75 and counting

First there was Leon.

Then John and Janice.

Now Michael, Greg and Jill, Brad and Brittany, and Daniel.

For 75 years and counting, the Fisher family has been providing meat to Portland, Jay County and, especially now, far beyond.

Fishing Packing, now perhaps just a few years away from adding a fourth generation to the fold, celebrated its 75th anniversary in May.

“It’s a testament to the hard work that we’ve put in as a family but also how receptive the community has been to what we’ve tried to do,” said Greg, 42, who runs the company’s Redkey production facility along with his brother Daniel, 35. Greg’s wife Jill works in the office at the same site. “It’s in our blood. It’s all we know. It’s part of us.”

As the family has grown, so too has the business. First solely run out of 300 W. Walnut St. in Portland, Fisher Packing expanded first in 2009 with the addition of a retail location in Muncie. The family had already been planning to expand again when a fire forced its hand in summer 2016.

The flames wiped out the north portion of their Portland site, with damage estimates around $1 million. By the end of the year, Fisher was back up and running, producing its meat products at the former Bell Aquaculture facility in Redkey.

Then, in late 2019 and stretching into 2020, the business expanded its capacity in Portland. Using the space that had been left dormant after the fire, Fisher added new coolers and other equipment to vastly increase its meat processing capabilities. It was just finishing up training and beginning to see the potential of that expansion when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

COVID-19 brought with it a long list of challenges. But the expanded capacity proved a godsend.

“We couldn’t have got luckier with the timing,” said Brad, 37, who runs the Portland site with his wife Brittany working in the office.

“We had a lot of capacity that wasn’t being utilized, so we were able to fill that capacity with Fisher cattle and Fisher hogs that we bought from local farmers just so that we could provide the community with meat.”

Fisher Packing has been doing that, providing the community meat, since founder Leon Fisher purchased the Walnut Street site from the Ehrhart family in May 1945. Leon’s son John returned to the family business in the late 1960s after his service in the Marine Corps., and he married Janice in 1969.

John has been retired for nearly a decade now, and when The Commercial Review wrote a 2014 story about the business Janice had “theoretically” retired that spring though John kidded her that she still was working full-time. Back then, Janice said she’d like to get that down to three days a week.

She’s still coming in every day.

“Though she says that she’s going to retire,” said Greg, laughing. “She’s not going to be in as much next year.”

Fisher Packing, with eldest brother Michael, 50, handling the financial side of the operation, now has its products in at least 16 different states. The company has seen tremendous growth as a co-packer (making products for other brands) with customers from North Carolina to Hawaii and in between.

Fisher is known for the quality of its meat, with its awards ranging from Jay County Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year — it has won that one three times, most recently in 2016 — to a litany of honors for its meats at the state, national and international level.

In 2019 the list included Best of the Entire Show for its summer sausage at the Indiana Meat Packers and Processors Association and the Illinois Association of Meat Processors joint convention. Fisher also took grand champion honors for its bacon, jalapeño and cheese snack sticks, venison snack sticks and summer sausage. It won best in show for its hickory smoked bacon at the 2017 Indiana Meat Packers and Processors Association and the Hoosier Cured Meat Show.

“(The best in show awards) stand out the most to me because you’re competing with people from all over … and all these people have the same passions that we do,” said Brad. “And to be able to go there and compete at that level and win really says a lot.”

All that extra capacity Fisher Packing in Portland had at the beginning of the pandemic is now booked up through September. And the company plans to add new equipment to the Redkey site in 2021 that will fill the building to capacity.

The brothers — their oldest children, the potential fourth generation of the family involved in Fisher Packing, are in middle school — leave open the possibility of adding more space in the future. But their ultimate goal is to keep making quality meat products, and to keep doing it together.

“It’s really special to be a part of a business that’s been around for 75 years,” said Brad. “But it’s even more special to be able to do it with your family … and be able to grow like we have and continue to do the things that we love and be successful.

“To be able to spend at least 40 hours a week with your family, to me, that’s the biggest blessing … I really cherish that.”