Content area
Full text
IT TOOK A FIRE to make Frank Christiana change his ways. And the poultry wholesaler has been grateful ever since.
"If it hadn't been for that fire," says Christiana, whose business has grown from being a small egg supplier to one of the top 10 food distributors in New Orleans, "I'd probably have gone bankrupt by now."
That's no exaggeration. Before a blaze destroyed Christiana's West Bank egg-packing facility in 1967, the company was just sputtering along, losing money on sales of about $500,000 a year. But with the loss of his egg-packing equipment, Christiana was forced to start buying his eggs in cartons, a convenient compromise which had the surprising effect of turning F. Christiana & Co. into a profitable, growing operation.
Instead of packing eggs all day, Christiana found himself with enough time to make personal sales calls. He discovered some of his clients wanted more than just eggs from him: they'd be happy to buy beef, pork, cheese and chicken. It was, Christiana recalls, a revelation.
"We'd just gotten used to doing things in a certain way," explains the distributor, whose father, Nick Christiana, had been packing eggs since 1951. "I guess we were in a rut."
Christiana hasn't looked back. After reaching the $1 million sales mark in 1969, revenues quickly climbed to $5 million in 1975, $20 million in 1980 and $33 million in 1989. And following a move to...