Luck’s Pinto Beans grew up in Seagrove, N.C.

Pinto beans are a Southern food, and Alfred Spencer of Seagrove, N.C., is the fellow who figured out how to put them into a can in 1950. 

He and Ivey Luck opened Mountain View Canning Co. at Seagrove in rural Randolph County in 1947. Clay Presnell became a third partner in 1948. They started out canning beef and sausage products. 

Chip Womick, a local journalist, learned that the men who gathered to play checkers at Ernest Spivey’s store in 1950 were pretty firm in their belief that “nobody can can a pinto bean fit to eat.”

 

Chip Womick

Their wives, mothers and grandmothers knew the proper way to cook pinto beans was to soak them and slow cook them on simmer in water seasoned with pork fatback and salt in a big old pot on the kitchen stove. 

Spencer figured out how to make it work in a commercial kitchen. The company’s canned pinto beans were a hit. Sales really took off when the partners changed the company name to Luck’s Incorporated in 1953.

Spencer also came up with the idea of bringing in Tommy Floyd and the Blue Ridge Buddies, a popular country music band, to help promote Luck’s beans. The group did a live show at Asheboro’s WGWR radio station. It was broadcast every Saturday morning. 

Soon, Tommy Floyd and his band were plugging Luck’s products on television with country music spots syndicated on stations throughout the Southeast. Here is the jingle: “Luck’s pinto beans. Luck’s pinto beans. Eat ’em and you’ll never go wrong. Luck’s pinto beans.”

At left is Ivey Luck. At right is the Tommy Floyd band of musicians and their cans of beans.

 

“Tommy Floyd had a lot to do with Luck’s becoming a household name,” said Alfred Spencer’s son Bill Spencer. 

“Luck’s beans served a changing world,” Womick wrote in an article for Our State magazine. 

“The economy was in need of heat-and-serve things,” said Lucy Rice, who went to work at Luck’s in 1954. “Women were starting to work. They could open a can and have a nutritious meal when they got home.” 

Families could enjoy the flavor of slow-cooked pinto beans without having to invest the time to prepare them.

 

“Vance Williams drove a Luck’s company truck for 42 years. Once a month, every driver received a case of beans to dole out as he deemed necessary: to the men who monitored the vehicle weigh stations, to state troopers and to others,” Womick reported. 

“Most orders were destined for store shelves within about a 500-mile radius. In the early days, the cans were sometimes still warm when they got to the stores. In all, Luck’s introduced more than 40 products through the years,” he added. 

Spencer bowed out of the partnership in 1957 and moved to Sunset Beach to live and operate a small motel. 

In 1967, Luck’s merged with American Home Products. Then in 2000, Luck’s was acquired by ConAgra Foods. The company closed the Seagrove plant in 2002, moving production to Tennessee. 

Lucy Rice said she “could taste the difference.” Luck’s beans packed in Seagrove used well water. They must have used city water in Tennessee, she surmised. 

In 2011, the Luck’s brand was purchased by Arizona Canning Company, which later merged with Minnesota-based Faribault Foods. Today, the beans are canned in Tucson, Ariz. 

Here is the company manifesto about the product found on shelves today:

The old Luck’s factory in Seagrove has been re-purposed as a community events center, thanks to local philanthropist Jack C. Lail.

 

About the whole town turned out to celebrate the 90th birthday of Seagrove philanthropist Jack Lail on April 1, 2023, which was held in the Historic Cannery facility.

It’s the site of The Celebration of Seagrove Potters, an annual festival, which will be held this year on Nov. 18-19. The event is highly recommended by the Folk Art Society of America.