2022 / Vince Hayward: Camellia Beans (New Orleans, LA)

In 1850 Sawyer Hayward came to New Orleans from the West Indies to start in the cotton business but soon expanded to source other items, including beans, which were prized by the large population of Caribbean immigrants. Vince Hayward is a descendant of Sawyer and the CEO of L.H. Hayward and Company, founded by his great-grandfather in 1923 to sell red beans in the famous old French Quarter Market in New Orleans. Those beans, named Camellia Beans after the favorite flower of the wife of L.H. Jr., have long since taken up permanent residence in the heart and culture of New Orleans as the star of red beans and rice. Currently, the beans are sorted and packaged at a facility which the company first moved into in 1974, in the nearby suburb of Elmwood, and many of the employees have been a part of it for more than 30 years. Take a bite of a well-made batch of red beans and rice, and you know there’s much more to the humble Camellia bean than meets the eye.