Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get the hell out of the way of Michael Pastore, Park Farms’ CEO, who in all likelihood is bearing down on the plump little bird on his Harley Davidson motorcycle at a high rate of speed.
Pastore, whose grandfather Eugene Pastore founded a dress-while-you-wait poultry business in 1946 that evolved into Park Farms, isn’t your average CEO. He earned a business degree from Miami University in 1984, but his real education has come from his 25 years at Park Farms, working every position from janitor to president.
While his grandfather struggled to sell the first 50 chickens, the company has grown ever since. Park Farms now processes about 65,000 chickens a day, and has 400 employees and close to $70 million in sales.
CEOs typically spend their leisure time on the golf course, but Pastore is more at home on a motorcycle, or jet ski, snowmobile ,or doing some off-shore power boating.
Smart Business talked to Pastore to learn more about the Canton-based business and its distinct leader.
You’ve worked at Park Farms for 25 years. Was there ever any question that you would work in the family business?
Yes. I started to work when I was 10 at my (other) grandfather’s motorcycle shop. I worked there until I was 18, and I thought I would end up there in the early stages of my career.
But once I started working here, I thought it was pretty sure I would stay here. The motorcycle business was at one time profitable, then it fell into a lull. I was about 18 when I stopped working there.
I didn’t have the aspirations of an entrepreneur, but more of an aspiration of riding and working on motorcycles.
What was your first job with the company, and what did it teach you?
I was in high school, and I did sanitation. I was basically cleaning out toilets. When people talk about starting at the bottom, that would be the bottom.
I learned that I really don’t want to do sanitation. It’s not where I wanted to spend the rest of my career. I decided there had to be a better way to go.
You’ve worked in practically every position within the company. How has that helped you as president and CEO?
It’s huge. It’s unmeasurable. It’s given me a more intimate knowledge of employees and respect for the employees’ jobs as well. There were some jobs I struggled with that they made look easy.
The jobs were a lot more difficult than I thought. I learned to respect them and the positions they hold, and I got to learn about the workings of the company. I learned that it’s like a domino effect. If you change something, it affects a number of things down the line. It ripples down through the organization.
I think one of my strong suits is understanding how they interface with one another, and how to take complicated issues and make them simple.
You list some of your hobbies as power boating, jet skis, snowmobiling and riding motorcycles — including a Harley. What does that say about your personality?
It used to say I really like speed. I used to really thrive on speed. I still do to some extent, but I’ve had to pull back a bit.
I still enjoy that and the thrill. But I’ve got three kids and a wife now, and that’s kind of tempered that a bit. In that respect, some people say I’m a thrill-seeker or I like to take calculated risks. Like one T-shirt I have says: ‘You can have football, basketball, baseball and golf. Offshore racing requires two balls.’
Does the thrill-seeking apply to your position at Park Farms as well?
I’m actually very conservative in this seat — very conservative. With my hobbies, it’s me controlling a machine.
There are a hell of a lot more variables in this than what is in that segment. There it’s just me, the machine and the elements. This is people. There are so many dynamics here. You cannot just press down on the pedal and get everyone to go in the same direction.
Does running a company have anything in common with riding a motorcycle?
It’s a calculated risk that you take. There are a lot of unknown factors. It’s the thrill of victory, if you will.
The other thing I do is to take the family and kids and their friends when we go boating. When we go boating, I always want to go faster, but they tell me, ‘Then leave all your friends at home.’
It’s rarely less than double digits of people when we go out. That’s the thing in common — the people element is the fun part to doing that stuff. It’s what makes it fun.
In business, people are the biggest challenge and the biggest reward. If you see people making progress and doing well, that’s a great thing.
How has the poultry industry changed since you first got involved with it?
The only constant in this industry is change. It moves very quickly because of the perishable nature of the product.
The thing I’ve noticed over my tenure is, I continue to see a decrease in the customer base of independents. The IGAs of the world are decreasing, but not the big chains.
The independents have really diminished, and so have the number of people producing products. There is more product but fewer players. Consolidations mean there are fewer companies to buy services from and fewer to sell to. But the magnitude of those has increased.
We’ve got to be a player. We are very small by industry standards. (Park Farms processes 325,500 chickens a week, which is what some larger processors do in a day) That doesn’t mean we are not a great company. That doesn’t mean we can’t do a great job with our people and services.
We can do a better job than anyone else can because of our size and flexibility. There are economics that come with being huge, but certain losses, too.
What are your goals for Park Farms?
Our main focus is going to be focusing on our trade pack product — the stuff in the meat case. With the numbers and weights of the birds we have coming through, there’s not much we can do to improve from the product standpoint.
We need to lower our costs on the back side. We are essentially dealing with a commodity. It’s difficult to differentiate ourself from the others out there. It’s becoming more difficult over time.
We need to cut costs and improve our margin. The bottom line is, when the day is done, we have to give the customer the best value that’s possible. My grandfather always said, ‘We are not in the chicken business, we are not in the meat business, we are in the people business.’ We still have all our goals internally, but when the day is done, you have to provide superior service for our customers.
What makes Park Farms’ products different from its competitors’?
One of the things we are known for in the industry is that when we start out to do something, we do it right the first time and do it better and more consistently.
All of us at the top have an open-door policy. Anyone can walk through my door. They may have to wait in line, but this is not about one person — it’s still a team sport.
The same goes with a customer. If we don’t do it, someone else will.
Internally, we changed from having such a rigid structure. We used to have to work half a day on Saturday. That’s gone. It made it a lot better for the folks that were here for half days on the weekend.
We are trying to take care of the employees’ needs that may not be related to work. We’ve looked at ways to pay for their children’s college education with pretax dollars. We have started to look at a way to provide quality day care.
The attitude of all of us is “work” may be a four-letter word, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. I try to put some fun in this. We are really trying to perpetuate that it can be fun and doing the job right can be satisfying.
We are trying to give the employees more responsibility and hold them accountable. We are trying to look at things bit differently.
You are not just the CEO of a company, you are CEO of a company your family built from nothing. Does that put additional pressure on you to succeed?
It used to, but it doesn’t now. I’m my own person. We (cousins Jim Pastore Jr., the company’s president and COO, and Christine Pastore-Bucher, executive vice president of operations, also work for the company) realize it is up to us. We’ll either make it, break it or stay in the middle.
It’s up to us to propel the business into the future. That’s a risk and a scary part all in the same breath. The key element is that we all have an understanding that it is truly up to us, and we need to work as hard and smart as we can to make things go.
Final thoughts?
It’s a family-run business. There are three of us that are heirs to the throne. We are making changes to make things better. We feel we have the right people on board.
We have some definitive goals and things are getting done. Everyone is feeling pretty good about it quite honestly.
I think if anything, when you go to the store, ask for Park Farms chicken. It’s either Park or it’s not real chicken. How to reach: Park Farms, (330) 455-0241
