Midwest favorite Jack Link's has made beef jerky the family business

Jack Link sold his first box of kippered beef to a Kwik Trip out of the back of his car.

Forty years later, he's chair of the board of a $2 billion brand that bears his name and family legacy.

Based in the northwest Wisconsin outpost of Minong, Jack Link's — which has a major corporate office in downtown Minneapolis — is a rare creature in an industry dominated by public companies and private equity firms. Especially considering it is by far the nation's largest meat snacks company.

"When you're family owned and operated, basically, you get to eat what you kill," CEO Troy Link said. "Growth can be slower, but I think that you can build a much stronger culture."

Progress is easier to come by these days as Americans are hankering for protein like never before: More than 60% of consumers are actively increasing their protein intake, according to a recent Cargill survey. And meat consumption keeps on rising.

Link said it's reminiscent of the Atkins Diet days decades ago.

"That was a huge, huge time to be at Jack Link's. We were growing as fast as we could grow," the CEO said. Now, with diets like paleo, Whole30, keto and a general hunger for protein: "I feel like we're really where the consumer is going."

Jack Link's today has more than 4,000 employees around the world and does about 30% of its sales internationally. On average, the company sells a bag of jerky or meat stick every 30 seconds in the U.S.

Yet many of the brand's most recognizable assets that helped make it the king of jerky — the logo, red packaging, Sasquatch — almost never happened, a new company history book reveals. And success did not come without some family drama.

"A real struggle was going on inside the company between where we'd been and where we might be able to go," Jack Link said in the book the company put together for its 40th anniversary. "Troy was always the one with the most advanced vision, while his brother [Jay] and I tended to be happier with the success we'd already had the way we'd achieved it."

Kippered to cowboy

The Links have been making meat in Minong since the 1880s, when German immigrant Chris Link came to town with family sausage recipes that quickly became a hit with local lumberjacks and farmers.

His son, Earl Link, later opened the town's first butcher shop and general store. His son, Wolf Link, started a meat-processing plant. His son, Jack Link, worked in the family business from a young age and took the reins in the 1970s.

The meatpacking operation was going through bankruptcy when his son, future-CEO Troy Link, bought a bag of subpar jerky from a convenience store on the way home from a hunting trip in the 1980s. He challenged his dad to do better.

"In those days, no one was thinking much about the potential of the jerky business," Jack Link recalled in the company history book. "The product was big with hunters and fishermen, but for most people, it was a novelty food."

Putting the old family recipes to use, the first Jack Link's kippered beef, juicier than traditional jerky, rolled off the production line Oct. 1, 1985.

Within five years, it was available in all 50 states and several other countries. Then in 1997, the company started bagging the chewier "cowboy-style" jerky, partly because Walmart asked for it.

Jack Link initially declined the retailer's request, but his son saw a chance to take on the competition in a new way.

"When it first started, it was about survival. We had to survive," Troy Link said. "Then you find another north star or motivator — it was Slim Jim.

"'We've got to be better than Slim Jim. We've got to be bigger than them.' They were our motivator for a really long time."

Decision time

While "Macho Man" Randy Savage commanded a generation of young men to "snap into a Slim Jim" in the early 2000s, Jack Link was hemming and hawing over the look of his brand.

Some market research had brought a reckoning: The cursive Jack Link's logo, and the varying colors used with different flavors, were not leaving an impact. "Beef Jerky" were the biggest words on the bags back then.

"In terms of going 'big time,' packaging was the largest hurdle," the founder recalled in the company history.

He eventually relented, and in 2005 the consistent red packaging and modern logo soon began driving up sales.

Not long after, Minneapolis ad agency Carmichael Lynch came up with the "feed your wild side" slogan and a TV ad campaign featuring jerky-munching campers playing pranks on Bigfoot.

Jack Link avoided advertising. He preferred pitching at trade shows.

"I could deal directly with our customers and see their reaction to our products for myself," he recounted. "I could tell what was working and what wasn't. With advertising, how could you be sure you were hitting the target?"

So the Sasquatch commercial didn't land. Link and several other company leaders initially panned the ad as too risky.

Like with the new packaging, it took some convincing.

"'I'm not sure about this,' I said once again," Link wrote in the book, "but what the hell? Let's go for it."

Since the first "Messin' with Sasquatch" ad aired in 2006, Jack Link's has become synonymous with beef jerky. And it did not take long for the brand to eclipse Slim Jim, Oberto and other competitors.

Keeping the lead

In the past two decades, Jack Link's has built new plants, acquired Unilever's European meat snacks business and launched the Lorissa's Kitchen (LK) brand of allergen-free meat snacks. The Minneapolis office and R&D center opened in 2017.

Troy Link, who became CEO in 2013, said the view from the top of the industry is daunting but encouraging, since there are millions of Americans who don't yet buy meat snacks routinely. That's an opportunity many new brands are seizing on, too.

"We've got more competitors than ever‚" he said. "When you become a category leader, you really need to work hard to continue to maintain your share, because everybody's coming after you."

It hasn't always been ideal to be a family-owned business. Jay Link's exit from the company several decades ago prompted a long-running, bitter court battle over how much the company owed him and whether he was forced out or left voluntarily.

"It was a very unfortunate deal for the family," Troy Link said. "People do ask about it, but it was such a long time ago. ... I wish everybody well."

Though Link said "unexpected things happen" when it comes to keeping the brand in the family, today Jack Link's is "not for sale."

His kids — now 12, 10 and 6 — already express excitement about the work he lets them do.

"Hopefully all the fun, cool things about the product engages them," he said. "We'll find out."