- Will you consider this?

There's really nothing fishy about this story.

Well, there is, literally, isn't figuratively.

Whatever.

But who would've thought that Central Illinois would be the hub of wholesaling fresh fish?

Now, perhaps, yes, but over 100 years ago?

Stay right here for more on Dixon's Fisheries.

(bright music) Here we go, in the late 1800's, two brothers saw the potential for getting consumers fresh fish.

And they made it happen.

In 1896, John and Frank Dixon, took the fruits of the Illinois River and expanded the reach.

That business managed to thrive, and today, Dixon's Fisheries specializes in seafood.

Joining me now are CFO, Bill Dixon, and COO and Vice President, Jason Livingston.

And what a fun story, 1896, your great-great-grandfathers had this vision.

Where did that come from?

What's the family lore?

- Well, they started it fishing in the river, and it just propagated from there, from generation to generation.

And here we are today, four generations later, we're very lucky, we're very blessed by the people of Central Illinois have supported us, and we've grown the business through Missouri and Indiana, into Iowa.

And we're blessed to have people like Jason and we've had a great work crew up to now.

- That's awesome.

So, okay, so when they were fishing back in the day, they were catching what in the river and were they doing clam digging an everything too, or do you know?

- No, it was mostly carp in Buffalo, and then they shipped it on railways throughout the United States, mostly I believe out to the east coast, like New York and Detroit.

- But they didn't have refrigerated cars then, how did they do that or did they?

- Lots of ice.

- In trains.

- In trains, okay.

- Which is why the markets or the buildings were located down in the north end of Peoria along the rail lines.

- Okay, yeah, we have a picture here, which is pretty cool.

So, this was at the foot of, of Green Street.

Okay.

- That was the very first market.

- The very first one, and look at those guys, I mean, that's from back in the day.

And then it moved to Liberty, closer to the train station.

- Correct.

- I mean, they still were close.

- Right.

Down on Eckwood Park.

- Yeah, okay.

- Yeah, and we moved from there in 19, about 1965, '66, over to our East Peoria location, as you know it today.

- Right.

And you put in the little fishing pond and all that stuff, so it makes it welcoming to everybody.

- The fish ponds were actually developed in the 1930's, and they were holding the areas for when they had a good day of fishing on the river, then they would hold the excess catch in the fishing lakes.

And then, if they had a not so good catch, then they would derive those fish out of the ponds and then.

- Into the river?

- No, they would, then they would process them.

- Oh, process, okay.

- And then, along the way, people would ask if they could fish, and then again, that developed into the fee fishing lakes.

- See, the beautiful thing about those three fishing lakes in East Peoria, is the water is 55 degress 'cause it's all artesian, it's all underground.

So, those ponds are open all winter, so the success of Dixon Fisheries was that they had open water with fresh fish that they could process all winter long, instead of the facility coming to a standstill.

- And that's property that you had owned before you were being moved across the river from Peoria.

- Correct.

And it's on the Sankoty aquifer, and it flows all year round.

And if you drive by, you'll see even in the coldest weather, those ponds don't freeze.

- That's something.

Well, you know what I have driven by it, and I've seen a little steam coming off of 'em from time to time.

Yeah, even in the way subzero temperatures.

- Correct.

Yeah.

- Yeah, yeah.

So, do you like to fish?

- Not particularly, no.

- But you like to eat fish.

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

We eat fish at home twice a week.

It's very healthy for you, and dietary restrictions and things like that, it's very good for your cardiovascular system, and we eat twice a week.

- Good for you.

And Jason, you started out working at, behind the counter, right, at Dixon's Fisheries, when you were in high school.

- That is correct.

1988 is when I started.

I've been there for 35 years.

I started out in the retail store, worked my way up to a retail lead.

Then when I went away when I was in college, I continued to work.

And after I graduated, they had moved me more into a leadership role.

And here we are today.

- Yeah, all these years later.

One crazy thing, I mean, you said that your expanse is, and I've seen the trucks around when I've been on the road, but Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and we had rehearsal dinner down near Edwardsville for one of our son's weddings.

And I was talking to Marilyn Perry who in your sales department.

She said, oh yeah, Popeyes, and I'm thinking, Popeyes, not Popeyes Chicken, but Popeyes, we supply the fish there.

And that's the first that I ever realized that that's why your trucks were going that way.

- Dwight routes in Saint Rose, Illinois, correct?

Yes, I'm good friends with Dwight.

Yes, yes.

He has a very good restaurant, he's a very good client of ours.

- Oh, awesome.

So, you have a lot of trucks that make deliveries, how many times a week?

- Well, in that region, it's five day a week.

So, the trucks leave in the middle of the night, they go down to St. Louis five days a week, one big truck cross stalks onto two smaller trucks.

We've got a team of guys down there that come and get into the trucks and take off and distribute the St. Louis suburbs, St. Louis and the suburbs.

- And that just, for us here, it's like, what an honor, what a privilege, to have such a good reputation that you are selling to markets like that.

- Well, thank you.

- Yeah, thank you.

- But, and like I would think, well, St. Louis would be shipping to us, but it's just the opposite.

So, how did that reputation get so set in stone?

- A lot of hard work, a lot of hard, actually, Jim Dixon is the one that started the St. Louis area, I believe that they were trying, Red Lobster approached us to sell them live lobsters, I believe back in the day.

Jim was beating the path down to St. Louis day after day, and then he just started calling on restaurants, cold-calling and cold-calling and cold-calling.

We were down, I believe that time, to the Springfield area, and then he just kept building and building and building, and going right into St. Louis.

And then we were fortunate enough to open up some grocery store chains down there, which is where we are today.

- Well, and then, so you started with, you said catfish in Buffalo.

How did you get into seafood, because that's more like river food, lake food, how did that happen?

- It was all driven by Jim.

- Jim.

- Jim Dixon had a vision of bringing the gulf.

- Here.

To the center of the country.

- And then start working on, when you go down to Florida, you'd have grouper, then when you live in Central Illinois.

- You didn't.

- You didn't.

So, he had a vision of getting different, and it just started to blossom.

He started buying fish from all over the world and he started networking.

He's really big at networking and he teamed up with a great group of guys out east in different fisheries, and he just started building a reputation and a rapport, and started moving some pounds here in Central Illinois.

He always says, we're smack dab in the middle of corn country, but we're making it happen.

And the logistics behind what we do is just amazing to get product into Peoria Illinois, and then distribute it to the three states that we service.

But every one of us has played a part in making this company a success.

For real.

All the way down to his father.

- Well, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, so he had the vision.

Do you think that he ever really envisioned just how awesome and how far reaching this would be?

- I don't know, I would hope that they're very proud of us.

I really do.

And what I would like to build on what Jason said, now, Jim, has in his network, has mentored Steve Reardon who is a fifth generation.

And actually, Jim is semi-retired, he works about two and a half days a week, and Steve has taken over his desk.

So, he's actually passed the torch onto Steve Reardon, who is doing a very fantastic job.

But Steve works very closely with Jason and Jason's teaching Steve, and Jim is teaching Steve.

So we're actually passing forth another generation.

But we would think that our fathers and grandfathers would be very proud of us, yes.

- Absolutely.

- And Jason, you said you majored in business in college.

- Correct.

- And yes, you had worked the retail store, but what did you say, you never thought you'd be a fisher monger?

- Yeah.

(laughing) Yes, when I graduated from college, I thought I'm gonna move on, and I had this vision of working for a Fortune 500 company, and I had stated the interviewing process and then the family caught wind that I was taking the next step in my.

- Away from Peoria probably.

- Yeah.

And they said, we have a plan for you, and I said, oh, and they wanted me to become the, Billy Dixon was actually doing the job at the time but it was the direct of retail operations.

Well, I had already worked retail my whole career there, so it allowed me to take advantage of something I was very very familiar with.

- And just moved right in.

- And moved, yeah.

And then it allowed Billy to move into another aspect of the business to learn.

So, it just kinda evolved, and I tell people that all the time, I didn't plan on being a fish monger.

- So do you get deliveries how many times a week?

so that we know exactly how fresh our seafood is coming into the stores.

- We get fresh fish out of the east coast, out of the Boston area, three times a week.

We bring Florida up three times a week.

Alaska is flown in or trucked in, mostly flown into Chicago, and we're up in Chicago twice a week.

So, really, all throughout the week, we're bringing fresh product in from the gulf, the east coast, and the west coast.

- And it's not processed, so we process everything here, is that correct?

- That is, some of the products that we carry, are already cut, but there is a lot of processing that's involved with the fresh tuna, swordfish, mahi mahi, grouper, we sell a lot of grouper.

We're known for grouper, it's kinda what we built the business on initially, and it's still a big success.

- Initially, as in what you had brought in, other than what we were fishing right here.

- Correct.

- Okay.

- And the other fish that's really gained momentum, and do we a great job, is sea bass.

Chilean sea bass.

- And it's good stuff.

- I knew you were gonna say that.

- I know.

(laughs) - How often do you eat it?

- Sea bass is a little rich for us, we eat it occasionally.

Our go-to fish are grouper, she likes the farrow salmon a lot.

We have farrow salmon about once a week.

She's now eating a lot of trout, she likes trout.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

We like to cook it open-faced on the grill.

- Okay.

- With a lot of lemon on it.

- Well, and it's nice that you also have recipes that you can share with us when you go in there.

It's like, okay, well I'm gonna try this, but how am I gonna prepare it?

- Another aspect of the business that Jason has developed, is our line of salads that are basically all made by us in our central kitchen.

And we distribute those to a lot of grocery stores, as well as our own stores as well.

- So, the picnic salad and the seafood salad.

- Crab and chutney.

- Oh my gosh.

- Jim's Holiday Spread.

- Cheese and crab.

- Yeah.

Well, those aren't salads, those are dips.

- Dips, correct.

- Yeah, okay, but I could eat it as a salad, just slap it on top of a piece of green.

- Jason has been very instrumental in developing those.

We actually kind of inherited the cookbook from my predecessor in the retail market.

But then, it's grown from there, we have a very, we have a lady with lot of experience that's tweaked the recipes to make them what they are today.

- I was telling Jason, I love the pickled shrimp.

Woo, my gosh, I could eat that, I eat about a pound a week, which is bad.

I mean, it's good for you, but maybe not so good for me.

- All the way from the twice baked potatoes to the ready-to-eat meals, and things like that, are all made in our central kitchen.

- Right, the stuffed mushrooms, yeah.

- Correct.

- Yeah.

How many people do you have working there?

- About 60.

About in the high 40's, full-time, and about 15 part-time workers.

- And that's just in the processing part, or is that also in sales and everything?

- Sales, truck drivers, sales, truck drivers, packagers, retail workers and such.

- All right, and you don't have to teach them anything, right, they already know, or have you taught 'em, Jason?

- Well, we bring a lot of them up.

They come up through our system.

- The most successful, well, there's been a lot of successful people over the year, but some of the most successful, are the ones that have evolved through our retail division.

Dave Marshalonas has worked for us for, he's followed my footprint.

Graduated from Notre Dame, went to Eastern, got his business degree, ran the stores.

He took my job.

And it just, we've got some longevity and just amazing support and great people.

- So, it doesn't have to be blood family, it is family family, work family.

Well, one thing that you've done and, (coughs) excuse me, Channel 47 will benefit in part along with Hult Center.

But for 22 years at least already, you have provided wonderful lobsters for our Lobster Boils.

So, thank you for doing that first of all.

And then we get to snack on the crab and chutney a lot too.

But tell me about that whole process, how many did we have the first year, do you remember?

- It was under 100, I believe it was at 75.

I remember telling Mrs. Bash, we are gonna cap it at 100, 'cause we are not into the catering side of.

- The business.

- Right.

- Well, you do the lobster pot things.

- Correct.

- Anyway, that way can take home with us and prepare.

- Absolutely.

- But no, but you weren't fixing it and putting it out.

- Right.

And so, with Mrs. Bash, - Patty Bash.

- Yeah, who's quite a force.

- She is, yes.

- And she doesn't give up very easily.

- She does not.

(laughing) - She's a wonderful lady.

- Oh yeah.

And that's how it started, and we started cooking and we developed, I had a, luckily for me, I had a chef that worked for us, it was in sales, and.

- He formally worked for Joomers, remember?

- Mm-hmm.

- Up on Moss.

- Okay.

- And he just.

- Up on Moss and Western, yeah.

- And he wanted to get out of that environment and he wanted to do something in sales, and he loved his passion was fish.

So, he helped me initially, guide me on how to successful-- - With those 75?

- Yes.

To successfully cook that dinner.

And then it just, every year, it grew.

- And you kept telling her this is the limit, we cannot do any more.

- Right.

- Right.

And so, the dinner is, it includes.

- It includes a whole live lobster, corn-on-the-cob, Hillshire smoked sausage, new potatoes and onion, coleslaw, and cocktail shrimp.

- Mkay.

Yeah, that's a good dinner.

- It is a good dinner.

- That is a good dinner.

And so you grew from, and he was okay with this, you grew from 75, then to a little over 100, right?

- Correct.

I think we doubled it.

I think we went from like 75 to almost 150, and then I remember thinking.

- That's your limit.

- Right.

Well, that wasn't.

- Not with Patty.

- Not with Patty, it wasn't.

- You always gotta throw a factor of two in there.

- For real.

And what's interesting is, it was growing and we were growing as a company, and as Billy was saying earlier, the salad program and the salads and seafood spreads started to grow.

And I had this vision of let's create a central kitchen, because at the time, all the salads were made fresh in each store that we owned.

- Okay.

- So, back in 2008, we came up and engineered this kitchen, this what we call our central kitchen, and so all production would be under one roof under my thumb.

- And that's at the East Peoria location.

- Correct.

And in the design of that kitchen, the Hult Center and this lobster boil dinner was always in the plans.

- On the agenda.

- For real, because we knew we needed so many burners to do all the steaming of the lobster and cooking of the corn, the new potatoes and this whole dinner.

So really, it's kind of interesting how that evolved and the kitchen was really designed, not only around our needs, but to accommodate the lobster boil dinner for the whole center.

- Now, 350 lobsters.

- Correct.

- So, the incredible thing is, go on.

- No, I think we could grow, it's just it's-- - Don't tell, Patty.

(laughing) - But it's always just accommodating all the guests in either a tent or a facility.

- Right.

- Well, the thing about it is that you prepare those, well 350 dinners, and you package them, you truck them to whatever location, and the food is warm and prepared and that is a feat in and of itself.

- Yeah, that is true.

- That last half hour is pretty hectic.

- Yeah.

- I have a great team, I couldn't do it without John Dixon, JR Dixon, and there's always that help out, and it's different faces, different years, but the core is always John Dixon and myself of course, and now we've brought in his, John's son, JR. - Okay.

So he's learning the ropes?

- He's learning the ropes.

- Or should we say nets when it comes to.

- There you go.

- He's learning the nets.

- Well, I want to do this picture too now, now this is , a tank where the lobsters are down there at the bottom in those, I guess they're cages or crates or what.

- Yeah, I call them cages.

That is our supplier that we buy the lobsters from for the dinner.

That aquarium, if you look, that tank is almost like a gigantic swimming pool, that is pulling fresh water out of the Atlantic, and siphoning it through this.

- Through this holding area, whatever, I guess.

- Holding area, and then back out, so it's constant fresh water.

And all those crates have different size lobsters in them so the lobsters are all graded.

- They're graded by size.

- So you've got one pounders, one and a quarter, which is what we use for the dinner, one and a halfs, two pounders and then up.

- And then the monster lobsters.

- Right.

- And you said, it's the only one in the country.

- That is correct.

Yep.

- And this is the Boston.

- Boston Sword and Tuna.

- Sword and Tuna.

And how long have you been affiliated with them?

The whole time we've been doing the Lobster Boil?

- Absolutely, yes.

- And that was another Jim Dixon connection or was that a generation before or do you know?

- I would say probably Jim.

- Yeah.

- Jim kind of inherited a little bit of that from probably my Uncle Jack, but I would say that probably came from Jim.

Yes.

- All right, so that's four generations of wonderfulness.

And you also, we'll move away a little bit, you also had your own boat, but this looks like a steam boat.

- That is correct.

That is "The Speed", and that picture is actually down in Eckwood Park as well and you'll probably recognize that picture.

There's several of those around town and Elmer King painted that picture.

All my family members have that picture, the painting of it.

And that's down in Eckwood Park.

If you were, the perspective of if the Murray Baker Bridge existed, it would be in the background.

- Okay, yeah.

- And they had two river boats and my grandfather and great-grandfather both had river boat licenses, and they were hauling freight.

- Oh, so they weren't just out fishing?

- Correct.

No, they were hauling freight and such.

- I mean, what a story, When I went online to look, I'm sorry, I need to know a little bit more, then I go to both of the stores, but since 1896, what other businesses are still in operation since that time?

- We are a centennial business recognized by the State of Illinois.

When you go to our store again, you'll see the certificate on the wall.

- Yeah.

Well, okay, so Lobster Boil is coming up, you're gonna prepare 350 lobster dinners for us, for Channel 47 and Hult, and they're flown in that day?

- Yes, they'll be brought in out of Boston, and we'll start prepping them on Saturday morning, and the process will begin.

It's an all day process from the time you start prepping to serving.

- What time do you start?

What time will they get here and what time do you start?

- The prepping starts on Friday, a lot of the prep, but then it bleeds into Saturday.

But we don't start cooking til late afternoon because like Billy said, it's crunch time, because to provide a properly temped dinner, steaming hot lobster and potatoes, that all has to be done at the very end.

And so, we're just very organized.

Again, all those burners that we cook in.

- How many burners are there?

- We have total of eight.

- And you put the big pots on?

- They're 50,000 BTU's per burner.

- They can boil a pot of water in an instant.

- Oh, I like that.

- If you don't watch 'em, they will boil over right away.

- And like I said earlier, John Dixon is just a force, he's very calculated.

We start with the lobster's first, 'cause they're the bulkiest.

- And then you layer them.

- Yeah.

And then we have all these different shipping boxes that are designed to hold heat or cold.

- They're thermal insulated.

- Yeah.

And it's just a well-oiled machine really.

- It really truly is.

So, you do the lobsters in some pots and then you do the other things in other pots, and when you're plating everything, it's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right?

- Correct.

And as the staff is boxing and getting ready to ship the product, everything is marked.

And so, when we get to the center, whether, this year, it's at WTVP, we'll line up the food, we'll have the lobster boxes, we'll have the corn, the onion, potatoes, sausage, and then we have a team of volunteers that come in, wonderful support from the community, and we put this together and serve you guys in about, we'll serve about 350 people in 20 to 25 minutes.

- And that's the incredible thing.

All right, so really quickly, fifth generation, who's coming up?

- Well, we have, there are four.

- Potentials.

- Four, yeah.

(laughs) yes, four potentials, we have Steve Reardon, we have JR Dixon, we have my nephew, Bobby Dixon.

Oh gosh, I feel like I'm leaving one out.

Is there another one?

No, so there's three.

- There's three.

- There's three.

- I thought maybe you knew of somebody.

- No, I didn't.

- Unless your son comes back.

- My son comes back, my son lives down in Dallas, John has a son that lives out in Arizona.

There are other family members around, but right now, there are three working in the company.

- So, there's potential.

Well, thanks so much for coming today, sharing the story.

Thanks for everything you do for the Lobster Boil.

- Thank you, Christine.

- Again, that benefit's here, Channel 47 and the Hult Center.

Something different this year.

And what a great story.

- Well, thank you, and we appreciate the community so much for their support of us.

- There you go.

There you go.

It's a Round Robin situation.

All right, and thank you all for joining us as well, hope you've enjoyed learning all about Dixon's.

I learned a whole bunch.

Stay safe and healthy.

Stay cool.

(bright music)