TURLOCK, Calif. — Strolling through the aisles of grocery stores across the west coast, it is almost impossible not to encounter one of the valley's most established brands: Foster Farms.
"Foster Farms is by far the largest company in the West and the Foster family has built it into a very successful enterprise," said Bill Mattos, the President of California's Poultry Federation. "Some of their products go throughout the nation."
When Mattos heard Tuesday that Connecticut's Atlas Holdings had finalized an agreement to purchase the Livingston-based company, he and other local economic experts weren't surprised.
"It wasn't a surprise that people were interested in the biggest, largest, most successful company in the West," Mattos said. "I'm sure it was a property that a lot of people wanted and it's probably doing, according to the records, $3 billion a year."
Some of that estimated $3 billion in annual profits has come from the work of thousands of employees in Stanislaus County where the company has a "Turkey Divison" in the city of Turlock.
Foster Farms' footprint in the valley has made it one of Stanislaus County's top 26 employers, according to the Employment Development Department.
Days after the private equity firm announced the acquisition of Foster Farms, a major west coast provider of fresh and frozen poultry products, experts are expressing general optimism over how the sale will impact the local economy, including Stanislaus State economics professor Dr. Gökçe Soydemir.
"There may be some restructuring going on. Usually, companies become more efficient," Dr. Soydemir said. "But because of that, I think jobs will be positively affected."
According to Soydemir, the sale will move Foster Farms from being a fully private company to being accountable to stockholders. The shift, Soydemir predicts, will force the company to be more efficient and waste fewer resources.
"Atlas reporting to stockholders is a very different issue and ballgame as opposed to family-owned," Dr. Soydemir said.
The acquisition will also expose Foster Farms to new opportunities, Dr. Soydemir says. With new resources and eyes on the company through a new leadership team, Dr. Soydemir expects that Foster Farms could begin to produce more and become a more dominant brand nationwide.
"Atlas has several manufacturing activities going on with distribution," Dr. Soydemir said. "By acquiring Foster Farms, it will be easier to incorporate those and realize the lower costs and being able to decrease costs."
While the likelihood of expansion looms on the horizon for Foster Farms, Mattos hopes that what brought the family company to success will continue to carry it forward.
"Foster Farms and our California companies have always listened to consumers. I think that's the important aspect," Mattos said. "With the team I see coming into Foster Farms now, that's not going to change. It's dynamic, it's powerful and they're very knowledgeable about the industry."
Both Mattos and Dr. Soydemir expressed optimism about the general future of the company and expect to see Foster Farms products on more store shelves in the future as a result of the sale.
On a wider scale, Dr. Soydemir says that the acquisition puts the valley in a prime place for investment and market dominance.
"Becoming more competitive means they won't be price takers in the same capacity as before, now they're going to have a price-setting behavior," Dr. Soydemir said. "Right before we had Save Mart being acquired, and now we have this, so it's bringing a lot of visibility."
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