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The Hausbeck Pickle Co. in Michigan is nearly 100 years old and produces pickles and peppers for fast food restaurants, such as Subway and Burger King.
Most people have likely never heard of The Hausbeck Pickle Co. in Saginaw, MI, but there's a good chance they've had one of its pickles, banana peppers or jalapenos.
The company makes products for fast food restaurants, such as of Subway, Burger King, Sonic, Domino's Pizza and Papa John's, and also recently contracted with Yum Brands, which owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. So, if you've had a burger in the last few decades, it's likely you've had a Hausbeck pickle.
Founded in 1923 by Charles E. Hausbeck, today, the company does between $40 and $50 million a year in sales and has 120 employees. And it's still family run. Charles's grandson Tim Hausbeck is now president, while his other grandson Joe Hausbeck is vice president.
All those pickles and peppers are made in the company's 80,000-sq.-ft. plant-which features 44,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing space and 40,000 sq. ft. of warehouse space. And the factory produces an average 400,000 pounds of pickles or peppers a day, which comes to about 10 billion pickle slices, 25 million banana peppers and 13 million jalapenos annually.
When the company was originally founded, it wasn't focused on fast food, but rather the retail market, with jars of Hausbeck pickles lining the shelves of grocery stores.
Charles, who started the company at just 35 years old, died young at 44. So, his wife Rose took over the business, while also raising her six children. Her sons served in World War II and the Korean War, and then returned to help their mother, brothers and sisters in the pickle factory.
"My grandmother took it over, and literally, it was just a small, little, tiny operation for a lot of years," says Tim Hausbeck. "The company was always quite small. They had all lived through the depression. They were all very much debt averse."
Eventually, in the mid-1970s, Tim's grandmother turned ownership over to her children, splitting the company up between four sons. Tim's dad John was named president.
"Through the years, myself, my cousins, my brothers and sisters, we all...