By Gary Lee Stuber
After you cross the top of the hill at Bickmore on Route 16 headed to Indore, and you pass the little church at the bottom of the hill on your right, don’t blink. If you do, you might just miss one of Clay County’s biggest little businesses. Legacy Foods, an enterprise owned and operated by Duane Legg on the site of his grandfather Brooks Legg’s Merchandize Store, is almost a tiny little thing. You would never know from the outside that the business is known all over the state and even all over America. I hesitate to call it a deli. It is. I don’t want to call it a sandwich shop. It is. I don’t want to call it a mom and pop place (and it operates like one) but Legacy Foods has been making its mark on the world, long before it existed, resurrected on the site taken out by the 2016 floods.
“I have been in the catering business since 1998,” says Duane. “Working out of kitchens in churches, or delivering finished food to various sites.” He laughs a little when he says, “I am probably one of the few businesses that actually grew during the pandemic.”
It started with apple butter, a home recipe that he first started selling at the 1995 Clay County Apple Festival. “The recipe goes back a long way in the family to the late 1800’s and the only thing I have changed is the ‘red hot’ cinnamon candy. Many people are allergic to the dye. Made with only four ingredients.” And it is still made the same today: in a copper kettle out back. And it is made all year long. He needs too. His apple butter sells commercially and people know it everywhere.
“I am the only one, and this could change, who still makes commercial apple butter in a copper kettle.” That was the start. Other items were added as needs changed. “At the Apple Festival, we’d let people taste before they buy by wiping a slice of bread around the kettle. So I baked my own bread. Pretty soon we were getting orders for our fresh baked bread.”
And then pepperoni rolls. What is more West Virginian than pepperoni rolls. And many state residents think his are the best. They make and distribute pepperoni rolls all week to other counties. “I try to source everything local, in the state or just over the border.” He stands among some famous West Virginia brands which fill shelf after shelf. He mixes and sells his own seasoned flour, and tons of baked goods from hand-fried pies, to cinnamon rolls, to cookies. “Now we wholesale.”
But what keeps people coming back every day and bringing friends are the sandwiches. With names like Yard Bird (sliced rotisserie chicken), the Turkey Club, The Turkey Ranch, Roast Beef and Provolone, even the Italian Sub. Or build your own New York Deli Style sandwich. All of these sandwiches are served so generously with shaved meat and cheese that they literally make two meals.
“We are doing so much business we are baking in the early morning to keep kitchen space free. If I had known when I built here that we would be doing this well, I would have built bigger.” He is planning to do an expansion this fall, but with limited space he can only get a yard or two more in front and a few more than that in the back. He even considers opening a second location.
Duane was born to Kathy Lane Legg and Kenneth Legg. He has one sibling, a brother, Johnathan, who lives in Morgantown. “When we had to tear my dad’s store down following the flood of 2016 I had no intention of rebuilding, and then I thought maybe I could build back as a storefront for my catering business.” He had no idea that the pandemic a few years later would make catering and safe food delivery a necessity. Moreover that apple butter, pepperoni rolls, bread, baked goods and sandwiches would propel him into a career that appears now to have no bounds.
The future looks bright here in Clay County. And delicious too.
