Bacon boon
Burgers’ other popular product that represents a large chunk of the business, and has become a signature item for the company, is its bacon. Burgers’ produces bacon under its own brand as well as co-processing for other companies in addition to supplying a number of foodservice products. The company set out to take craft bacon mainstream and has succeeded. Its dry cured country bacon has become a leader in the premium end of the retail grocery case.
“You have a lot of craftsman, dry-cured bacons out there, and a lot of those folks are small and they haven’t been able to achieve any kind of scale. We fit a good middle market position out there to take craftsman quality bacon mainstream,” Burger says. “So we’re going to be at the high end in the grocery case and fit into that craftsman segment within the bacon case for the people that appreciate the flavor development and the bolder flavors.”
Burgers’ bacon flavors include Hickory Smoked, Applewood Smoked, Peppered, Maple and Cajun. Also, most of these flavors come in a Bacon Steak option where they’re cut a ¼-in. thick. Overall, the plant processes between 60,000 lbs. and 80,000 lbs. of fresh pork bellies a week and recently purchased a new Thurne bacon slicing and packaging line to keep pace with the growing demand.
Bacon processed at the plant represents around 20 percent of Burgers’ overall business and is also one of the fastest-growing products. In the past few years, ribs have joined bacon in the fastest growth category. Burger says that the retail grocery channel has driven most of that growth. But there are still growth goals for the next five years, and for the most part, they don’t involve the development of many new products.
Planned growth spurt
Steven Burger and four other family members represent the third generation of management in the organization – his father Morris still comes into the office, but has a less active role today as board emeritus and company ambassador. Four members of the fourth generation currently play active roles in the company and plan to be a part of its continued success in the future. But Burgers’ also hired from outside the family to attain a skill set it didn’t have before to achieve the goal of doubling the $50 million company by 2020.
In November of 2015, the company hired Carl Hemreck, a former Cargill executive, as its senior vice president of sales to develop the sales department.
“He led us on a project to create a five-year strategy plan. That strategy was completed earlier this year and we’re in the process of executing it,” Burger says.
An additional key hire to help Burgers’ achieve its goals was Kelly Perrier, another Cargill veteran who recently had done a short stint at Koch Industries before joining the Burgers’ team as the director of marketing.
“She was brought in to help us fill a void in marketing,” Burger says.
Burgers’ first growth spike started in the mid-1980s, but there have been some unforeseeable hiccups the company has had to navigate since then. At that point, annual sales were about $8 million. Despite the dot-com bubble, real estate bubble and the recession in 2007-2008, the company grew at a steady pace. In the 30 years since Steven Burger started, the compound annual growth rate has been 6.5 percent. For the first half of those 30 years, the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the company saw a 12 percent annual growth rate, but Burger and his staff have committed to taking the business to the next level.
“Hiring a vice president-caliber person from a multi-billion dollar company will bring skill sets to us that we feel are really imperative for us to grow,” Burger says.
The plan includes staying with the core product line of whole muscle, cured and smoked meats, and focusing on the sales and marketing of those products, but allows for innovations that will come from the process of the new strategy plan.
“A part of our strategy is to actually create an innovation process,” Burger says.
Feedback and input from the sales and marketing departments will feed the current innovation process, as well as set up new ideas into the future.
“Creating a process and allocating resources toward identifying market trends and either modifying or creating products that fit those trends is certainly something that we’re going to be investing in,” Burger says.
Reaching the company’s future goals depends on the performance of the existing third generation management, the incoming fourth generation and the key new hires, but possibly the most important variables are the employees who work in the plant. The core group of approximately 150 employees, plus the seasonal temps that take the company up to 300 total employees, all have to do their part too, and the executive team at Burgers’ has the utmost confidence in them.
“Our core employee group of around 150 people are outstanding,” Burger says.
“A lot of people have been here 15 to 25 years,” adds Keith Fletcher, senior vice president of operations.
Fletcher listens to and trusts the workers in the plant. He says that 90 percent of the beneficial ideas for changes in production and manufacturing come from the employees that work on the line. They are the ones that tell him where things might be done in a more efficient manner. They’re the people who understand ways that processes can be improved the most, he says.
“They can stop the line and call for QA or management and we’ll take a look at it,” Fletcher says. “They’re very beneficial to us in making changes and corrections in our processing.”
