Owen “Ross” Taylor, 88, died Jan. 30, 2019.
Taylor was active in the poultry industry, starting with Rudd Poultry in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1963, he established Beehive Poultry, which slaughtered 25,000 chickens per day. Beehive Poultry produced whole chickens and tray-packed chicken parts for grocery stores and restaurants, boneless chicken breast stuffed with seasoned rice, cooked chicken and turkey rolls, chicken cooked in natural juices and chicken soup base for hospitals and school lunch programs. Beehive Poultry was also a distributor of turkeys and boxed beef.
Taylor was one of the first suppliers to the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants and designed his own circular saw with guides to cut up chickens quickly and accurately with a minimum of bone dust.
The KFC orders produced a lot of chicken necks and backs for which Ross developed a meat bone separator, manufactured by Beehive Machinery, which was founded in 1966 in Sandy, Utah. The Beehive line of equipment soon found applications not only in the poultry industry but was also used to process red meat, fish and fruit and vegetables. Beehive machines were sold in more than 40 countries around the world.
As a director and the sales manager of Beehive Machinery, Taylor traveled the United States and the world and specialized in selling machinery in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
After retiring from Beehive Machinery, Taylor continued to successfully found several more companies.
Ross was a past member of many meat, poultry, and food and restaurant organizations.
