Nalley’s, once a major local food factory with over 800 employees, eventually stopped producing chips, peanut butter, and pickles. The plant’s owners changed, orders dropped, and cheaper substitutes took their place on supermarket shelves and in cafeterias.
Where does Nalley’s chili come from?
According to the company’s website, despite Marcus Nalley’s death in 1962, the company continued to flourish, with new operations opening in Tigard, Oregon, and Billings, Montana. In the Northwestern household, Nalley’s was becoming even more of a staple. In fact, at its peak, the corporation had more than ten potato chip manufacturing plants across the United States. Nalley now sells over 1,300 different goods, ranging from pickles to canned meals to salad dressing and peanut butter. The Nalley brand continues to be associated with excellent, high-quality culinary goods, with canned chili being its most popular product.
Of course, the website fails to mention that Nalley’s is no longer in business. That is, however, what occurs when your jar of pickles, bag of chips, or can of chili loses its autonomy.
Nobody can really be blamed. Marcus Nalley and the corporation did not aim to betray the trust placed in him and his family. Nalley’s was once a neighborhood food institution, and then? It wasn’t then. It was no longer.
Nalley’s was one of those companies that became infected with the cancer of ambition, a cancer that required money transfusions from banks and investors, long before it closed the plant in South Tacoma, long before the pickles started coming from India, and long before its slow, sad decline as a regional brand. The company wasn’t infected by failure; rather, it was infected by success. The Nalley’s that exists now, hidden away in a corner of a massive holding corporation, did not lose its way because it was attempting to stay afloat in difficult times. It sold its soul instead because it was drawn to the blinding light of “more.”
In actuality, businesses expand and are frequently sold to larger firms. The new corporate owners relocate the operations to an area where labor is lower and ingredients are even cheaper. They promise to create synergies of cost-effective sourcing, efficient production, and improved distribution from their polished mahogany boardrooms, then take advantage of their bright new bottom line by selling the company to a private equity group.
In the instance of Nalley’s, ownership was transferred from Marcus and his family to Agrilink, which was later acquired by Dean Foods. When Dean was taken out by Pinnacle Foods in New Jersey, the Tacoma operation was shut down. The company’s goal was to protect America’s great food brands, but they ended up being buried.
Is this a too harsh assessment? Consider some of the brands that fall under the Pinnacle Foods umbrella: Duncan Hines, Log Cabin, Birds Eye, Vlasic, Mrs. Butterworh and Aunt Jemima, Hungryman, Van de Kamp, Armour, and Tim’s Cascade Chips are among the brands available. Some are still available in supermarkets, but they’re hardly market leaders.
In America’s supermarkets, grocery conflicts are fought in the trenches: inch-by-inch battles for shelf placement. There are hundreds of brands, but just ten main players: Kraft, Procter & Gamble, and Nestle. Kellogg, General Mills, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Mars By the way, Pinnacle Foods isn’t on the short list. It’s no surprise, then, that Pinnacle’s corporate parent, private equity firm Blackstone Group, sold the company earlier this month. Blackstone, which is worth over $100 billion, is heavily involved in technology and life sciences; food isn’t a good fit.
The name Nalley is still remembered, but it is fading. The injury is permanent. What we must remember is that other brands of beer, coffee, airlines, and bookstores will suffer the same fate. Do you honestly believe there will still be 21,000 Starbucks locations in 2100?
Consider how many well-known brands have vanished if you think Nalley’s is an outlier. Bakeries have been particularly badly hit, as they are typically family businesses that demand a level of dedication that rarely survives a second generation: Brenner Brothers, Gai’s, Langendorf. Tim’s Cascade Snacks, the spiritual successor of Nalley’s, has been a part of Pinnacle Foods for many years.
It’s still unclear whether the new owners of Pinnacle will even try to keep Nalley’s alive.
Where do Nalley pickles come from?
(AP) TACOMA, Wash. Nalley’s Fine Foods, a 92-year-old Tacoma institution, is closing its Tacoma plant and relocating to an Iowa factory, according to the company’s owner. The company, located in the “Nalley Valley” industrial district of south Tacoma, used to make a range of items, including pickles and potato chips, but today produces Nalley’s Chili and Brooks Beans.
Which beans are used in Nalley chili?
Nalley’s Original Vegetarian Chili mixes a soy-based protein substitute with plump, pink beans for a tasty, low-fat chili that doesn’t skimp on flavor.
Is Nalley Chili free of gluten?
This product should be egg free, msg free, artificial color free, artificial flavor free, nut free, artificial ingredient free, and gluten free.
What became of Nalleys?
One of Tacoma’s iconic companies is closing.
The local plant of Nalley Foods will close next year.
The Nalley’s brand of potato chips, pickles, and mayonnaise is well-known.
For decades, the chips were omnipresent throughout the Northwest, but the line was discontinued 15 years ago.
That represents what has occurred to the company.
Marcus Nalley, a Croatian immigrant, started it in Tacoma in 1918.
Nalley grew the business to the point where the industrial region surrounding its factory in south Tacoma is today known as Nalley Valley. It’s at the intersection of I-5 and Highway 16.
In the 1960s, Marcus Nalley passed away.
Since then, the company has been sold and resold to national companies multiple times, but it has always maintained a Tacoma presence.
It employed 1,000 people ten years ago and was one of Tacoma’s largest employers.
The remaining 160 employees who process chili and beans are now being relocated to Iowa.
If they desire, they can transfer there.
Pinnacle Foods of New Jersey, the parent firm, has one other nearby plant, in Algona, where it creates Tim’s Cascade Chips.
Who owns the Nalley Chili Company?
This Nalleys complex, which was built on a 10-acre site, produced, stored, and shipped canned meat specialty items to Nalleys clients across the United States. Meat balls, ravioli, spaghetti products, corned beef hash, and lasagna were among Nalley’s canned convenience foods in the 1970s. Chili and beef stew were the first goods to come off this plant.
The Nalleys facility included a concrete column structural system, a laminated wood beam roof system, and tilt-up panels with an exposed aggregate outer face on the exterior walls.
Today, Pinnacle Foods owns Nalleys, and Nalley’s chili is the best in the Northwest. Nalleys now sells over 1,300 different products, ranging from pickles to canned foods to salad dressing and peanut butter.
Is Strubs based in Canada?
Since 1929, Strub’s pickles have been a staple in Ontario. Strub’s assets were purchased by Whyte Foods, a Quebec food maker, when the firm went bankrupt in 2012. After that, production was shifted from Brantford to Quebec.
Whyte’s, on the other hand, continues to buy cucumbers from Canadian farmers and make pickles in the country.
