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Buchy Foods... Five
Generations of Service
Editor's Note: Kate Kerg,
Vice President of Buchy Food Service, gave the following presentation
to Greenville Kiwanis Wednesday. She was kind enough to share the text
of her talk with us. It was a fascinating look at the history of one of
Darke County's oldest contining businesses... and of Greenville.
Thanks, Kate, for your trip back to 1869...
Greenville Kiwanis
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Greenville, Ohio
Jim Ward invited me to speak on behalf of Buchy Food Service.
When he called, I told him I didn’t think a speech on Buchy Food
Service would be that interesting, and especially after a nice meal, I
might have a few people asleep before I finish my introduction.
But he suggested that some people may not know in any detail what we do
at Buchy’s.
Buchy’s is one of the oldest companies in Darke County and I’ll share
some of our history with you. In 1869, my great-great
grandfather, George Buchy immigrated to the United States from Alsace
Loraine, which was a German country. He was a butcher by trade
and hit the dock in New York with the clothes on his back, a knife,
steel to sharpen it with and 75 cents in American money. He worked his
way west to Pittsburgh, PA, and then worked along the Ohio River to
Cincinnati and worked in a pork slaughtering company. Cincinnati
was the pork capital of the country at the time so he was able to find
work. But in 1871 he came to Greenville to work for his relative
Albert Klee. They operated a slaughterhouse for livestock used in
the retail market. In 1878, he became a US citizen and was
married in 1879 to Anna Grossman. Around that time, he set out on his
own and built a 14x20’ slaughterhouse. In 1881, my great
grandfather, Charles Buchy was born, and by 1890, his father George had
expanded the business and built a brick building (shown in the
photo). So, George operated this business until 1897 when
he died of Bright’s disease. A man named Albert Bailey bought the
business and operated it until Charles Buchy bought him out in 1901 at
the age of 19. He renamed the business from the George Buchy
Slaughterhouse to the Chas. G. Buchy Packing Co.
The business up until then had strictly been a Greenville business, but
Charlie had visions for more. He started a horse and buggy peddle
route which he would load a wagon and leave the plant at 4:00 a.m. each
day and drive the team to Gettysburg, Bradford, Versailles, and Ansonia
and return to Greenville around 8:00 p.m. in the evening.
Back then there was no such thing as a refrigerated truck or a
compressor for refrigeration for that matter. The company
slaughtered cattle, hogs, sheep and calves in the winter and sold
mostly sausage, lunch meats and cured meats off the peddle wagon in the
summer. Bologna and wieners were sold the day they were made and
for special events such as the Darke County Fair, Charlie would set up
a makeshift smokehouse and would cook sausage on the grounds.
During the winter, Charlie would cut ice from an old pond behind Vine
Street and store it in big bunkers on top of the plant for use in the
summertime. Around 1918 he bought his first gas compressor to
make refrigeration, thus a new era began. The slaughtering and
processing of fresh meat could now be done on a year round basis.
It wasn’t until 1933 that the refrigerated truck really came on the
scene, but when it arrived, the company began to expand the sales
territory. 1941 saw the company add a separate sausage making
room, 1959 an extension was added, and in 1960 a beef floor was
added. Charlie Buchy died in April of 1963 at the age of
82. He was walking down the front loading dock with his meat coat
on and just dropped dead.
My grandfather, George, was named president. He continued to expand the
business with the addition of a freezer and the company’s first
computer system. Jim Buchy, my father, joined the company
full-time in 1967, and was named president in 1978. In 1974, we
expanded the business to the institutional and restaurant business.
During the late 60s and 70s, the meat manufacturing business became
much more specialized. It became apparent to my grandfather and
father that they could buy the fresh pork and beef cuts that they
needed to make their processed products cheaper than they could by
purchasing live hogs and then slaughtering them. So the company
stopped slaughtering hogs in 1968 and beef in 1973. Just like
Charlie, they evolved with the marketplace, capitalized on technology,
and continued to find ways to make the company more profitable.
Toward the end of the 1970’s, the company began to carry items that
complemented their manufactured items. Along with pepperoni, sausage
toppings, and other items manufactured at the Buchy plant, they could
also sell cheese, pizza sauce and other items to restaurants and
foodservice operations. By the mid-eighties, our company was
working with a just in time supplier out of Detroit. We sold them
our manufactured items, and they in turn sold us their inventoried
items. It turned out to be mutually beneficial, and it taught us
a lot about how to be a distributor. By the late 80s, with
government regulation of manufacturers so heavy, our distribution
business was more profitable than the manufacturing business. We
evolved completely into being a distributor of foodservice items, aimed
primarily at wholesale customers, and discontinued our meat processing
altogether in 1991. I was the last Buchy to make bologna and
sausage at our plant in 1990.
Our family recipes are still made to our specification and sold
throughout this area. While we were always known for our prize
brand meats, we are now known for a whole host of items: chicken salad,
cheese, pizza crust, and etcetera. Over the last 20 years, we
have expanded all lines and are considered a broadline food
distributor. We service customers like the BRC and Wayne
Hospital, grocery stores like Eikenberry’s, independent restaurants
like the Maid Rite and Fairlawn, and even country clubs and what are
considered “white table cloth” restaurants such as the Bistro. We
also do a decent amount of business with pizza and Italian-related
restaurants, and two multi-unit accounts, one called City Barbeque and
the other called Graeter’s Ice Cream.
Today, we are now Buchy Food Service and have 9 refrigerated trucks on
the road each day, and we service over 600 customers in a 100-plus mile
radius in Ohio and Indiana. We still sell sausage at the Darke
County fairgrounds, along with thousands of other items. We
warehouse 2300 items and handle another 8,000 items.
And, while our sales representatives work with wholesale customers, our
doors are open to anyone who wants to buy items in bulk. We
frequently have customers come in to buy for example 10# cases of
hamburger patties and hot dogs, 5# tubs of potato salad and cole slaw,
along with bulk chicken, fish and cheese items.
My brother, John and I, and our spouses, Kevin and Dara, are the fifth
generation owner-managers of the company. Our industry is
particularly competitive, and we are David in a Goliath field since
most of our competitors are nationwide, publicly traded
companies.
We moved into a new facility in 2006 at the Greenville Industrial Park
and are close to capacity already. We have been blessed with good
sales in a tough economy as we have the ability to be flexible.
From our company’s beginnings, we have focused on quality and
service. Those two things have remained our hallmarks. But
the one thing that has always been with our company is a willingness to
change. I sometimes look at my father and grandfather and think
they are and were stubborn and too set in their ways. It turns
out that the qualities of hard work, commitment to quality, and
servitude are the things that they were stubborn about. Coupled with
their ability to adapt to the marketplace and respond to their
customers’ needs, we just celebrated our 133rd anniversary. With
35 employees and sales tripling in the last 10 years, we are optimistic
about the future
It’s been a pleasure to be here today. Thank you for hosting me
and not falling asleep. I would be happy to entertain any
questions you may have.
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