With the latest acquisition of Golden Valley Natural, Matt Bormann, chief executive officer of Western Smokehouse Partners, a subsidiary of AUA Private Equity Partners, brought a fourth family into the growing meat snack company.

The facility Western Smokehouse recently purchased and partnered with covers 200,000 square feet in Shelley, Idaho, giving its customers west of the Mississippi a chance to reach the critical West Coast market.

As co-manufacturers with several snack brands, Bormann and Western Smokehouse understand the importance of the markets of California, Washington and other western states for processing products.

“Because these are national brands that we work with, they’re going to be in every location and every geography, so having closer manufacturing and shorter ship points is very important,” Bormann said.

Bormann stated that Shelley and nearby Idaho Falls continue to grow, making it a solid labor pool to fill open positions. Golden Valley has about 250 employees working at the plant.

“Just being able to grow with a team that’s already in motion and ready to grow further is very exciting,” Bormann said.

Bormann estimated that the Idaho facility currently processes about 10-12 million lbs annually, but after purchasing new equipment and upgrading specific systems, he believes the plant could produce 24 million lbs annually.

One of the central principles of Western Smokehouse’s philosophy is collaboration and a sense of responsibility to the owners and operators who send their brands and products to their processing facilities.

“We have all these other companies where we are essential to their business, and if we were disappointing them and not working well with them and not doing what they need to do to be successful, it’s their livelihood and their team’s livelihood,” Bormann said. “So, it’s not just these 900 people. It’s the thousand other people who rely on these companies and rely on us as their manufacturer. We just take that very seriously, and that’s the collaboration.”

With trusted plant managers, the corporate team and Bormann remain ready to support the facilities when needed, giving the company time to look toward the future.

“I’m constantly thinking about what’s next,” he said. “What’s the next build? What’s the next acquisition? Who’s our next partner? What does the market look like for the customer landscape? Who do we want to target and build a relationship with next? That frees me up because the operations team and the corporate team that supports us do such a great job of carrying the water on the day-to-day that I get to think about what’s next.”

After the acquisition, Western Smokehouse looked to Nancy Cortez, the longtime operations manager at Golden Valley Natural, as a crucial person to lead the new Idaho plant.

“We just want to empower her to kind of really take over the lead even more than she was already,” Bormann said of Cortez.

Western held a town hall meeting with the entire production and office team and clarified that Cortez was still in charge and the person on the production floor, even with the change of ownership.

“Nancy is going to make a lot of the calls on what happens at this facility and how the facility goes,” Bormann said. “We’ll support her in any way possible.”

Jerky capabilities

An exciting addition to this partnership for Western Smokehouse is bringing jerky capacity online. At its current facilities in the Midwest, the company does not have jerky processing available, which will change with the Golden Valley plant.

Bormann expects to look at the jerky space with private labels and co-manufacturing. However, he wants to ensure the company evaluates the jerky market before making major commitments.

“We want to understand the opportunities to expand jerky with the elevation of beef prices and round prices recently; you just have to understand the competitive dynamics a little better,” Bormann said. “We’re still a little new to that evaluation of jerky, so we need to know whether we’re going to wait a little bit or expand jerky.”

Even with the great possibilities of jerky, Western Smokehouse still places much of its business at its four other facilities, where there is a high demand for meat sticks, high-claim grass-fed beef, antibiotic-free pork, free-range, no-antibiotic chicken and turkey.

Even though Western Smokehouse mainly works with those four proteins, the pack formats of these products continue to shift frequently as people want to pick them up at convenience stores and grocery retailers.

“That’s the biggest challenge with our growth is continuing the evolution of how it’s going be packed out,” Bormann said of product packaging. “The count sizes and the pouches versus caddies and that whole evolution. So that’s really what we’re trying most to get our arms around as we continue to service those growing formats.”

Burlington boom

Outside the Golden Valley acquisition, Western Smokehouse has seen a significant step forward with its Burlington, Iowa, meat snack plant hitting its stride.

The company opened the facility in May 2023 in a converted 100,000-square-foot building and fitted it for meat snack co-manufacturing.

Bormann said the company took a leap on the Burlington facility but saw strong demand. They planned a small expansion, such as adding some smokehouses and additional packaging capabilities, which landed over the summer.

“We had a really great feeling about the community from the beginning,” he said of Burlington. “They really kind of rallied to support us. We felt like it was the right environment. They had a strong manufacturing backbone — people who have been used to working in a production environment.”

When the company had its first hiring fair in Burlington a few months before opening, Bormann said his human resources staff explained that pretty much all the candidates were qualified for some position.

Western Smokehouse moved quickly to implement its business in Iowa. Bormann stated it took about 11 months from conception to launch. Demand hit so fast that a second shift was added at the facility in August 2023, three months after launching. The company estimates it currently has about 180 employees in Burlington.

Company officials said the Burlington facility aims to process about 65,000 lbs daily at full capacity.

In June 2024, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds toured the Burlington facility, joined by local and state officials, to see what Western Smokehouse accomplished in one year.

Timing out the meat snacks

The busiest times of the year for Western Smokehouse remain April through September.

“That’s where it seems like no matter how much we build in every year, demand is 110% of our capacity,” Bormann said.

For March, October and November, Western Smokehouse stays at full capacity, with it possibly going down 10% in December, January and February.

Placing people in necessary roles, even with some automation, also remains challenging for Western Smokehouse. Still, the processor understands that it needs skilled labor to succeed well into the future.

“We’re always going to be a company of people, and that will create its own challenges. But we kind of embrace that challenge and that’s where we win,” Bormann said.

Researching the next meat snack

Another area the corporate team heavily examines for Western Smokehouse Partners is coming up with the next design and flavor of meat snacks.

Doug Hankes, chief product officer, and Laura Williams, vice president of R&D and commercialization, remain very busy developing new flavors, formats and opportunities for customers.

“We’re constantly pushing into R&D and supporting it,” Bormann said. “Most of our brands use us to support all their R&D efforts as far as how to launch. We have to figure out not just how to make it but also how to make it at scale and be efficient when we make it because we can’t slow down and create a bottleneck with some decision we make.”

With such significant growth, Bormann breaks down his success and what guides him as the executive of Western Smokehouse.

“My advice is, do you believe in your market, and do you have the relationship with your customers to believe what they believe that there is growth and are they going to trust you to sign up for more commitment?” Bormann said. “You have to believe in the market. You have to have a good read on the market to know you need that expansion and take that leap because it’s always a big bet.”

Find the right partners

Since assuming the role of CEO in 2021, Bormann has valued making suitable acquisitions and knowing which businesses will integrate into Western Smokehouse Partners’ existing operations.

Finding the successes of something like Burlington can now be applied to Bormann and the rest of his team at Western Smokehouse as the company moves into another growth phase.

“It starts with selection both on location and the partner you have, and you make the right selection and then it’s having a story around the culture,” Bormann said of partnerships. “One of my biggest fears as we continue to grow is that we’re going to lose the culture. That’s what we fight against every day, is to keep that small feel of the company, still keep that family-owned mentality as much as we can.”

After that part of the conversation, Bormann discussed how strong leadership at each facility allows businesses to stay even when demand expansion continues.

“We want that plant manager to really be the owner of the four walls,” Bormann said of each facility. “I may show up, meet everyone and talk to everyone, but we want to know that that’s the person who kind of leads the tone for the site. We make sure that’s the right person, and we have great ones at every single location we have, but they’re the ones that keep that feel. We’re here to support these great plant managers, these great plant teams, and that’s kind of been our model of how we keep that culture — is decentralized ownership of the plants.”

Western Smokehouse Partners now runs five facilities throughout its meat snack network, with about 900 employees and more than 500,000 square feet of meat snack capacity.

Even with all these recent major moves, Bormann and Western Smokehouse are making it clear that it’s only a chapter in a longer company story.

“This is not the final step of the journey,” Bormann said. “We’re still at the middle point in our journey, and we see opportunity in this market to continue to grow rapidly. And we plan to continue to invest and grow rapidly in this industry.”