Meat+Poultry - October 2019 - 18

COVER STORY

"I'm a very practical
person - my vision
is simple. I would
like to double our
business."
- SHELLY STAYER

Shelly Stayer took over
the role of chairwoman in
February, succeeding her
husband Ralph C. Stayer.

Johnsonville products before and during
Packers games to patrons with or without
tickets to Lambeau.
In the late 70s, while growth was steady
for the company during Ralph's early years as
president, Johnsonville still hadn't achieved
the national recognition and distribution
Ralph was striving for. By 1981, things would
change. Ralph hired an advertising company
to develop a national campaign. Focusing
on the company's brats - one of its top
selling products - the ad agency developed
a campaign that would help the Johnsonville
name become synonymous with brats
forever more.
Enter Charlie Murphy - the dad caught
secretly grilling Johnsonville brats who is
outed by his neighbor who yells, "Charlie
Murphy's making Johnsonville brats...
Johnsonville brats." Fictitious Charlie Murphy
became the unofficial Johnsonville spokesman
from that point on as Johnsonville brats
started to be recognized and soon sold around
the country.
Hand in hand with the Charlie Murphy
campaign came a boost in recognition from an
on-air Johnsonville brat "plug" by sportscaster
Bob Costas during a 1982 World Series
broadcast. Costas loved the Johnsonville
brats he was served while covering the World

MEAT+ POULTRY | 10.19 | www.meatpoultry.com

Series Brewers/Cardinals game so much that
he mentioned the brand on-air. "Our business
probably doubled immediately after that
happened," Stayer says.
By the end of the 80s, Johnsonville brats,
and other Johnsonville products were sold in
47 states.
"We've always had a wide variety
of products - Johnsonville breakfast,
Johnsonville dinner, Johnsonville snacking
- but no matter how hard we have tried
in the last 75 years, the bratwurst is what
we're known for," Stayer says. "We use the
Johnsonville brat notoriety as often as we
can - it gets us in the door. As they say in
baseball, 'any way on.' We get in the door with
the Johnsonville brat reputation, and then we
show them we have so much more to offer."
Including regional offerings such as
andouille and chorizo, Johnsonville now offers
upward of 100 different sausage SKUs to its
retail and foodservice customers.
The full line of Johnsonville products will
soon all be available under one roof - at the
new Johnsonville Marketplace across from
company headquarters in Sheboygan Falls. Set
to open in May 2020 as a part of the company's
75th anniversary celebration, the store will
sell Johnsonville products to employees
and passersby.

BIGGER AND BETTER
Company expansion from one year to the next
led to the need for additional production facilities at Johnsonville. The company's current
global headquarters opened in Sheboygan Falls,
Wisconsin, in 2005. Three of the company's production facilities are located at the headquarters. Additional production plants are located in
Kansas, Illinois and Watertown, Wisconsin.
In 2015, Ralph stepped down from his role
as president of the company after 37 years.
Nick Meriggioli, former president of Oscar
Mayer, took over. At that time, the company's
employment was up to 1,300 people.
"Our new CEO, Nick Meriggioli, wanted to
hire the best talent in the country after he took
over, and I wanted to make it really attractive
for people to move here to Sheboygan Falls,
so we decided to renovate our headquarters,"
Stayer says.
In 2017, Johnsonville began construction
on a 49,000-sq.-ft. addition to its headquarters.

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Meat+Poultry - October 2019

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