Trappey’s canned blackeye peas are a staple on many Southern tables for New Year’s Day good luck meals and the company’s canned red beans provide Southerners a quick alternative to cooking dried beans.
While it's no longer the case, for decades Trappey’s canned its vegetables in Lafayette.
Motorists traveling Evangline Thruway can catch glimpses of the remaining brick buildings along the Vermilion River, across from Beaver Park, a water tower still visible over treetops.
Bernard Francis Trappey started the operation bottling pepper sauce around 1898 on the site of his blacksmith shop on Avery Island, according to a history by Kelly Calhoun of Calhoun Preservation. B. F. Trappey's Sons opened a bottling plant in New Iberia by 1918.
In 1929, the company bought the 8-acre site between the Vermilion River and Guidry Street in Lafayette to can vegetables. The property previously was operated as the Baldwin Lumber Company and Star Salt Company, according to Calhoun.
Randolph J. Trappey Sr., son of Bernard Trappey, was plant manager.
“At the new Lafayette cannery,” Calhoun wrote, “Trappey's developed a canned yam product preserved in a heavy syrup, which became an important product in World War II. During the war, this complex produced over 12 million pounds of canned candied yams for the U.S. and allied military forces.”
Trappey’s patented an okra trimming machine developed by Randolph Trappey Sr. and Lafayette machinist George LeBlanc, chief maintenance man.
More than 10 million cans of Trappey’s sweet potatoes, Calhoun wrote, were on store shelves around the world by 1968.
The plant closed in 1991.
Trappey Riverfront Development LLC bought the property in March 2021 for $1 million and plans to turn it into a mixed-used riverfront development.