COUNTY PAIR

ACE PECAN CO

900 MOASE AVENUE/PO. BOX 727/ELK GROVE VILLAGE/ILLINOIS 60067/312 364-3277

Dad told me,
“Joe, always give the customers a little more than they pay for.”

Dear Friend:

It was tough making a dollar back in the 1930’s. I was just a kid at the time, but I still remember how my dad did it.

He was in business for himself --- selling hot dogs at a nickel a piece off a pushcart to factory hands in our Italian-American “ethnic neighborhood” on Chicago’s northwest side.

But in the spare time he had left over in a 12-hour workday, he started a little sideline that turned into the family business.

He shelled bag after bag of walnuts and pecans on the kitchen table, late into the night. He bought the nuts, shelled them, and then sold then back for a profit.

He started making as much money from the nuts as from the hot dogs, and soon a friend encouraged him to go into the nut business full-time.

Well, here it is more than 50 years later, and I guess you might call Dad’s a “typical” American Success story. Dad’s little nut business has expanded from the kitchen table into three large plants --- one in Georgia --- that sell millions of dollars worth of top-quality nuts all over the United States.

I’ve often pondered about what made Dad successful, when so many others didn’t make it. I think it was his approach to doing business.

“Joe,” he used to tell me, “if you just keep giving the customers a little more than they pay for, they’ll keep coming back to you.”

That’s what Dad did, and I really believe that’s what made our business grow the way it did.

But it still took me a while to learn that lesson when I took over. Our first mail order efforts duplicated what other companies were doing --- using fancy tins and expensive packaging to sell our nuts.

One day the Controller came to me and said, “You know, we’re paying as such for the tins as we are for the nuts.”

I thought about it for a while, then decided to get rid of the fancy packaging. We would package the nuts in inexpensive cartons and plain tins, call them Bulk Packs, and give the customers more nuts for every dollar. That was a real turning point in the business.

That’s just one of the many ways our business has changed since those early years. But our commitment to giving our customers more than they pay

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for continues --- and it will as long as I and my kids are running the business. Here’s how we live up to it in 1983:

And to ensure that we live up to all this (and to our family tradition), we put ourselves on the spot with this triple guarantee:

Some Of Our Nuts Are So Big, It Takes a Couple Of Bites To Eat Them.

Have you ever watched nuts being graded? It’s interesting.

Ours are graded by a screening process. Between the beginning and end of the grading line are screens with twelve different size holes for the nuts to fall through. As the nuts move along, they drop through, into the appropriate bin for their size.

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As I mentioned before, the nuts we sell by mail are the largest sizes only --- they can only fall through the biggest holes. “Premium Grade” is the official term for nutmeats this big, and they just don’t come any bigger.

In fact, some of our nuts are so big, you cannot politely eat them in one bite.

That’s especially true of our cashews. I call them our “two-bite Cashews” because they’re about twice as big as a regular cashew.

But it’s also true of our luscious and our crunchy Brazil nuts.

We sell most types of premium-quality nuts, your choice of either salted or unsalted, including…

And there’s a lot more still. I hope you’ll examine the enclosed brochure to find the hand-selected nut meats and fruit-nut blends you prefer.

No matter which products you choose, you can be absolutely sure they’re fresh, because the nuts are immediately refrigerated after harvesting and rushed to our packing plants for sorting, shelling, grading and roasting. Some are lightly salted, others left unsalted, but all are quickly packed and sealed for guaranteed-fresh delivery to you.

Once you’ve decided which you want, you can either order by mail, using the enclosed order form, or by phone by calling our toll-free number. Simply call 1-800-323-9754 and order our COUNTY FAIR Premium Grade nut meats of your choice.

To make it easy for you to order direct, we’re pleased to offer you a choice of major credit cards --- MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Diner’s Club --- or, if you prefer, send us a check or money order.

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We’ll rush your order to you quickly (please allow additional time for Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, APO and FPO deliveries) so you can begin enjoying the nuts right away.

Of course, for special occasions and holidays, I probably don’t even have to tell you what an excellent gift these make. An especially nice present is our Deluxe Mix Nut Tin which contains the best of everything we make. It’s a real bargain at only $10.95.

If you are giving our nuts as a gift, just let us know and we’ll be happy to enclose a handwritten gift card with your own personal message.

But whichever you’re considering ---nuts for yourself or a gift for someone else --- I hope you’ve decided to see for yourself that we give our customers a little more than they pay for.

However, if you’re still not sure, let me make a suggestion. Order the nuts you think you’d enjoy most. Taste-test them yourself, in your own home. If you’re not completely delighted, simply take advantage of our money-back guarantee and ask for a refund. There’s absolutely no risk at all --- except that you’re likely to become “addicted” to our nuts and keep coming back for more.

Because once you taste our nuts, I’m confident you’ll agree that we are giving you the best nuts that can be found anywhere --- at very reasonable prices.

And to make our offer even more appealing, I’ll throw in a free gift when you try our nuts. Send in your order and I’ll send you a free Taster Box of our giant “two-bite cashews.” It’s another small way for us to give you a little more than you pay for.

So please order now and see for yourself. You won’t be disappointed. (That’s our fourth guarantee.)

Sincerely,
Joseph C. Graziano, Sr.
President