This family business went from bankrupt to $1.6B/year in sales
Jack Link's family business recovered from a 1985 bankruptcy by pivoting to beef jerky production, leveraging existing meat processing infrastructure and their great-grandfather's sausage recipe. Starting with no established category or machinery, they innovated their own equipment and built Jack Link's into a $1.6B/year sales company.
Summary
The Link family's business history spans generations, beginning with Jack Link's great-grandfather, a German sausage maker who settled in Minong, Wisconsin in the 19th century. The family operated multiple businesses including a car dealership, general store, and slaughterhouse. However, in 1985, when Jack Link was 40 years old, the slaughterhouse filed for bankruptcy, forcing the family to pivot. Rather than continuing with their existing operations, they experimented with various food products including potato chips and rice crispy bars before settling on beef jerky. The turning point came when Jack and his son Troy, then 15 years old, took a hunting trip and decided to pursue the jerky business seriously. They recovered their great-grandfather's original sausage recipe and began producing jerky in their existing smokehouse. The initial product quality was exceptional, leading them to recognize commercial potential. At the time, no established jerky category existed in the food industry, and there was no specialized machinery available for production. The Links solved this by designing and building their own manufacturing equipment. Their existing infrastructure proved invaluable—they already had smokehouses, slicing and stuffing equipment, and access to quality meat from their previous sausage business. By continually innovating with new flavors, shapes, sizes, and product formats, they successfully built Jack Link's into a major brand generating $1.6B in annual sales.
About this episode
The first time Jack Link cured a batch of beef jerky, he was trying to save his business. It was 1985 and Link was a 40-year-old father of two teens living in Minong, Wisconsin. The slaughterhouse he’d bought from family members in 1978 had just filed for bankruptcy protection. Its failure left him searching for a way to provide for his wife and children, and prove that he could turn a small family-run business into something bigger. After a hunting trip, Troy Link says he brought home a few packs of convenience store jerky, prompting his father to examine the price tag. Based on the elder Link’s experience raising cattle and selling meat at his family’s general store over the years, he wondered whether his family business could make and sell its own version for less. Today, meat snacks — including beef sticks and steak strips — form the core of Link Snacks’ multibillion-dollar global portfolio. See how they built their business into what it is today in related video.
Key Insights
- When Jack Link's entered the jerky market, there was no established category and no existing machinery for production, so they had to design and build their own manufacturing equipment to create the category.
- The family leveraged their existing meat processing infrastructure from their sausage business—including smokehouses, slicing and stuffing equipment, and meat supply—to pivot into the jerky business after bankruptcy.
- The turning point came when Jack and 15-year-old Troy went on a hunting trip and used their great-grandfather's original sausage recipe to make jerky in the smokehouse, discovering the product had strong commercial potential.
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] The Link family story begins in the tiny village of Minong, Wisconsin, where Jack Link's great-grandfather, a German sausage maker, settled in the 19th century. >> You know, it was all big pine trees, and people [music] came here and homesteaded. And then I came along, and then Troy came along. >> The Links owned several businesses, including a car dealership, a general store, and a slaughterhouse, which went bankrupt in 1985. >> He was 40 years old when he filed bankruptcy. We had a big manufacturing side as a family. We needed to do [0:30] something that could make money. And we tried more things than meat snacks, too. We tried frying potato chips, we tried making rice…
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