NACS Community Remembers Time Saver’s Monty Montgomery

It is with deep sadness that NACS shares the news of the death of Levere C. “Monty” Montgomery, Jr., who served as 1970-71 NACS chairman. He died August 6 at the age of 97.

Following a two-year stint in the United States Coast Guard, Montgomery pursued his natural entrepreneurial instinct for business. In 1954, he opened the first Time Saver convenience store at the corner of Carrollton and Oak Street in New Orleans. Before opening the store, Montgomery briefly worked at Cabell’s convenience stores and developed a close relationship with Earle Cabell, who later became a United States congressman and mayor of Dallas, Texas.

Within two years of its founding, Time Saver opened four more stores. The business continued to grow as Montgomery and his wife Anne raised their six children in Metairie, Louisiana. Ultimately, Time Saver business grew to over 97 locations throughout southern Louisiana. Monty also introduced the popular ICEE to his convenience stores.

“At that time, people used to take carbonated drinks and put them in the freezer and get them almost frozen hard, take them out, take the top off, and that drink would start to foam off the top. It would be very cold and flaky,” Montgomery told NACS in a 1999 interview. “We’d sell snow cones or snowballs; but they weren’t carbonated, so it didn’t have the zing that the carbonation did. ICEE was marketed well, and we put the machine in an important location. We had a lot of traffic. There was a tremendous amount of traffic through these stores.”

Montgomery joined the NACS Board of Directors in 1964 and served as 1970-71 chairman. During his term, NACS created a confidential figure exchange, which allowed the industry to benchmark performance for the first time. The benchmarking program grew and eventually became the NACS State of the Industry suite of products.

“That was a wonderful time, where we would simply sit around the table, put these figures out in front and say, how are you doing this? How are you able to accomplish this in Tulsa, New Orleans or in Dallas? It was a terrific exchange. People helped other people,” said Montgomery.

“I think that the need for the industry was to be able to share the changes and the growth that was happening. I don't think essentially it was a ‘How can I help one another,’ but there was absolutely no restraint. Most of us believed that it wasn't the information so much that you had, but the implementation of the ideas,” said Montgomery, looking back on the growth of NACS benchmarking.

Montgomery was a past president of the Metairie Rotary Club and the Louisiana Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization. He also served on the Boards of Pontchartrain Builders, Crystal Pure Ice, Delight Distributing and the St. Tammany Hospital Foundation. He was also the president of Montgomery Ventures Ltd.

Through the Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, he and his wife Anne established the Levere C. Montgomery Jr. Family Foundation in 2004. They were honored to receive the Order of Saint Louis Award from the Archdiocese of New Orleans.