Virginia and Spanish Peanut Company Celebrates 100+ Years of Family Business

Leon Kaloostian in the company’s delivery truck circa 1920. Courtesy of Virginia and Spanish Peanut Company.

Not many families could open a small business together, let alone keep it running for more than a century. Most would call the idea, well, a little nuts.

Not the Kaloostians.

The interior of Virginia and Spanish Peanut Company. Photo by Chad Weeden

For the past 111 years, the family has operated the Virginia and Spanish Peanut Company in Providence, most of those years in the same two-building complex on the corner of Cromwell and Dexter streets. The business first opened in Olneyville in 1913.

It all started with Peter Sarkis Kaloostian, great-grandfather to the present-day owners. “He had come from Armenia to this country in 1894. He was fifteen. He had initially gone to Chicago and then Lynn, Massachusetts, before settling here in Providence,” says Candace Kaloostian, who owns the business alongside her sisters, Shelley Kaloostian-Conti and Ellen Kaloostian Ferrara.

Peter dabbled in different trades, owning a bathhouse and even working a stint as an interpreter for the United States government before setting out on a new venture. A friend recommended he stake his luck in the then-fledgling automobile business, or else get into roasting and packaging nuts. Peter chose the latter.

“I don’t know why he chose the peanut business; we never got an answer to that, but he did, and the rest is history, as they say,” Candace says.

The company headquarters in 1930. Courtesy of Virginia and Spanish Peanut Company.

His son, Leon — an artist with dreams of becoming an architect — took a few classes at Brown University, but left to enter the family business alongside his brother, Anthony. It was Leon who drew the company logos still used on products today, including Brown Bear peanut butter and Anchor Brand salted nuts.

By the time Candace came around — her father, Peter, and uncle, Robert, ran the business next — the product line had expanded to include popcorn, concessions, dried fruit and baking supplies. Like her grandfather, Leon, Candace had other plans. She attended the University of Rhode Island to become a teacher but joined the office after graduation and never looked back. Today, she and her sisters work alongside her brother-in-law, Joseph Conti, and nephew, Peter Conti, in a former three-family home with photographs of the former owners dotted across the walls.

“It makes me happy to think that we’ve survived a lot of those ups and downs of owning a small business,” Candace says. “To be on five generations, it’s not very common these days.”

Photos of family patriarchs line the walls of the office. Photo by Chad Weeden

She attributes the success in part to the resurgence of nuts among current health trends. The business prepares almond and hazelnut flour to order and sells its  all-natural peanut butter at local markets and through Farm Fresh Rhode Island. The biggest seller, though, remains the raw and roasted nuts, with the company packaging 5,000 pounds of tree nuts alone each week. With any luck, that popularity will continue for another century to come.

“We’re going to need more wall space,” Candace acknowledges, admiring the portraits of her forebears as the scent of roasted nuts hangs in the air.

Leon Kaloostian drew many of the original logos. Photo by Chad Weeden

A Tale of Two Nuts

The company is named for two varieties of peanuts. “The Virginia would be the more popular. If you go to a cocktail party and saw peanuts, more than likely it would be the Virginia,” says Candace, who adds the nut of choice hails primarily from North Carolina and Virginia. The Spanish, she says, comes from Texas, and has a different flavor with a red skin. “You don’t tend to see that as often — a lot of people don’t like the skin.” The company’s signature Brown Bear peanut butter uses a blend of both, she says, and nothing else. “Just ground peanuts, period.”

Photo by Chad Weeden