BD&K Foods to hire 35 employees after expanding into Cusseta Road facility
A company that packages Southern-style vegetables for sale to supermarkets and restaurants said Tuesday it plans to hire 35 employees for growth it expects from an expansion of its Columbus operation.
BD&K Foods said it has purchased a 75,000-square-foot building at 1333 Cusseta Road and will now launch its "Fixin's" packaged side dishes that will be sold in grocery store delis that already offer meat items such as rotisserie chicken.
The company already operates a 30,000-square-foot plant on Andrews Road in Columbus, with that facility having grown to 75 workers since the business relocated from Auburn, Ala., in 2009. The company itself was founded in 1999.
BD&K said its product output has grown as well to 70 million side dishes prepared each year for customers in the U.S. and military families overseas.
"We have been very pleased with the quality of the workforce here in Columbus as well as the site selection support we received from the Columbus Chamber of Commerce," Kevin Jordan, chief executive officer of BD&K Foods, said in a statement. "This new building will allow us to bring in-house our freezing, storage and distribution functions. It also allows us to expand our production capacities in the future."
The company pointed out that more than 800 million rotisserie chickens are sold each year to hungry consumers, which offers plenty of potential for its side dishes to be sold along with the cooked birds.
BD&K Foods Inc. purchased the 1333 Cusseta Road property on just over six acres from GWC Inc. earlier this year, paying $1,059,000, according to city real estate transactions.
That location is a former cold storage and distribution facility for Glover Foods, which served commercial and governmental customers in the Southeast from the site. US Foods purchased Glover Wholesale Co. in 2012, with the Columbus property going on the market for sale the following year.
Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Brian Anderson, in a statement, said a "priority" has been placed on helping existing companies in Columbus grow their operations and employment.
The Cusseta Road plant is located within the city's enterprise zone, which makes BD&K Foods eligible for property tax savings that it is now in the process of seeking approval to receive, chamber officials said. The chamber also is working with the company to determine if it might be eligible for state tax credits for creating jobs.
This story was originally published September 15, 2015 at 1:22 PM with the headline "BD&K Foods to hire 35 employees after expanding into Cusseta Road facility."