Kraft Heinz execs struggling to produce growth within the staid grocery products arena might want to steal a page from the playbook at Carl Buddig, a family-owned maker of delicatessen meats.
While Kraft Heinz has been selling off production plants—it closed its historic Oscar Mayer facility in Madison, Wis., two years ago and more recently took a devastating $15.4 billion writedown on its Oscar Mayer and Kraft trademarks—Buddig has been investing in new businesses and production capacity. It’s been quite a turnaround for a company known for bargain-priced deli meats—founded in the Chicago Union Stockyards neighborhood in 1943 but based now in Homewood—that had grown at a conservative pace for decades.
In a $26 million deal two years ago, Buddig bought South Holland-based Rupari Food Services out of bankruptcy, launching into a new line of barbecued ribs, reviving the business by striking a trademark deal with Clorox’s Kingsford Charcoal brand. Last year Buddig bought a closed 300,000-square-foot Butterball turkey plant in west suburban Montgomery and hired 300 employees to produce private-label deli meats for Walmart, Aldi, Kroger and other grocers. Meanwhile, the company is now marketing nationally its Old Wisconsin line of sausages and snacks, based in Sheboygan, Wis., which was once confined to the upper Midwest.
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