The story behind Richmond's Sauer's Vanilla sign
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
He's so precious. Photo: Sabrina Moreno/Axios
The glowing, mustached chef towering above Broad Street has been a Richmond fixture for roughly a century.
Why it matters: The Sauer's Vanilla sign at Broad and Hermitage is one of Richmond's most recognizable landmarks, but little is known about how it got there in the first place.
Catch up quick: Conrad F. Sauer founded the company in Richmond in 1887 at age 21, initially selling flavoring extracts like vanilla, per the company's website.
- In the 1910s, the shapely chef — an advertising character, not Sauer himself — was appearing in ads, reports Richmond magazine.
- By Sauer's death in 1927, years before the company famously took over Duke's Mayo, C.F. Sauer had become the country's largest producer of spices, per the Valentine.
- And at some point around then, the colorful cartoonish chef made it atop the Sauer's roof, where cycling lights made him appear to pour vanilla into a bowl.
Fun fact: When the building beneath the sign was demolished in the 1960s, the company reportedly airlifted the 60-foot sign by helicopter and moved it a block to its current perch.
- Roadside Architecture, a digital archive documenting 20th-century buildings and signs, estimated that it had about 1,200 incandescent bulbs and was tended to monthly by an electrician.
A spokesperson for Sauer's was unable to confirm who built the sign, if the chef has a name and why the company has continued maintaining it by press time.
- But when Sauer's sold to a North Carolina private equity firm in 2019, the company's marketing director at the time called the illuminated vanilla sign one of the things that made Sauer's "synonymous with Richmond."
- The company was sold again last year, this time to a Boston-based private equity firm, BizSense reported.