Did you see Bell & Evans and my son, Scott Jr., on the cover of Meatingplace this month? If not, read it here!
Tom Johnston spent a full day at Bell & Evans touring our facilities and meeting with our leadership team. We prepared an aggressive schedule for him – our goal to show him everything we possibly could during his short visit. In the end, I think Tom walked away feeling pretty enlightened about our company’s significant history and our operations here in Fredericksburg, PA.
You might wonder why we would open our doors to an industry publication to share our secrets. There’s a lot of marketing hype coming from the commodity producers, and we felt it was time to share our story. If you have spent any time on our website, you already know that we are very transparent. We have been the industry risk-taker for decades. Others watch and wait as we make changes and do things better. If it works for us and they think it could be profitable for them, they jump on the bandwagon, cutting corners along the way to fit it into their profit-driven business model.
We don’t pay for press, and until recently, industry press didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to us. As Tom says in his article, we were considered a “niche” player. But niche doesn’t mean insignificant. It means we are committed to something different – in our case, filling customers’ needs for premium quality chicken from healthy, well-cared-for birds. Our niche is growing today because the big commodity producers are buying up the smaller producers to enter the Raised Without Antibiotics and Organic markets. They’re looking at our past achievements and trying to replicate our successes. All of a sudden, the things we’ve cared about forever are becoming important to the industry.
I was impressed by Tom’s sincere interest in our operations which I feel is reflected in his work. Thanks again, Tom, for paying an honest day’s attention to us. As it turns out, this niche producer is pretty significant after all!
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