07/30/2026
Yesterday July 29th, your Chamber was invited to conduct a "Ribbon Cutting" for Lafayette County Enterprises, Inc. & Undiscovered Treasures in honor of their new outside employee break area. Congratulations to all involved!
Following are remarks made by Suzanne Smith, Executive Director/CEO
• Welcome to our open house and ribbon cutting
• We have been in business for 52 years and currently have around 45 disabled adults (employees) that are employed.
• I have been ED for 2 yrs, was on the board for 10 yrs prior and my brother worked here for 30 yrs until he retired so LCE has a special place in my heart.
• Contracts we have include Old World Spice, ACME, Rufus Teague, Gallagher, and Milbank. We are also the subcontractor for janitorial work at the Concordia Rest Area which we staff 7 days a week from 7 am – 5 pm and each day there is one supervisor and 2 employees that work there.
• We also do the janitorial work at the Odessa Truck Parking Lot at Odessa and go there 3 mornings a week to pick up trash.
• We are also the only recycling center in Lafayette County. We accept cardboard, white/colored paper, newspaper, #1 & #2 plastics, Christmas and any holiday lights, aluminum and tin cans. We expanded our recycling this past year to include E-Waste which consists of small broken appliances, old laptops, desktop computers, flat screen tv’s and monitors, cell phones, printers, CD and cassette players, DVD/VHS players, etc.
• Our exciting announcement is that we have received two grants one for $50,000 from the Buckner Foundation and $126,900 from West Central Solid Waste Management District F and with that we will be purchasing a Styrofoam Condensor (picture inside at sign-in table) and a new box truck with a tommy lift gate. This will allow us to start accepting Styrofoam to recycle and also add that as a pickup to our existing cardboard route!
• Now for our ribbon cutting! This outside break area for the employees was paid for with the money we made from our 1st Piccadilly – tickets now on sale for 2nd Piccadilly.
• We also want to acknowledge those that provided memorials of their loved ones and/or current employees. Connie Rehkop, Joel DeHaven, Carol Clark, Ron Fiene, Carol Ann Sanders, and Chad Sanders (In honor of Chad and in memory of everyone else)(.
Pictured: LCE Director/CEO, Board of Directors and Employees