach to the baked beans market in the 1990s transformed the family enterprise and created a new market champion.

The decade of historic change began in 1991, when Bush Brothers’ board of directors, for the first time, included a majority of directors from outside the Bush family. That same year, Condon Bush was named chairman, while C.J. Ethier’s son, Jim Ethier, was named president and chief operating officer. The two cousins resolved to embark on a marketing campaign of unprecedented scale in support of the company’s baked beans brand. Their decision made Bush’s Best Baked Beans the company’s core product, signaling an era in which marketing prowess would determine success in the bean world.

Historically, baked beans had received little advertising support from producers. The market category was deemed “under-marketed” by industry observers, presenting an ideal opportunity for an aggressive company to exploit. Bush Brothers sought to be just that, taking on a new approach that required substantial changes to its operations.

Ron Dix, a veteran in the packaged goods industry, became Bush Brothers’ first ever director of marketing. His first major task was to assemble a brand management team, something Bush Brothers never had. Dix wanted to hire talented, experienced food marketers from the industry’s stalwart participants, but Bush Brothers’ management believed the location of the company’s executive offices weakened its ability to attract the industry talent. After spending 84 years based in Chestnut Hill, the company relocated its headquarters to Knoxville, Tennessee, completing the move in 1992.

A secret recipe, a talking dog

In 1993, Bush Brothers retained Cole, Henderson and Drake, a small advertising company in Atlanta, Georgia, to develop a new ad campaign for the baked beans. The marketing focused on a “secret family recipe,” and introduced Jay Bush, a great-grandson of A.J. Bush, as the company’s spokesperson. The advertisement performed well in test markets and was released nationally in 1994.

In the summer of 1995, a new ad paired Jay up with a mischievous, talking golden retriever named Duke, modeled after Jay’s golden retriever of the same name. Bush Brothers witnessed a remarkable surge in baked bean sales.

The Jay and Duke duo became celebrities, and sales of the company’s beans increased to a whopping 80 percent national market share. The popularity of the commercials also inspired the company to publish a children’s book, Duke Finds a Home, published in 2006.

In 2010, the Bush’s Visitor Center opened in Chestnut Hill, partially in response to customer and regional tourism agencies. Located inside a remodeled version of the original A.J. Bush & Company General Store, the center features a museum, café and gift shop. Inside the museum, guests can trace the history of the company, learn how the beans are manufactured and shipped, get a peek inside Duke’s doghouse, and enjoy several interactive exhibits.

The gift shop offers a variety of Southern-themed gifts, Duke and Bush’s souvenirs and, of course, a wide selection of Bush’s Best Beans. Outside the center, visitors can pose with cutouts of Jay and Duke at a vintage 1940 Ford truck that was in one of the iconic commercials. The Bush’s Family Café, next door to the museum, specializes in home-cooked Southern fare. “We have a lot of made-from-scratch food and homemade pies, which includes a signature pinto bean pie,” said Schroeder, the general manager.

Maintaining a green footprint

The company also operates a successful cattle farm that it says creates an environmentally sustainable and profitable business arm by employing bean waste and processed water from the manufacturing plant. All wastewater is recovered and piped to an on-site processing facility, where all the solid material—primarily bean pulp and skins—is filtered out to become methane. The methane fuels the boilers to provide steam to heat the plant. The remaining water is further cleaned, piped out and used to irrigate pasture land.

In 2003, Bush Brothers completed a $160 million renovation and expansion project at the Chestnut Hill plant, tripling production and including a 38,000-square-foot office building. The facility provides administrative space, a new employee training area, locker rooms, and showers to ensure sanitary conditions before employees enter the workplace. Nine-story-tall hydrostatic cookers enable Bush Brothers to produce products more efficiently.

In 2015, fourth-generation family member Drew Everett succeeded Jim Ethier as chairman. Schroeder said Bush Beans is still family owned and is committed to remaining family owned for generations to come.

Meanwhile, Duke is still scheming to get his paws on the secret family recipe to sell to the highest bidder.