Good Foods Group LLC is a company that’s been in business for just over a decade. Kurt Penn, the founder and CEO of the company, was first exposed to high pressure processing back in 2008 at a trade show and then later when the chicken sausage business he owned was purchased by Perdue Farms, who was using HPP.
According to Joyce Longfield, vice president of product innovation at Good Foods, “Penn thought to himself, ‘This is the technology of the future,’” Longfield says. “So before he even know what his next company was going to be, he had purchased an HPP machine and eventually built Good Foods around it. Good Foods is an HPP company that makes food as opposed to a food company that uses HPP,” Longfield explains.
Today, Good Foods has more than 100 product SKUs, including 10 to 12 categories such as guacamole, hummus, salsa, salad dressing, chicken salad, grain salad, dairy-based dips, plant-based dips and more. Longfield says, “Some people think we are crazy for doing to such a wide variety of products, but when you start as an HPP company that makes food, it really helps you narrow in and focus on where you want to be more specialized. And you can determine more easily what is giving you the best ROI.”
Machines from JBT/Avure and Hiperbaric are used at the company’s Wisconsin and Mexico locations.