La Choy was founded by Korean immigrant Ilhan New and Wally Smith, who had become friends while both attended the University of Michigan. Beginning in 1920, they sold bean sprouts bottled in glass jars at a Detroit grocery store owned by Smith’s family. Sales were so good that in 1922 the two men founded La Choy Food Products Company, selling a variety of oriental vegetables in cans. New left the company in 1930 and returned to Korea. Smith died in 1937, the same year the company opened a 60,000 square foot manufacturing plant in Detroit. In 1942 the federal government, which converted many Detroit-area food-processing plants to war production, commandeered LaChoy’s Detroit facility. The company relocated to Ohio, and was soon purchased by Beatrice Foods.
