Older than America: This US family business has been around for 328 years

America turns 250 this year. Laird & Co., the New Jersey distillery still run by the Laird family, beat that milestone by 78 years. According to a Wall Street Journal feature on the family, it has been making apple brandy in Colts Neck since 1698, and George Washington was reportedly a fan of its signature applejack. Two Laird brothers fought beside him at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, the WSJ noted, two years before the company was even formally registered.

That makes Laird & Co. older than the United States. It became a formal business in 1780, in the middle of the Revolution, the Journal reports. Today it is the country's leading seller of American apple brandy, with exports to 18 markets including Australia, China, France, Italy and the UK. The signature applejack is still made with the same recipe. As the WSJ points out, the company even uses the same kind of apple-crushing machine and charred-oak barrels it used three centuries ago.

Three pivots that kept Laird's lights on: Prohibition, WWII, and Covid

Every generation has had to scramble to survive. When Prohibition shut down American distilleries, Laird & Co. switched to making applesauce and sweet cider, according to the WSJ. In 1933, it received Federal Liquor License No. 1, which allowed it to keep distilling apple brandy for medicinal use. During World War II, the Journal reported, it made pectin, a preservative used in military food rations. When Covid hit, the family pivoted again and started producing hand sanitizer from its beverage alcohol stock. In the 1970s, with brown-spirit sales falling, it diversified into contract bottling for other liquor brands.

Most family businesses do not get this far. Only 4% make it past the fourth generation, the WSJ noted, citing the US Small Business Administration.

How nine Lairds ended up owning the whole company

Keeping ownership in the family took some bruising fights. In 1973, then-CEO Jack Laird sold a 90% stake to two liquor companies. His brother Larrie was furious. "It ended with a fight with my brother in the company parking lot," Larrie, now 86, told the WSJ. Two decades later, the family raised a $10 million bank loan and bought the stake back, the Journal reported. The shares are now held in trusts meant to keep the business under family control for the next generation.

Nine Laird family members now own the entire company. Lisa Laird Dunn, 65, is its first female CEO. Her two Gen Z children, Gerard and Laird Emilie, already work there. Gerard, the executive vice president, told the WSJ that first-quarter online sales are up 300% year on year. She also pushed through a packaging overhaul 20 years ago that her board hated; applejack sales jumped 49% within five years, per the Journal.