Mr. W.A. Brown started working with his father, Henry Miller Brown, in the family-owned fish market located in Salisbury, North Carolina, late in the 1890s. W.A. Brown moved on to open his own fish market in 1901, which was also located in Salisbury.
 
In 1908 W.A. moved his market and expanded it to include fresh meat. As his market offering grew, he searched for a better method to preserve the quality of his meat products. He had heard of the Hill refrigerated meat display cases. Making a special trip by train to Trenton, New Jersey, W.A. met Mr. C.V. Hill, Sr. with whom he became very interested in this new method of refrigerating food products. W.A.'s market in Salisbury became the first in the Southeast to purchase a Hill refrigerator and a Brunswick refrigerating machine, which used ammonia as the refrigerant. The early refrigeration unit was electric motor-driven and very crude. After all, electric motors were not all that common in those days. It required daily manual adjustments for proper operation.
 
Soon, out-of-town market owners heard of Brown Market's mechanized equipment. They came to Salisbury to see how it operated. W.A. Brown wrote to Mr. Hill and ordered units for the impressed market owners. After several installations, Mr. C.V. Hill wrote in 1910 and asked Mr. Brown to be his sales agent for Hill Refrigerators. The same arrangement was made with Brunswick to provide the refrigerating unit. As W.A.'s sales grew, the business grew into a dealership.
 
World War I caused the newly established business to struggle, but it grew steadily in spite of it. In 1917 Mr. Brown purchased a large building and moved his office and the market to this location. A small space in the front of the market and a room upstairs served as the office. Hill  manufactured a refrigerated single glass display case, with a bunker space for either ice or the mechanical cooling that Brown offered to his customers.
 
As business continued to slowly grow, the refrigerator business potential of the South was recognized and expansion was planned. The expansion required sacrifices at the meat market and in 1922 Brown expanded into a 40’ x 100' warehouse for receiving and servicing refrigerators for his dealership.
 
In 1925, W.A. Brown gave his son, Dodd, an interest in the business and changed the name of the company to W.A. Brown & Son. By this time the company had begun building prefabricated modular panel walk-in refrigerators. Dodd Brown led the company's manufacturing of walk-in refrigerators to complement the sale of grocery store equipment, which the company distributed.
 
In 1929, a double brick building was built on South Main Street. The meat market also closed about this time. The north half of the building was to be leased to the local Chrysler auto dealership, while the southern half of the building was the W.A. Brown & Son office, warehouse, and walk-in refrigerator manufacturing facility. The first refrigerator panels were built of oak framing with granulated cork for insulation, and were connected by lag bolts. The entrance doors and reach-in windows were purchased, and the finishing work and assembly was completed at the Brown plant. The Chrysler dealer never opened in the northern part of the building, making additional space available to expand the manufacturing shop.
  
The Great Depression of 1930 all but broke W.A. Brown & Son. If it had not been for the size of the building, which was used as a warehouse for equipment taken back by agreement, the business would have folded. The returned equipment was reworked by the skilled craftsmen at Brown, and produced saleable equipment that Brown financed to make customer purchases possible.
 
W.A. Brown & Son kept expanding the manufacturing of refrigerators. Management enlarged and equipped a wood working and sheet metal shop, paint shop with bake oven, service area, and sales departments until World War II. During World War II, business was again limited by the loss of men to the service and wartime production priorities, which affected metal, copper tubing, refrigerant gasses, etc. Brown found it urgent to find other means to keep the business going during this time. For example, Brown built church pews and utilized the paint-baking oven to bake finishes on concrete bathtubs for government housing projects.
 
The end of WWII found Brown to be the first walk-in manufacturer to offer smooth aluminum material as the standard walk-in cooler finish. Joining the company about this time, Ed Brown, current president, helped develop a technically advanced insulated panel using polyurethane foam, another first. Specialized low pressure frothing equipment was purchased to inject the urethane material into the panels. The new panel method incorporated integral locking devices and used pre-formed metal sheets as the outside of the panels. Production of the new urethane material panels was limited to one day a week in 1958. The 60 employees, up from the original three, worked the other four days on West Coast Fir-framed panels with fiberglass insulation using lag bolt assembly.
 
In 1974, W.A. Brown established a separate electrical controls division. Beginning with the installation of walk-in units, it quickly grew into energy management systems serving customer needs for lighting controls, commercial restaurant hood controls, fuel dispenser controls, and power quality systems. The division's unique capabilities allowed it to grow swiftly, and in February 2001, the division was spun off to Powerbox Solutions, LLC, to allow the company to focus on the core business.
 
Brown has continued to expand its market and to keep abreast of new technology to produce its products. In 1985, Brown was the first to purchase and install specially designed high pressure foam equipment. This high tech equipment offered the most consistent metering of polyurethane into panels resulting in a consistent density throughout the panel.
 
The walk-in product has been submitted and passed major testing conducted by Underwriters Laboratories, Factory Mutual Laboratories, and the National Sanitation Foundation. Brown manufactures a product today, using advanced production equipment, which meets the building codes important in the states being served.
 
New products and alternate markets are constantly being developed nationwide. BBP, LLC was established as an extension of W.A. Brown & Son, Inc. into the structural insulated panel (SIP) industry. The SIPTEX™ building system is a natural evolution of the use of polyurethane foam, using the 50-plus years of experience building panelized refrigeration, into today’s demanding building industry. BBP was sold in mid-2011.
 
W.A. Brown & Son, Inc. grew operating a small meat market with three employees to a 275,000 square foot state-of-the art facility opened in 1999, employing nearly 200 workers. Brown's current product offerings include coolers and freezers serving customers from the huge Paris Casino to the local service station. Whether you are in a restaurant, casino, supermarket, hospital, school, university, or the neighborhood convenience store, chances are that close by a Brown system is at work.
 
At W.A. Brown, employees continue to meet today’s economic challenges, much the same way as earlier employees met the challenges of the Depression and World War II. While growth and change will continue in the second 100 years, quality and craftsmanship are traditions that will never be sacrificed. Over the company’s first 100 years, the dedication of Brown employees has inspired numerous advancements which are reflected in the loyal customer following and in the longevity of Brown's satisfied users.