Lancaster Colony Corp., the Westerville-based food company, is looking to the future with a nod to the past.
As of July 1, the company is to be known as The Marzetti Company, in honor of the company’s founding and its namesake dressings.
The publicly traded company will start trading immediately under its new symbol, MZTI, instead of LANC.
The change reflects a broader rebranding of the company by harkening back to its 1896 roots, when Teresa and Joseph Marzetti opened an Italian restaurant in Columbus, launching the brand that would become famous for its dressings and dips.
Lancaster Colony acquired Marzetti in 1969 and grew the company with multiple food brands including Sister Schubert’s dinner rolls, New York Bakery garlic bread and Reames noodles.
“Marzetti is embarking on a transformational chapter and doing so under the name that started it all 130 years ago,” CEO Dave Ciesinski said in a news release.
“While Lancaster Colony will always be an important part of our heritage, we believe the Marzetti name is critical to positioning ourselves in today’s food industry and communicating the value we deliver for customers and shareholders alike.”
In addition to making products under its own brands, Marzetti makes sauces and dressings for Chick-fil-A, Buffalo Wild Wings, Olive Garden, Arby’s, Texas Roadhouse and Subway. The company said its foodservice business supplies most big national restaurant chains and has been making sauces for Chick-fil-A for over 40 years.
The company employs about 1,200 people in its corporate office in Westerville, Innovation Center in Lewis Center, three manufacturing plants in Columbus and a warehouse and distribution center in Grove City.
Valued at about $4.7 billion, the company posted sales of about $1.8 billion in its most recent full fiscal year. Through the first three quarters of this fiscal year, sales were up about 1% from a year earlier while net income was up about 9%.
To celebrate its new name, The Marzetti Company will ring the closing bell on July 10 for the Nasdaq stock market, where the company’s stock is traded.
Real estate and Development Reporter Jim Weiker can be reached at jweiker@dispatch.com and at 614-284-3697. Follow him @JimWeiker
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Lancaster Colony food company looks to its Marzetti past for a new name
Reporting by Jim Weiker, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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