Boar’s Head became one of America’s most powerful food companies thanks to a strategy of “bullying” and “intimidation,” according to former employees and industry insiders. But since the deadly listeria outbreak, its piggish behavior may no longer work.
By Chloe Sorvino, Forbes Staff
When Boar’s Head recalled more than 7 million pounds of liverwurst and other deli meats four months ago due to a listeria outbreak, supermarkets and grocers around the country scrambled to remove the dangerous products from their shelves.
Yet one deli counter worker at an Ingles Market in Georgia, who spoke under the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said he was “shocked” when a Boar’s Head representative visited his store after the outbreak that has left 10 dead and caused 59 hospitalizations, she seemed more focused on how its products were selling. Rather than only showing concern for the safety of its products, the salesperson went on the offensive, with potential contract “terminations being threatened every which way for every little thing”—so much so that the deli worker says it was as if Boar’s Head was “trying to scare everybody straight.”
“It felt like panic,” the deli worker says.
After previously working the deli counter at a Publix supermarket—which had a decades-long exclusive relationship with Boar’s Head—he had seen Boar’s Head representatives act “arrogant” and “egotistical” before: “At times, it really felt like I was working for Boar’s Head,” he continues. “Boar’s Head had more control, more influence than any other vendor I’ve ever worked with. Hopefully the recall gives some retailers back some leverage because they seem to enjoy having a lot of power over how their product is used.”
As America’s largest deli meat brand, Boar’s Head has long been the food industry’s 800-pound hog. For decades, the company has wielded its power across the country’s grocery stores. Or as one former supermarket executive puts it: “Boar’s Head has to want to sell to you.”
“They feel like it’s a privilege for the retailer to carry the brand,” the former executive adds. “They do everything they can to make sure that they are the only brand and they keep competition out.”
Another meat industry insider echoes that sentiment: “They’re like Mercedes and there’s no BMW.” He describes the company leadership as “rageful” and “nasty,” depicting executives as “nightmares.” (Boar’s Head calls those allegations “unsubstantiated” and says that its employees “pride ourselves on our professionalism, high standards of conduct and long-standing business relationships.”)
“The whole company is so cloistered,” says an industry insider. “It was like working with the Kremlin.”
Now, in the aftermath of the July 26 recall, Boar’s Head is facing a nightmare of its own creation: retail sales are estimated to be down by a quarter. The brand, with estimated sales of $1.3 billion annually, is in retreat.
A spokesperson for Boar’s Head denies that, too, saying: “This description of our company and our response to the recall does not reflect our values or who we are as a brand. We are addressing the recall head on and continuing our efforts to enhance our safety practices.”
The 100% privately owned deli brand was shaped by Boar’s Head owner Robert S. Martin, better known as Bob Sr., 74, who is a descendant of company founder Frank Brunckhorst. According to legal filings, he has served as co-CEO and chairman of the board. His son Robert P. Martin, or Bob Jr., 50, is chief operating officer. Alongside their cousin Frank Brunckhorst III, the Martins lead Boar’s Head—with a lot of secrecy. The company’s own employees are never even told the official titles of executives in the family.
To get into a new grocery chain, several retailers, industry insiders and former employees say, Boar’s Head often gives an ultimatum: if a grocer wants Boar’s Head, it must get rid of the other premium brands it is already selling. That became known internally, according to several former employees, as the “80% Rule.” Meaning that 80% of the store’s deli “has got to be Boar’s Head,” says another industry insider, adding that Boar’s Head reps tell grocers, “‘If we make it, you sell ours. If you don’t like that, we’ll leave.’” (The 80% Rule started, according to the industry insider, after Boar’s Head began selling to Safeway in the 1990s. During a meeting, Martin got into an argument over Safeway developing its own, less expensive, deli meat brand and instantly decided to stop working with Safeway.)
“This is [their] way,” says the industry insider of Boar’s Head’s philosophy. “We run it, and you just collect the money.”
Another former Boar’s Head employee described the way the company’s network of hundreds of independent authorized distributors, dubbed purveyors, act with their retailers as “an aggressive bullying tactic” that typically trickled down. Says the former Boar’s Head employee, “The company would intimidate the distributor. The distributors would intimidate people. They liked that as a reputation.”
A representative for Boar’s Head denies that, saying that behavior “does not reflect our strategy, our culture or the relationships we have with the purveyors and retailers with whom we work.” The spokesperson adds: “We are proud of our long-standing relationships with purveyors and retailers small and large nationwide who choose to work with us because they understand the value of our brand and premium products.”
According to former employees, many distributors are related by blood or marriage to employees or owners of Boar’s Head, or the distributors are related to each other with several sets of siblings, in-laws and children running their own routes. These purveyors manage inventories, rotate products to make sure the brand label is properly facing out and train and support a stores’ deli associates. They also aid in marketing and store level sales. It’s a full-service model that few food businesses can afford today, aside from some major conglomerates like PepsiCo. And it’s part of why supermarkets are willing to put up with bullying behavior. Says one former Stop & Shop employee: “There’s certainly an advantage to having Boar’s Head because they do a lot of the work for you, and they bring a premium.”
Removing stores from a purveyor’s route is a common threat that keeps them complying with Boar’s Head’s strict demands, and, according to former employees, stores and entire routes have been stripped from many.
That’s what spurred Anthony Lercara of New York-based Lercara Provisions to sue Boar’s Head in 2019. After purchasing the route in 2011 for just under $1 million, Lercara Provisions was forced in 2014 to forfeit distributing to a Norwalk, Connecticut Stop & Shop without the chance to sell the route to another distributor—“as punishment” after, according to the lawsuit, Boar’s Head owners Bob Martin, Sr. and Bob Martin, Jr. had visited that store for an inspection.
The petty reason why, according to the claim: When Bob Sr. approached the counter and asked what the current Boar’s Head promotion was (like sliced turkey being on sale), the deli associates did not know the correct answer. After losing the location, Lercara called Bob Jr. to ask for a reversal, saying the decision would “cripple him financially.” But Bob Jr. allegedly responded “that he and his father and his uncle sit in a room for hours and ‘spend millions’ on advertising and that Lercara was responsible for making that clear.” Eventually, Lercara was forced by Boar’s Head to either sell or forfeit all of his other deli accounts.
“The sales policy is very clear. They’re buying a customer list. You buy air. You buy nothing other than the right to sell,” recalls one former Boar’s Head employee. “That’s how entitled they feel over their brand.”
The year after Lercara filed his lawsuit, two former New York purveyors, Frank Barone and Sal Savasta, filed their own cases alleging breach of contract, fraudulent inducement and economic duress over being forced to give up stores. All three lawsuits got linked in 2021 and the litigation is ongoing. Boar’s Head says it doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but that it is “vigorously defending against these claims.” Depositions have been taken for the past two months.
“With the purveyors, it’s ‘You belong to us.’ That’s the bully concept,’” the former Boar’s Head employee adds. “In the middle of this recall, I can’t even imagine the amount of hours, the amount of pressure that they were feeling from corporate because everything was just led with an iron fist.”
Adds the industry insider, “the whole company is so cloistered. It was like working with the Kremlin.”
“It was tough leaving Boar’s Head,” says Stew Leonard, Jr. “But our deli business has never been better.”
A spokesperson for Boar’s Head calls these statements and the allegations “untrue” and “false” while describing them as “unsubstantiated claims.” The spokesperson tells Forbes: “Boar’s Head has a long heritage of manufacturing high-quality and delicious products. Our teams will continue building on the standards and values that have driven our company for nearly 120 years. We have spent decades building trust with purveyors and retailers large and small throughout the country by holding ourselves to our high standards and values.”
Boar’s Head has cornered the market over the decades, but the business is starting to slip. According to Nielsen grocery sales data, Boar’s Head commands about 15% of the deli meat market nationwide, compared to Kraft (which owns up-for-sale Oscar Mayer) at 11%, Tyson at 9% and Hormel (which owns Applegate, Jennie-O and Spam) at 7%. The rest is a mix of grocer’s own privately labeled brands (more than 25%), as well as family-owned rivals such as Thumann’s and Dietz & Watson.
So far, Dietz & Watson has one chain—the 114 stores of St. Louis, Missouri-based Schnuck Markets—that it convinced to switch from Boar’s Head after the recall. More are coming, Dietz & Watson says. But Boar’s Head also counters that it hopes to return to Schnuck shelves.
For decades, local exclusivity has been a powerful tool in Boar’s Head’s retail strategy. When Massachusetts-based Stop & Shop brought on Boar’s Head in the 1990s, a former deli buyer there recalls “a gentleman’s agreement that [Boar’s Head] wouldn’t go into any of the major supermarkets” in New England.
There is no stronger example of that than at Publix. In exchange for becoming Publix’s exclusive deli meat brand in 1992, Boar’s Head promised Publix that it would be the only supermarket allowed to sell its meat throughout all of Florida. Boar’s Head grew alongside Publix. It even moved its headquarters from Brooklyn to Sarasota, Florida in 2001 to be closer to Publix, based in nearby Lakeland. For the partnership’s 25th anniversary in 2017, Publix deli workers celebrated with pins featuring a large 25. But in more recent years the exclusivity agreement with the employee-owned, $50 billion (annual revenue) retailer has “relaxed,” says Publix director of communications Maria Brous.
Back in 2009, the relationship was as strong as ever. When North Carolina-based Harris Teeter brought on Boar’s Head, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution, a Harris Teeter store in Florida still couldn’t sell Boar’s Head because it was located within a zone deemed to be exclusive to Publix.
When Boar’s Head began selling in Harris Teeter stores, it seems to have employed its 80% Rule. Harris Teeter dumped Dietz & Watson and owner and CEO Louis Eni called out the move as anti-competitive.
As Eni told trade publication Meat & Poultry, “We would never—ever—consider demanding that grocery stores carry only our premium products at the exclusion of others. We want to win on quality and taste, not by cutting off competitors. That disrespects consumers…Exclusivity is selfish and it needs to stop.”
Just five months later in 2009, Meat & Poultry reported on what it described as a response from Boar’s Head distributors. The purveyors tried to “intimidate” Dietz & Watson workers while creating “an onslaught of disruption” while the Pennsylvania-based firm was holding several charity events across Florida to raise money for breast cancer research. According to the report, Boar’s Head distributors sent “a fleet of 40 large box trucks and vans to cause overall chaos.” (Boar’s Head claims it “was not associated with this situation.”)
“I just cannot believe that Boar’s Head would stoop to the low level they did today,” Eni told Meat & Poultry in 2009. “I can’t [imagine] that [Boar’s Head owner] Bob Martin would sanction his distributors disrupting charity fundraising events.”
As Boar’s Head deals with government investigators and an onslaught of fresh lawsuits stemming from the listeria outbreak, the next months will decide a lot. Grocers say they stock what their customers want, and Boar’s Head still is preferred. But they also may take advantage of the unfolding uncertainty.
“I can totally see this being an excuse for retailers to amp up their private label offerings, whereas in the past, Boar’s Head would’ve said, ‘Absolutely not,’” an industry insider says. “That’s the biggest threat for [Boar’s Head] right now.”
Consider what’s transpired at Norwalk, Connecticut-based Stew Leonard, which ended its 35-year-plus relationship with Boar’s Head in 2022 over exclusivity demands. As CEO and owner Stew Leonard, Jr. puts it, “they wanted to turn our deli business into a Boar’s Head concession in the store.” One issue was that Boar’s Head kept pressuring Leonard to bring on more of its expanding line of deli-adjacent items like hummus. But Leonard didn’t want to. So the chain of eight stores across Connecticut, New York and New Jersey launched its own deli brand, and even took aim at Boar’s Head’s signature Ovengold Roasted Turkey with its own label called Stew’s Gold Reserve Turkey.
“Like a drumbeat, as they became a stronger brand, they wanted more control over our deli,” says Leonard. “It was tough leaving Boar’s Head. But our deli business has never been better.”
Hummus is one of the products that’s been pushed hard by Boar’s Head recently. And it’s a touchy subject for the Martin family, according to an industry insider and a former employee, who recall Bob Sr. initially questioning Bob Jr. over Boar’s Head diversifying with chickpeas. As the former employee recalls, “His overall objective has always been, how does he make his stamp on the company? Hummus was a big piece of that for him, and he was able to expand a portfolio of something that was laughed at by his dad.”
Boar’s Head denies that, and clearly the project was ultimately validated by leadership. A spokesperson says “The performance of our hummus products speaks for itself.”
With Bob Jr. as its champion—and with Boar’s Head’s classic leveraging of deli power to push other brands off the shelf—the line has grown into the country’s second-largest hummus brand with around $75 million in annual retail sales. PepsiCo.-backed Sabra dominates the $1 billion (annual retail sales) category with more than $300 million annually and has been most impacted. Over the past decade, Boar’s Head has helped cut Sabra’s 60% market share in half. Boar’s Head even took shelf space from Sabra after the company couldn’t fill orders during a 2021 recall of 2,100 cases of hummus.
Says Chris Kirby, founder of fourth-largest hummus brand Ithaca: “They leverage their relationships to do things like mandate shelf space. That’s become more of an issue for us as we’ve grown into more conventional retail.”
Kirby adds that Boar’s Head hummus often underperforms in terms of sales, but “because of Boar’s Head’s relationships, they’re untouchable.” Now that’s in jeopardy as well. A Boar’s Head representative sniffs at that, and surely the brand will give any challengers a tough fight.
“They spent more than a century building their brand reputation and trust, and that’s valuable. That’s an intangible asset that allows them, if they leverage it properly, to transfer that premium into other items,” says Kirby. “But even though it took a century to build, that can break down very quickly.”