Koch Foods Inc.

Koch Foods Inc., based in Park Ridge, Illinois, was founded in 1985 as a one-room chicken deboning and cutting operation with 13 employees. Since then, it’s grown to be one of the largest vertically integrated poultry processing companies in the country with 14,000 employees and operations in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee.
Koch Foods produced 62.1 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis in 2023, the same as reported in 2022. Its 2023 sales were $5.1 billion, a decrease from $5.3 billion in 2022. Koch Foods sales break out is 40% foodservice, 20% retail, 15% institutional, 10% industrial and 15% export. Koch’s product mix is 75% frozen and 25% fresh. The company brand is Koch Foods and it also supplies private labels.
According to the survey response, Koch Foods opened a new 550,000-square-foot, five-line further processing plant in Fairfield, Ohio, in 2023. In November 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an antitrust lawsuit against Koch Foods. The company is accused of unfairly penalizing contract growers if they opt to enter a contract with a competing poultry processor.