Industry—Quietly tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac in this manufacturing-laden town, "sandwiched" between the 60 (Pomona) freeway and Valley Boulevard, sits one of the juice industry’s most profitable family-owned firms.

Thirty-nine years after being founded, Industry-based Langer Juice Co. Inc. shows no signs of the stress and strain that have often befuddled other family-operated companies.

Langer Juice, with its 200 employees, is still headed by its founder, Nathan Langer, now in his 70’s, while the firm’s day-to-day operations fall to his two sons, Bruce, 40, and David, 44. A third son, Dennis, is a vice president with pharmaceutical firm SmithKline Beecham in Philadelphia.

In fact, Langer Juice has been enjoying so much recent success that it now may shed its privately-owned status and begin exploring whether to open its doors to Wall Street investors with an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

An IPO, according to Street analysts, could ump enough new capital into the company that would allow it to compete on a national sales basis with rival heavyweights like Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., a marketing cooperative that had 1998 sales of $1.48 billion: Chiquita Brands International Inc., maker of "Naked Juice," and a company that posted $2.7 billion in sales last year: and Tropicana Products Inc., owned by PepsiCo., which had $2 billion in sales in 1998 with products like "Frutiva."

"I can visualize (an IPO)," said Bruce Langer, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. "If we had an IPO, we’d use the money to expand geographically on the East Coast."

The company currently distributes its juice products as far east as Illinois and in the southwest, with targeted markets in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, Texas. Seven years ago, the company began an aggressive expansion plan into Northern Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Washington state.

Langer Juice Co. last year had annual sales of $48 million, not bad for a San Gabriel Valley-based firm that still has the time to cultivate community ties by sponsoring local children’s athletic programs.

In 1999, Langer Juice is tracking sales in the neighborhood of $60 million, according to Bruce Langer, who said the company expects at least "20 percent growth" for 2000 from areas like new distribution, new products and increased sales in same-store locations.

Nationally, beverages last year took in about $190 billion in retail sales, excluding milk or brewed coffee and tea, according to New York-based Beverage World Magazine.

The fruit juice industry in 1998 had 9.4 percent of that multi-billion dollar figure, inching ahead of total U.S. wine consumption, which tallied 9.2 percent of the beverage market. The combined vegetable and fruit juice industries last year sold 5.7 million gallons, a growth of 24.3 percent from 1998, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp.

So it’s no wonder that Langer continues to generate solid sales figures, its products found in most major Southern California retail market chains including trendy natural health food stores like Boulder, Colo.,-based Wild Oats, which has a location in Pasadena.

Southern California accounts for 30 percent of Langer’s total sales, according to Tom Bottiaux, the firm’s national sales manager.

"Everybody drinks juice," quipped Bottiaux.

But while many people may drink juice, the company has had limited success with Issaquah, Wash.,-based Costco Companies Inc., which has been lukewarm to offering its members Langer Juice products in its 217 U.S. locations.

"We’ve presented to Costco several times before," said Bruce Langer. "I’m not sure what they’re looking for."

A Costco official said she didn’t know exactly why the firm had passed on Langer, saying, "it could be for a million reasons."

Langer Juice’s Industry facility is 140,000 square feet, housing not only its sales and marketing divisions, but manufacturing quality control and distribution.

The firm has also expanded to Mexico, with a plant in Cuahtemoc in the state of Chihuahua, which has about 50 employees. But the company has no plans in the offing to transfer its corporate facilities south of the border.