On June 17 the namesake of the Stew Leonard grocery store empire, Stew Leonard Senior, was honored with the unveiling of a life-size bronze statue.
The new statue, to be permanently installed at a yet-to-be-determined location within the Norwalk store, honors the man who built a modest dairy into a business with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, thousands of employees, and eight locations throughout Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey.
Originally founded by his father Charles Leonard in the 1920s as Clover Dairy Farms, Stew Leonard Sr. established the Norwalk store on Westport Avenue in 1969. Realizing that supermarkets were poised to supplant milkmen as purveyors of dairy goods, he expanded the store’s offerings beyond milk and cheese, eventually turning it into a full-fledged grocery store while maintaining dairy operations on site.
Leonard Sr. passed away in 2023, and even after his retirement in the early 90’s following a tax fraud conviction his vision guided the business. The recently completed renovations to what Ripley’s Believe It or Not once deemed “the world’s largest dairy store” were proposed in his earliest plans for the property.
According to Leonard Sr.’s son Stew Leonard Jr., the current president and CEO of the supermarket chain since 1991, the 300-pound bronze statue was inspired by the same trips which gave rise to the animatronics and atmosphere which have made the chain a formative experience for area children.
“We went on our family vacations to Disneyland and Disney World, and when you look at all of the animation you see in the store, and not just the animation but the focus of the business on families and children…the whole idea was to make it fun for them,” Leonard Jr. said. “When we went down to Disney there was a bronze statue of Walt Disney, and I remember my father always said ‘I’d love to have one of them some day.’”
Leonard presented several employees with 3D-printed statutes to commemorate their contributions to the store, including those who worked with a studio in Salt Lake City to craft the realistic statue, including details like a replica of a belt presented to the elder Leonard by his wife when they visited Utah.
Leonard also thanked the many employees who gathered in front of the recently renovated store, some of whom had been with the company for more than 40 years.
In addition to dozens of longtime employees and the extended Leonard family, Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling and State Representative Kadeem Roberts were present to underline the importance of the store to the city.
“I don’t have to tell people this, but Stew Leonard’s put Norwalk on the map many years ago,” said Rilling before delivering a proclamation from the city recognizing the store’s economic contributions. “By opening the largest dairy store in the world people started noticing Norwalk, and you brought people to Norwalk.”
“Knowing your dad,” Rilling added, “I tend to think he would probably be saying ‘c’mon get in there and get back to work!’”
