No cutups here Root’s Poultry still serious about business

By Michael Carter

RFD News correspondent

Root’s Poul­try Inc. has been cook­ing and serv­ing it’s deli­cious chicken to North­west Ohio for over 80 years.

Today the busi­ness best known for its shred­ded chicken has expanded its main prod­ucts to include white cubed chicken, chicken noo­dle soup, Bar-B-Q and oth­ers, plus offers 1 pound meat tubs for homes to 20 pounds of bulk for com­mer­cial needs. Besides offer­ing prod­ucts at its store in Fre­mont and a web­site, www.rootspoultry.com, the long-time fam­ily busi­ness also has diver­si­fied to level the cash flow of its oper­a­tion. This Ag busi­ness also has a Face­book page.

Wayne Root, founder of Roots, had a vend­ing route across the state deliv­er­ing chicken and come up with the idea of open­ing his own business.

He and wife, Grace, opened the first Root’s in 1930, near the inter­sec­tion of Ohio SR 53 and State street in Fre­mont in San­dusky County.

They ran their family-owned and oper­ated busi­ness from that loca­tion until 1940 when they moved to their present loca­tion at 3721 W. State St., still in Fremont.

They have been doing busi­ness and going strong at this loca­tion ever since.

In the begin­ning the Roots raised, slaugh­tered cooked and processed their own chick­ens to use in their products.

How­ever in 1968 when the Gov­ern­ment passed the Whole­some Meat Act things changed.

“My grand­fa­ther had to make a deci­sion,” said present owner Mark Root.

“He had to either put a lot more money into the busi­ness to meet gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions or pur­chase his chick­ens from some­one else,” he added.

“He was still pay­ing things off from the move and chose to pur­chase his chick­ens from some­one else.”

The Roots still pur­chase their chicken from out­side licensed farms all over the state. The most local sup­plier is Park Farms out of Can­ton, but they pur­chase chicken from many other farms as well.

In 1985 third gen­er­a­tion broth­ers Mark and Mike Root pur­chased the busi­ness from their grand­mother and have con­tin­ued the Roots business

That legacy in an agri­cul­ture related busi­ness, how­ever, was not ini­tially guaranteed.

“I went through the car­pen­try pro­gram at Terra (Com­mu­nity Col­lege),” Mark Root said.

“But when I grad­u­ated the econ­omy was poor and a lot of good car­pen­ters were out of work,” he continued.

“So I made a choice to enter into the fam­ily busi­ness, and have never regret­ted one minute of it.”

Things took on a new look in 2000. That is when Roots became USDA-approved, allow­ing the oper­a­tion to cross state lines and sell their product.

“We just wanted to expand our busi­ness out­side of Ohio,” Mark Root pointed out.

You can now find the Roots name in stores in Michi­gan, Indi­ana, Ken­tucky and West Virginia.

Mark Root said its very dif­fi­cult to fig­ure how many chick­ens they buy.

“We cook over 4,000 pounds of chicken each day just for our shred­ded chicken orders,” he commented.

That nets the busi­ness around 2,000 to 2,500 pounds of fin­ished shred­ded chicken for sale.

The Roots also have expanded the busi­ness in Fre­mont on State Street into more of a full ser­vice store in order to bet­ter serve their customers.

They now also offer canned veg­eta­bles, breads, cheeses and noo­dles to go with their large selec­tion of chicken products.

“We wanted to offer a whole meal, instead of just the main course,” Mark Root explained.

Roots may be best known for its shred­ded chicken sand­wiches, which are sold com­monly at ice cream stands.

The poultry-based busi­ness expanded its offer­ings to attempt to level its sales base.

“We didn’t want the huge ‘Ups and downs’ in sales as the sum­mers would come to and end and ice cream shops closed up,” Mark added.

Roots has ven­tured out into other smaller areas as of late.

“We now have some pri­vate labeled prod­ucts under the Daisy Field Brand,” Root added.

The Fre­mont busi­ness also has an agree­ment with J H Routh Pack­ing Co. in San­dusky, Erie County, help­ing process some of their pork as needed, which is sev­eral times a month.

Editor’s Note: Have a Ag busi­ness or farm fea­ture sug­ges­tion? E-mail your idea and a con­tact name and num­ber to rfdnews@bizwoh.rr.com.

Posted by Staff Reports on Sep 28 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.