For decades, Harry DeFeo carried Boar’s Head at his Harbor Deli stores on Long Island. “Boar’s Head is like gold,” he says. “It’s like Hellmann’s mayonnaise. If you were in the business and you weren’t carrying Boar’s Head, you weren’t carrying the best.”
That perception served Sarasota-based Boar’s Head Provisions well. Trade publication National Provisioner ranks it 21st on its top 100 list of largest meat and poultry processors with $3 billion in sales. It’s said to hold a tenth of the deli meat market. Business Rankings Annual rates Boar’s Head cheese sixth in market share.
The premium deli manufacturer achieved that stature while guarding its privacy to a degree unusual even for private companies. In an age when transparency is all the corporate buzz, Boar’s Head is a case study in business blackout curtains. Leaders don’t give interviews to the trade press, The New York Times or, in the case of this article, FLORIDA TREND.
Accounts of its history conflict but the timeline goes like this: Boar’s Head traces to Brooklyn in 1905 and 20-yearold, German-born Frank Brunckhorst delivering meat in a horse-drawn wagon. Corporate lore on the Boar’s Head site says he was dissatisfied with the ham quality he delivered and set out to make a better product. Other accounts say meat manufacturing began in earnest two years after his 1931 death when his son, Frank Jr., and his son-in-law, Bruno Bischoff, began producing hams under the Boar’s Head name and distributing them via the family-owned Frank Brunckhorst Co.
Under Frank Jr., Bruno and succeeding generations, Boar’s Head grew far beyond Brooklyn by acquisition and bare-knuckle business as deli meat and cheese went from neighborhood storefront to supermarket staple. The same wave took Oscar Mayer from a Chicago deli to national brand. Unlike Oscar Mayer, however, the Boar’s Head family focused not on pre-packaged cold cuts but on dominating supermarket deli counters just as grocers came to see the in-store deli as a mint. Deli sales reached $48.6 billion in the U.S. in 2024, doubling from 2014, according to Hamburg, Germany-based data firm Statista.
Members of the two lines descended from Frank the deliveryman — the Brunckhorsts and Bischoffs — still own the company and make the major decisions, putting the day-to-day into the hired hands of executives such as current president Carlos Giraldo. Secrecy rules. Just a small number of executives reportedly ever see the finances.
Another Boar’s Head family attribute: Decades-long fights over how many company shares each Brunckhorst and Bischoff heir gets to own and their worth. A lot of bacon is at stake. Start with National Provisioner’s estimated $3 billion in annual revenue. Then assume a food processing industry margin of 6% to 7%, and Boar’s Head produces $180 million to $210 million a year in profit. Kraft Heinz last year reportedly wanted to sell Oscar Mayer for $3 billion to $5 billion and the b-o-l-o-g-n-a maker’s sales aren’t as large as Boar’s Head. It, therefore, behooves individual family members to maximize their Boar’s Head share count, especially if, as has been attempted as recently as 2020, the company gets sold.
BOAR’S HEAD RULES
Like many a successful New Yorker, Boar’s Head in 2001 moved to Florida, establishing its corporate HQ in Sarasota. One account says the Florida relocation was to be near Publix. Other reports say family leaders had moved to Sarasota. “We haven’t had a lot of engagement with Boar’s Head,” says Joshua Ewen, vice president of the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County. He adds, “We’re very lucky to have their corporate presence here. We know they’re creating high-wage jobs, which is important to our community.” It also helps in marketing the area to be able to cite a corporate headquarters presence, he says.
The company won’t say how many it currently employs in Sarasota and keeps its low profile, though an employee occasionally gets publicity for community involvement. The company has supported the Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation.
Despite its secretive ways, the Boar’s Head business model has been laid bare in court cases. Family-owned Boar’s Head Provisions produces the goods and sells them to Frank Brunckhorst Co., its national distributor owned by the same people, according to court filings. That company, in turn, moves the merchandise to as many as 400 local distributors who get it into supermarkets and delis — the “accounts.” Boar’s Head rules cover everything from product freshness to who paints the Boar’s Head logo on the delivery trucks, according to a judge’s summation in 2019 of its business practices.
The accounts pay. According to a 2011 court case, one distributor paid $913,520 for 32 accounts in the Connecticut area that generated $60,000 per week in sales. He said he netted $728,000 a year working from 3 a.m. into the evening driving and delivering. Rules were enforced with spot checks. During one such check in 2014 at a Norwalk, Conn., Stop & Shop, a member of the Brunckhorst family quizzed a deli worker on the current “campaign” item. The worker didn’t know. The punishment for the distributor was forfeiting without compensation that particular store. In New York, the following year, a distributor was “thrown out” for not living within 50 miles of his route, a Brunckhorst Co. rule, according to court filings.
Boar’s Head is strict in its relationships with distributors and demands exclusivity from retailers, effectively forcing rival “premium” brands from stores.
Boar’s Head is strict in its other relationships. It demands exclusivity from retailers, effectively forcing rival “premium” brands from stores. The policy “arguably served as a key ingredient” in its success, Progressive Grocer once noted. In 2009, Louis Eni, CEO of Philadelphia-based rival premium brand Dietz & Watson, called for Boar’s Head to cease its exclusivity demand after Dietz & Watson was shut out of Harris Teeter stores in Charlotte. “We want to win on quality and taste, not by cutting off competitors,” Eni told Progressive Grocer. (Efforts to obtain comment from Dietz & Watson for this article weren’t successful.) “That disrespects consumers. Yet that’s exactly what Boar’s Head has been doing to grocery store chains across the country — essentially telling grocers, ‘If you want to sell our product, you can’t offer your customers any other premium choices.’ … After all, if they believe their products are superior, what’s to be afraid of?”
In 2009, Boar’s Head distributor trucks disrupted Dietz & Watson-hosted breast cancer charity fundraisers in Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach and Port Charlotte by occupying parking lots and blowing air horns. “I just cannot believe that Boar’s Head would stoop to the low level they did today,” Eni said at the time. A Boar’s Head spokesperson at the time indicated the distributors thought they were impacting taste-testing events, not charity work, and said the company was “very upset” and donated $100,000 to the charity.
One other ingredient in the Boar’s Head successful recipe: An open wallet for advertising, spending double and triple what competitors put out, and offering retailers signage, deli training and even operators.
COLD CUT CRISIS
One in six Americans come down with a food-borne illness each year, and 3,000 die. Listeria, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is far rarer as food-borne illnesses go than say, salmonella. Listeria sickens only approximately 1,600 a year. But it kills 260, a high percentage. Once a listeria infection takes hold, hospitalization is nearly guaranteed. A fifth of the ill die and nearly a fourth of pregnant women lose their baby. Listeria is the third leading cause of food-borne death in the U.S.
Ubiquitous in the environment, listeria is well-suited to ready-to-eat, refrigerated foods like deli meats, spreading easily from surfaces and slicing equipment and thriving in cool — as cool as 34 degrees — damp conditions. Once consumed, the bacteria migrate through the body, taking as much as 70 days to bring on sepsis, meningitis and other ills. Most people withstand it, but it’s particularly risky to pregnant women, newborns, people with compromised immune systems and those over 65. The deadliest U.S. outbreak came in 2011 when 33 died from listeria in cantaloupe. Globally, the deadliest outbreak, at least 216 dead, occurred in 2017 from a South African meat processor.
The Boar’s Head listeria outbreak began in May 2024, but it wasn’t until July 2024 that investigators traced it to the Jarratt, Va., Boar’s Head factory, and specifically to liverwurst after Maryland authorities tested an unopened pack. (Not everyone who got sick ate liverwurst. They ate other meats sliced at the local deli on equipment liverwurst had been on. Experts said it was fortuitous that liverwurst was the culprit. Because it’s a distinctive, less common purchase that people remembered, authorities knew where to look.)
Boar’s Head ultimately issued a recall of 7 million pounds of its various products. In all, 61 listeria cases in 19 states were confirmed with 60 requiring hospitalization and 10 deaths. The CDC says likely many more got exposed but overcame it without listeria being identified.
Boar’s Head is strict in its relationships with distributors and demands exclusivity from retailers, effectively forcing rival “premium” brands from stores.
The median age of people sickened was 78. Victims included Gunter Morgenstein of Virginia, a Holocaust survivor. The one Florida fatality, Otis Adams Jr., died after eating Boar’s Head Tavern Ham and cheese bought at Publix in Brooksville. “Unfortunately, he suffered severe pain as the infection spread to his blood, brain and nervous system before ultimately killing him,” his Morgan & Morgan attorneys said in a statement. A pregnant Michigan woman sued after contracting listeria from sliced turkey and ham she got at a Publix in Hollywood while on vacation.
Retailers shut down counters to dispose of product and clean. DeFeo, the Long Island deli owner, like many of his peers, spent time answering customer calls. He remembers customers specifying no Boar’s Head products in their catering orders. A New York retail chain told a media outlet there that sales of Boar’s Head products at its stores fell by half.
The industry took a hit. “Is it safe to eat a Publix sub?” a South Florida Sun Sentinel headline asked. Market research firm Circana says that even before the outbreak and recall, the number of deli meat consumers and the dollar value of their purchases were trending downward. In the weeks after the outbreak, the number of U.S. deli meat consumers (from mid-August to early October) fell by 2.14 million buyers to 69.7 million. Deli meat sales in dollars over the same period fell to $337.4 million, down by $77.2 million. The trade press reported that Boar’s Head contributed to sluggish demand for turkey in 2024 amid consumer trust issues.
“We understand the gravity of this situation and the profound impact it has had on affected families,” a Boar’s Head statement in September 2024 said. No Boar’s Head c-suite or family member made appearances or public statements.
SANITATION FAILURES
Federal inspection reports made it clear the Boar’s Head outbreak wasn’t a fluke occurrence at a model factory. Federal rules set out the three ways ready-to-eat food makers like Boar’s Head should protect the public from listeria growing on factory-cooked products. Two methods involve treating product after cooking, such as with pasteurization or anti-microbial agents or both to keep listeria from growing. The third method — the “weakest,” members of Congress said — was a sanitation program. Boar’s Head said that like more than half the deli meat industry, it used that approach. “A notable contributing factor was the facility’s inadequate sanitation practices,” the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service determined.
Inspectors through the years had cited scores of instances of noncompliance at Jarratt. In 2022, inspectors warned the factory was an “imminent threat” to public health. Inspectors over time had found meat and fat residue on equipment, giving listeria a place to survive and grow, condensation dripping on products and a fan blowing condensation onto product. There were cracks, holes and broken flooring where moisture could collect along with rust and peeling caulk. The inspection service, in an after-action report in January, noted that though each time inspectors forced the problem to be addressed, “repeated instances of insanitary conditions can present opportunities for growth or sustained presence” of listeria.
Inspection reports over the years noted insects, “slime,” equipment “covered in meat scraps” and puddles of “blood, debris and trash” at a Boar’s Head factory in Virginia.
Inspection reports from other Boar’s Head factories — it has none in Florida but factories in Virginia, Indiana, Michigan and Arkansas — documented similar failings over time. Released in January under Freedom of Information Act requests from media, the reports showed that inspectors found through the years meat residue left on equipment, mold, flaking paint, a doorway covered in dried meat juices, an abundance of insects and a puddle of blood and debris at Boar’s Head plants. “General filth,” one inspector wrote of one. “Horrific,” commented the Consumer Federation of America.
Members of Congress wrote the company in 2024 that the conditions “show a complete disregard for food safety and for the public health of the American people.” Two Democratic members in September called on the USDA and Justice Department to look into criminal charges.
For DeFeo, the Long Island deli owner, the inspection reports were a revelation. “We can all make mistakes,” he says, but the reports showed a company that was “not trying (its) best. I didn’t want to carry Boar’s Head anymore. You claim to be God, you better be God.” He dropped Boar’s Head in favor of a local premium meat supplier.
St. Louis-based Schnucks Markets, a 114-store chain in four states, one of which’s customers died from the Boar’s Head listeria, switched to Dietz & Watson. “We listen to feedback from our customers and many shared concerns about Boar’s Head” and the recall, says spokesman Paul Simon. Dietz & Watson is family owned and founded in 1939 — “just like Schnucks,” he says. “We know they have a strong food safety record and premium deli product our customers appreciate.” He declined to provide numbers on lost sales from the Boar’s Head incident.
“In 2024 and ’25, this kind of thing shouldn’t happen,” says Seattle attorney Bill Marler of Marler Clark, who specializes in food-borne illness cases and represents families of Boar’s Head fatalities. “The company — and frankly the government — should have been on top of it. Unfortunately, 60-plus people paid the price, and some got so sick they died. One of the untold stories is what the hell were the inspectors doing?” He adds, “That doesn’t absolve Boar’s Head of their responsibility.”
The federal inaction contrasts with how quickly the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services moved in 2019 after listeria was found at two Broward County retailers, the Penn Dutch Meat and Seafood stores in Hollywood and Margate. There were no reports of illness but inspectors issued stop orders, oversaw the destruction of product and the stores were cleaned. A thorough, subsequent state inspection found listeria again. The Salsburg family, which owned the chain, shuttered the stores and Penn Dutch went out of business. A member of the family complained to the South Florida Sun Sentinel of a “witch hunt.”
Federal inspection reports made it clear the outbreak wasn’t a fluke occurence at a model factory. “The company — and frankly the government — should have been on top of it. Unfortunately, 60-plus people paid the price, and some got so sick they died.” – Attorney Bill Marler
The federal government came to the conclusion from the Boar’s Head outbreak that gaps existed in its safety standards even though inspectors are a daily presence at meat processing plants and product from the Boar’s Head factory in Jarratt already was being sampled at the highest frequency allowed — once per month, according to the January inspection service report. It said that given changing food consumption patterns and the consolidation of food production and supply, it’s time to reconsider the regulatory approach for the 2,600 ready-to-eat factories it oversees. It promised science-based recommendations in 2026 on listeria-control measures. One area of study, it said, would be ways to better identify high-risk factories and whether a pattern of repeated noncompliance signaled a “broader systemic failure” that warranted higher scrutiny. Just since the Boar’s Head outbreak, there have been six listeria outbreaks from other food companies and 20 deaths in the U.S.
THE FALLOUT
Boar’s Head said it would no longer make liverwurst. It closed the Virginia factory indefinitely in September 2024, eliminating 500 to 600 positions. The workers’ union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, called the company’s effort to keep the factory open “extraordinary” and said severance packages were “well above and beyond what is required under the law.”
Boar’s Head promised an “unwavering” commitment to “reach new food safety heights.” The company formed a “Boar’s Head Food Safety Advisory Council” of independent food-safety pros, chaired by Frank Yiannas, a former Food and Drug Administration deputy commissioner for food policy and response. It announced it would move from the sanitation-only regimen to sanitation plus pasteurization and sometimes ingredients that inhibit pathogens. It also instituted an annual “Food Safety Promise Day” to pause production to train employees. The company in March hired Natalie Dyenson, chief regulatory and food safety officer for the International Fresh Produce Association, to oversee food safety and “ensure the integrity of Boar’s Head products.” Boar’s Head declined to make her available for an interview.
As of July, it had settled nearly all the fatality cases on undisclosed terms. Lawyers for victim families declined to make their clients available for interviews. “Boar’s Head is doing everything right in terms of dealing with the victims,” says Houston attorney and food-borne illness specialist Ron Simon, who represented the families of several killed. Boar’s Head also paid $3.1 million to settle a class action suit from people who bought the products subject to the recall.
Out-of-court civil settlements can be just part of an outbreak’s financial outcome. Blue Bell ice cream had to pay $19.35 million in the criminal case over its 2015 listeria outbreak that killed three. ConAgra paid $11 million in penalties in a 2015 salmonella contamination criminal case involving its Peter Pan peanut butter and at least $36 million in civil settlements.
Only Boar’s Head knows how much in sales and profit it lost in the listeria debacle. But DeFeo and Schnucks aside, most retailers stuck with Boar’s Head, including Lakeland-based Publix. Efforts to obtain comment from Publix weren’t successful. For the quarter the outbreak occurred, listeria didn’t merit a mention as material to Publix’s performance in its quarterly report to shareholders.
Deli products remain big business. Consumer interest in eating more protein augers well for a Boar’s Head rebound but other trends, like the growing competition from prepared meals and the ready-to-cook market, don’t. Statista, the data firm, reports meat and cheese make up less than half the deli sales share at supermarkets. Prepared foods and meals now make up the majority. And there’s the health issue. Consumer Reports puts deli meat at the top of its 10 riskiest foods. Even when deli meat is free of pathogens, consumers increasingly recognize that processed food just isn’t good for them. “Owing to the potential health risks associated with deli meat, its consumption has reduced drastically,” reports analytics firm Allied Market Research.
Boar’s Head’s mistakes gave consumers opportunity to try something else. DeFeo, the Long Island deli owner, keeps in front of his customers to note the reception of the premium private label he introduced. “99.9% like it way better,” he says.
While some delis and supermarkets have stopped carrying Boar’s Head products, Publix has stuck by the brand.
Outbreak Casualty
Otis Adams Jr. “suffered severe pain as the infection spread to his blood, brain and nervous system before ultimately killing him,” said his lawyers at Morgan & Morgan in filing a suit in Sarasota last year against Boar’s Head and Publix, from which his wife purchased the listeria-contaminated tavern ham that allegedly killed him. For her 79-year-old husband, the symptoms began with diarrhea, fatigue and fever. He didn’t know what was wrong until he went to a hospital May 2, 2024, and was diagnosed with listeriosis, which led to meningitis and sepsis and his death May 5. Adams was an Air Force veteran who worked for 30 years for ExxonMobil Chemical. He led the Exxon retiree club and was active in a Catholic fraternal organization and nonprofit. “Mr. Adams, a man of faith and a deeply caring and supportive husband, was taken away from his wife and family too early,” said Morgan & Morgan attorneys John Morgan, Mike Morgan and Harris Yegelwel. “We allege that his painful, untimely death was completely preventable. Mrs. Adams is fighting to hold Boar’s Head accountable for the allegedly unsafe conditions at the Jarratt, Va., facility that allegedly led to her husband’s death, and to make sure no one else has to go through the pain and loss she has experienced.”