The Vernon plant where Farmer John hot dogs were once made will soon be cranking out millions of pounds of meat sticks for a fast-growing Southern California snack food company.
It will be the second manufacturing facility for Archer, which needs to expand beyond its plant in San Bernardino, Chief Executive Eugene Kang said.
Part of the Vernon plant that Farmer John left behind in 2023 is being completely refurbished by Archer and will employ more than 200 people when it opens in September. The Vernon plant addition will cost about $30 million.
Archer is taking over what was Farmer John’s processing plant, Kang said, where Farmer John cooked ham, sausage and hot dogs.
Farmer John supplied the meat for famous Dodger Dogs at Dodger Stadium for decades, but couldn’t reach a new contract agreement with the Dodgers, and it stopped being the stadium’s main hot dog provider in 2021.
The Vernon facility.
(Pascal Shirley for Archer)
“I don’t know exactly what happened between them and the Dodgers,” Kang said, but “we’re now the official meat snack of the Dodgers.”
The Dodgers recently signed a multiyear contract with Archer, MLB announced last month. Archer’s jerky and meat sticks are sold at stadium concession stands, a satisfying development for Southern California native Kang.
“As a kid growing up, the Dodger Dog was ingrained in my childhood and my life,” he said.
He also developed a taste for jerky while stocking shelves at his family’s convenience stores scattered across Southern California’s deserts. As a young man on a road trip with his aunt to the Grand Canyon, he fell in love with jerky he sampled from a roadside stand.
Archer CEO and founder Eugene Kang with products.
(Archer)
Kang tracked down the small jerky manufacturer near San Bernardino and set out to meet the producer, an 80-year-old man named Celestino “Charlie” Mirarchi who was near retirement. Kang and his aunt bought Mirarchi’s business in 2011 and used Mirarchi‘s recipe to build his own jerky empire.
Archer achieved a breakthrough in 2014 through a partnership with Huy Fong Sriracha to create a sriracha-flavored jerky.
The new flavor caught the attention of some big retailers including Kroger and Sprouts, and helped Archer expand its reach, Kang said. Among the 30,000 stores selling Archer products today are Costco, Whole Foods Market, Walmart, Target, Albertsons and 7-Eleven.
Kang said the company, which employs nearly 200, had a 90% increase in sales last year, mostly fueled by meat sticks, and will take in nearly $500 million in revenue in the next 18 months.
The new Vernon plant will focus on beef and turkey meat sticks, eventually operating three shifts a day producing 36 million pounds of meat sticks per year, Kang said.
Most of Archer’s grass-fed beef supply comes from Australia and New Zealand, the company said. Archer competes in the premium clean-ingredient, protein-rich and convenient snacks food category.
