Joseph Grendys

Net worth over time

Biography

• Joseph Grendys runs Koch Foods, a poultry processor that slaughters, ships and sells chicken under its own brands and through private label products.
• The $5 billion (estimated revenues) business makes buffalo wings and chicken strips for Walmart and nuggets for Burger King.
• Grendys joined Koch in the mid-1980s after graduating from Loyola University, lured by a 50% equity offer from original owner Fred Koch.
• At the time it was just a one-room shop with 13 employees, and its main business was taking bones out of chicken and cutting up the meat.
• Grendys bought out his former boss in 1992 and vertically integrated the company by gobbling up smaller feed mills and slaughterhouses.
• Grendys still lives in the modest Chicago split-level home where he grew up.
• Its Morton, Mississippi, plant was one of five poultry processors targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August 2019.
• In 2019, ICE arrested 234 Koch Foods workers, who the company said had passed the government's E-Verify program, for potentially working without legal documentation.