The third generation usually destroys a family business, but Jim Perdue ended up growing his century-old poultry company tenfold by focusing on all-natural premium meats—beyond chicken—and not following the flock.
In a sheltered bit of the Chesapeake Bay in front of Jim Perdue’s home in Berlin, Maryland, the scion of America’s most famous chicken family raises clams. Each year he sells about a thousand to local crab shacks. The rest are eaten by the Perdue clan. The clam farm is the last remainder of his dream of striking out on his own and farming seafood, which inspired him, in 1974 at 25, to walk away from his family’s successful poultry business.
“You don’t know if you’re getting a pat on the back because you did a good job, or because your name is on the door,” says the 77-year-old Perdue, from a barn on the property. The structure is adorned with memorabilia from the company’s history, including the famous ads featuring his father, Frank, with his signature slogan: “It takes a tough man to sell a tender chicken.”
Frank was the legendary poultry magnate who grew his own father’s hatchery (founded in 1920) into a $1 billion (sales) business by the time he turned over the reins to Jim in 1991. Jim had come back to the family coup a few years earlier—and only after Frank threaten to sell the company unless he returned.
“My dad didn’t trust a lot of people,” Perdue says, “but he trusted me.”
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