If you are keen to get a glimpse into the real fortunes of Tandy’s Manufacturing Company the physical presentation of their products is probably not the best indicator to go by. The high quality of the packaging and labeling of their nut butter, jams and jellies and various other condiments and the manner in which they match, every inch, the aesthetics of their imported counterparts, masks what the Company’s Chief Executive Officer Burt Denny says are the formidable challenges associated with “holding things together.”
This may not be the era of two decades ago when Burt and Vilma Denny’s kitchen turned out peanut butter and sold them to shops in one-gallon buckets, the brisk trade that the product attracted compelling him to repeat the production process all over again in a week or so. Nor are these the days when the popularity of the product grew his market to include J.P. Santos, the Knowledge-Sharing Institute, the Linden Plaza, Melanie Damishana, Guyana Stores and Fogarty’s Supermarkets. Then gradually expanding markets enabled an increase in earnings for both himself and for a man named Robbie who regularly moved hundreds of pounds of peanuts from Lethem into storage in Burt Denny’s home, which in those days, doubled up as living quarters and storage and production facility. Then too, embracing the old axiom that every little helps, he sold parched nuts but had to eventually end that ‘side line’ as his substantive pursuit took up more time and effort.
