In 1909 Otto Kolshowsky, a German immigrant, started a family meat market. It was located in Oak Park, Illinois. Eight years later he moved it to Maywood, Illinois and expended it to include the wholesale meat. By 1928 the company then called Otto & Sons had developed a reputation for offering the best quality meats. In 1955 the company made an agreement to be the exclusive supplier to a new fast food franchise called McDonald’s. As McDonald grew nationally, Otto & Sons grew with them. Otto & Sons opened the first of their high volume meat plants in 1973 in West Chicago. Two years later the company changed it’s name to OSI Industries.
The new facility featured liquid nitrogen freezing tunnels and patty-forming machines. The company also created a separate unit to handle its non-McDonald’s business like providing area restaurants with specialty meats and local supermarkets with processed meats. It was called Glenmark. Today the company is called the OSI Group and its headquarters is in Aurora, Illinois. It’s now a privately owned meat processors holding company that provides retail stores, fast food chains and other parts of the international food service industry with fresh and processed meat products.
The OSI Group has 65 plants located in Eastern and Western Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and North America. In the U.S. they have processing plants in Chicago, West Chicago and Geneva, Illinois, Riverside, California, Oakland, Iowa, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin and West Jordan, Utah. They produce bacon, fish, hot dogs, meat patties, pizza, pork, poultry, dough and vegetable products for companies like Papa John’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Subway and other western fast food chains doing business in China. The OSI Group also produces and co-packs products for private label brands, retail customers and food service companies. To know more about the company click here.
The company has received numerous awards for health and safety risk management and environmental management. Today they have over 20,000 employees has $6.1 billion in annual assets and is the 58 largest company in the United States. Otto Kolshowsky’s children are no longer part of the company. The OSI Group is now led by Sheldon Lavin the company chairman and CEO as well as CFO Sherry DeMeulenaere. The company is now internationally known and respected for its quality meat, vegetable and dough products. Over the past 100 plus years the company has grown from being a local Chicago area meat market into a global company.