The History of Canyon Specialty Foods

My name is Anne Connally and I am the Owner and President of Canyon Specialty Foods. Over the years, it has always been a pleasure to create meals for my family and friends. I grew up in a large family with seven siblings. As in most large families, my childhood lessons included hard work and constant striving to get ahead. I dreamed for years of creating recipes and preparing foods to sell to the public like I had served my family. It took a skiing accident in 1989 to help me realize my dream. While I was recovering from knee surgery, I resigned from selling real estate to start my own food manufacturing company.

In the beginning I contacted grocery stores and delivered samples of refrigerated soups to the corporate offices of two large grocery chains in the Dallas area. Both grocery chains were excited and placed orders as soon as the facility was built. The only way to have a superior product and oversee every stage of production would be to build my own U.S.D.A. inspected facility. Both chains purchased four varieties of soups (Southwestern Chicken Soup, Cuban Black Bean Soup, Italian Sausage Chowder and Black-eyed Pea Jumbalaya) for their upscale stores. I, along with my family and friends, distributed sample products on weekends to help establish the Canyon name.

From the beginning, Canyon had a reputation for making a quality product. Soon, restaurant owners who had tried the soups contacted Canyon to produce some of their signature recipes. Restaurant owners knew that Canyon had the ability to offer the same product specification on every order, everday, unlike each individual restaurant location. Today, over 80% of production is private label for foodservice and retail grocery stores.

My family values have carried over into my work philosophy. That is why the attitudes at Canyon make the difference. Canyon's associates have a passion for what they do and take pride in what they do each and every day. Whatever the challenge, we are there for our customers. Upon request, we deliver custom formulated samples in 24 hours throughout the country. Our customers consider Canyon their own personal manufacturer and a valuable part of their team. Canyon has a "no excuses, no short cuts" philosphy and we do whatever it takes to be our very best everyday.

Altough our private label products bear our customer's name, we will still prepare the product as if our name is on every container.