Today we’d like to introduce you to Larry O’Connell.
Larry, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was born and raised over near Midway Airport on the Southwest Side of Chicago. I attended Loyola University Chicago on scholarship for swimming and water polo and majored in accounting. After college, I passed the CPA exam and also went back and got my MBA at night from Loyola.
I started out working at Toys ‘R’ Us in their Management Training Program, and after a few years, I moved to Bally, Sylvestri, and finally to Peer Foods in 1990 as their Treasurer and Controller. I worked my way up through the company to be President around 1999. I finally bought out the previous owner, R.O. Buehler who was 99 at the time, in 2002.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road whatsoever. Peer was traditionally an old line meat processor. Our biggest customer was Heavenly Ham, a chain of stores specializing in spiral sliced hams when I bought the company. Not long after buying, Heavenly Ham was purchased and their business slowly started going down.
In the meantime, one of our main calling cards at Peer was to be a good partner, and so we had started to gain smaller customers that have turned into our largest customers today. But during those periods, we had a lot of struggles. The economy took a downturn obviously during the recession, which was hard for us because credit tightened.
Then during all of that, our production facility down in Columbus, Indiana was hit by a flood. We took huge losses and prospects were bleak for several years. I had to get on the phone with creditors, to assure them we’d be ok, but I knew that we had a runway out of it all, and also the people that stuck with me during those hard times to get through it, and we eventually did.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Peer Foods Group story. Tell us more about the business.
Peer Foods Group produces, distributes and sells high-quality meat products. We create value-added protein products for our co-manufacturing partners, food service and retail customers.
When I tell people about Peer Foods, I always start out by talking about our hams, sausage and bacon. People like those things a lot, and we make those products extremely well. We often tell people we’re very bad at making bad things, but we’re great at making premium products. We trace our history back to 1867, when Christian Buehler, a German immigrant, founded a pork packing and butchering company in Peoria, IL. It was one of the first meat companies in the US to use refrigeration to sell fresh-cut meat year-round. In the 1890’s Christian Buehler’s sons founded Buehler Brothers Meat Markets in Chicago, IL, due to its proximity to the Union Stockyards in order to have the freshest cuts of meat.
In the 1920’s Buehler Brothers opened a meat packing facility in the Union Stockyards area to supply their markets, which had expanded throughout the Midwest. They used traditional natural hickory and hardwood cooking methods to produce high quality smoked and roasted meats. This facility was re-named Peer Foods in 1944 in order to distinguish it from the meat markets so that they could sell products wholesale. We became known for our hams, bacon, and other naturally smoked meats. Today we also do co-manufacturing and provide custom products for restaurant chains, and take great pride in being great partners to these customers.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1200 W. 35th St. Chicago, IL 60609
- Website: www.peerfoods.com
- Phone: 773-475-2375
- Email: mmcfarlane@peerfoods.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peerfoods/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeerFoodsGroup
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/mariah-foods-columbus
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