Foster Farms (poultry company)
| Private | |
| Founded | Modesto, California, U.S. (1939) |
| Headquarters | Livingston, California, U.S. |
Foster Farms is a United States West Coast poultry company. The company has been privately owned and operated by the Foster family since 1939. The company is based in Livingston, California, with operations throughout the West Coast and a few on the East Coast. The company specializes in a variety of chicken and turkey products advertised as fresh and naturally locally grown.
Foster Farms was established in 1939 by Max and Verda Foster. They began by investing $1,000 into a farm in Modesto, California, on which they raised turkeys. The back porch was Max's office and the first hatchery was built next to their bedroom so the eggs could get constant care. In 1942, Max quit his day job as a reporter and city editor for the Modesto Bee. Around this time, the Fosters expanded into raising cattle and chickens. As the business grew, the Fosters acquired another farm and a feed mill in the 1950s. The feed mill allowed the company some independence from outside feed contracts. In 1959, Foster Farms built a processing plant in Livingston, California, and in 1960, the company's headquarters was moved there from Modesto. Livestock were slaughtered, processed, and packaged at the Livingston plant on an assembly line.
In 1969, Max and Verda Foster turned the company over to their son, Paul Foster, who became President of Foster Farms. In 1973, Foster Farms opened a major distribution center in El Monte, California, serving southern California. In 1977, Paul died of a sudden heart attack, and his brother Thomas became president of the company.
In 1982, the company bought the property of The Grange Company and its branch, Valchris Poultry. After this purchase the company re-entered the turkey business and began to produce deli products under the Foster Farms name. By the 1980s, Foster Farms had many new products to offer, such as bologna, poultry franks and luncheon meats. Sales tripled between 1975 and 1988; by 1987, Foster Farms was selling about 140 million chickens per year, making it the largest chicken producer in California. The company's hens laid around 2.2 million eggs per week, which were then transported to hatcheries and kept in an for 18 days. When the chicks hatched, they were taken to different ranches for about 52 days, while they ate the company's own corn and soybean meals.
Throughout the 1980s, Foster Farms began to make commercials, with one winning a Clio Award in 1988. By the mid-1980s, their sales had continued to improve, and they expanded again, purchasing Oregon's largest poultry producer, Fircrest Farms in Creswell, in 1987. In 1988, the company leadership decided to increase production capacity. They created a new fryer ranch with one million square feet of poultry housing in Merced, California, upgraded their feed mill in Ceres, California, and built a new 85,000-square-foot (7,900 m2) distribution facility and sales office for Northern California in Livingston. In November 1989, Foster Farms obtained a turkey processing plant in Fresno, California, from Roxford Foods. The turkey processing plant was converted into a chicken processing plant, where new equipment was added, enabling the plant to process 80 million more chickens a year.
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