Lammes Candies, Austin’s oldest continuously run family business, is closing after 141 years in operation.
The Round Rock location shut its doors on April 24, 2026, with a handwritten sign informing customers of the decision.
The flagship store at 5330 Airport Boulevard, the same address it has operated from since 1956, remains open for now, with no specific closing date announced. Online sales continue while inventory lasts.
The owners posted a sign at the Round Rock location that read: “We have made the difficult decision to close our business.”
The official reason cited was “changing market conditions and the long-term sustainability of our operations.” The sign added, “It was not made lightly.”
Lana Schmidt, vice president and fifth-generation family member, put the loss in personal terms when she spoke to Fox 7 Austin.
“I think we’ve built a legacy for the community,” she said. “I know people are gonna miss this sweet treat, this tradition of theirs. And so we will miss the community.”
The Poker Game That Started Everything
The story of Lammes Candies is inseparable from the story of a poker game, a gambling debt, and a $800 payment that became one of the more consequential transactions in Austin business history.
William Wirt Lamme arrived in Austin from St. Louis in 1878 and established the Red Front Candy Factory at 721 Congress Avenue.
The business grew. Then Lamme lost it at a poker table in the spring of 1885.
His son David Turner Lamme came down from Ohio specifically to repair the damage. He paid the gambling debt, $800 at the time, which works out to nearly $27,000 in 2026 dollars, reclaimed the business from whoever had won it at the card table, and officially reopened on July 10, 1885.
He renamed it Lammes Candies, moved it to 919 Congress Avenue, and the business has been family-owned and family-operated ever since.
“My great-great-great grandfather started it in 1885,” Schmidt told Fox 7 Austin. “It was called the Red Front Candy Store. But he had a passion for playing poker and lost it in a poker game. So his son came down, repaid his debt of $800 and got the candy company back.”
What his son built from that $800 repayment is the business closing today.
What Lammes Became
In 1892, seven years after reclaiming the business, David Turner Lamme introduced the product that would define the company for the next 134 years: the Texas Chewie Pecan Praline.
The recipe was simple, pecans, corn syrup, sugar, butter, salt, but the execution required seven years of development before Lamme was satisfied.
He used pecans gathered from trees growing along the Colorado River. The company still sources exclusively from Texas-grown pecans.
At first, pralines were only available by special order and only in minimum batches of 25 pounds, shipped through Lammes’ mail order division.
They became available to the public in the 1920s and never stopped being the company’s best-selling product. They are the thing people fly home with, mail to relatives, and specifically request in their holiday gift packages.
The Texas Chewie Pecan Praline is not the only product that defined Lammes.
The Longhorn, pecans covered in caramel and chocolate, similar to what the broader candy world knows as a turtle, became a signature piece. The chocolate-covered strawberries became an institution at Valentine’s Day and Christmas.
The company offered over 1,000 distinct confectioneries at its peak, mixing old-fashioned recipes with seasonal specialties that customers planned their visits around.
Lammes also holds a specific place in Austin history that goes beyond the candy.
The company installed the first neon sign in Austin, the iconic lamb logo that still marks the Airport Boulevard flagship. Lammes had the first soda fountain in Texas.
These are not marketing claims. They are documented firsts that place the candy store in the history of the city in ways that transcend what was in the glass cases.
Schmidt described what the store once meant to Austin in a way that captures the business landscape of another era.
“Back in the day, you went to Lammes Candies for your candy,” she said. “You went to the grocery store for your groceries. You went to Scarborough’s for a nice outfit. And we went to Benold’s or Kruger’s for your jewelry.”
Every business in that sentence except Lammes is also gone. Until now.
The One Employee Who Stayed 75 Years
The Schmidt family, Lana, her brother and her sister, represent the fifth generation of the family to run the business.
Lana started working the cash register at 12 years old. Their father bought the business in its entirety around 1972 as the fourth generation.
What they inherited was not just a candy store but an institution with employees whose tenure measured in decades.
In a company video from 2015, co-owner Bryan Teich noted that much of the management staff had worked at Lammes for 20 to 35 years.
The most extraordinary example was Mildred Hamilton Walston, an Austin native who began working at Lammes in 1941 and stayed for more than 75 years.
When she died in 2019, her family wrote in her obituary that she considered Lammes “a second family.”
She was there for most of the company’s history, watching Austin change around the same address on Airport Boulevard while she went to work every day.
That kind of longevity, in employees, in family ownership, in the recipes themselves, is what people on social media are mourning alongside the actual candy.
One commenter captured it plainly, “You can’t buy the smell online. I suggest you walk in the door.”
Former employees flooded Austin community pages with memories of Valentine’s Day strawberry rushes and first jobs behind the counter. Customers described Christmas boxes and holiday traditions that stretched back generations of their own families.
Why Is The Legendary Store Closing?
The owners have not elaborated beyond the official language posted on the sign, changing market conditions and long-term sustainability concerns.
The specifics of what those conditions include, rising ingredient costs, commercial rent increases, changing consumer habits, the shift to online retail, competition from larger candy brands, have not been detailed publicly.
What the business history does show is a gradual contraction. At its peak Lammes operated seven or more locations across Central Texas.
Barton Creek Square Mall, Anderson Lane, Lakeline, and other suburban locations have all closed over the past several years.
The Round Rock location, which shut April 24, was the last location to go before the flagship.
Each closure reduced the company’s physical footprint while the Airport Boulevard store and the mail-order operation kept the brand alive.
The Airport Boulevard flagship opened in December 1956. It has been operating from that location for nearly 70 years. It will close when the remaining inventory is sold.
What Remains For Now
The Airport Boulevard store, 5330 Airport Blvd., Austin, remains open with no specific closing date.
The company is encouraging customers to come in while inventory lasts. Online sales remain active for people who want to order before the business winds down completely.
For Austinites who have been meaning to go back, who have a memory tied to the lamb logo on Airport Boulevard, who want their children to see what they grew up with, the window to do it is open, but it will not stay open indefinitely.
A poker game in 1885 cost the Lamme family their candy store. An $800 payment got it back.
What followed was 141 years of pralines, Longhorns, strawberries, neon signs, and an Austin that kept changing while the lamb stayed lit on Airport Boulevard.
