Zacky Back in Poultry Business

Zacky Back in Poultry Business

By Kyle Buchoff, Assistant Editor

Lillian Zacky, a very familiar name in the Central Valley poultry industry, told an interesting story about the family’s business, “My father-in-law, Samuel Zacky, started this business in 1928. He would go into the country, which is now a metropolis, pick up chickens, take them back to his market—Sam’s Poultry Market in Los Angelesand process them there. He thought that was the future; there would always be a corner poultry market. But my husband [Robert Zacky] said, ‘This is not going to be forever, and I don’t want to do this forever. So let’s sell to a supermarket because they are going to have packages of poultry in there.’ My father-in-law would not believe that. But anyway, it worked out.”

Sam's Poultry Market (Photo Source: The Zacky Farms Story, http://www.zacky.com/story.htm)

Sam’s Poultry Market (Photo Source: The Zacky Farms Story)

Zacky Farms flourished. Lillian Zacky recalled, “We started with chickens, we did turkeys at Thanksgiving, and now we are doing turkeys all year-round.”

In 2001, the family sold their chicken business to Foster Farms, Zacky explained, “with a non-compete for 10 years. Now that the non-compete is over, we are back in the chicken business because it is our passion, our family passion.”

The buyout terms also dictated the “Zacky” name could never appear on trade-packed chicken, but they could put Zacky on their other products, including Zacky Farms chicken franks and lunch meat. “But, anyway,” Zacky said, “for the chicken, it is now ‘Lillian Z’ because we wanted to put that ‘Z’ at the end.”

Lillian views the poultry business is a way of life. “It is not just a business,” she explained. “It is something we enjoy, plus we bring quality and health to the public. I feel what we produce for the consumer is what we would have for our own family.”