Who Owns Hillshire Farm?

Friedrich "Fritz" Bernegger, an Austrian immigrant born in 1904, founded Hillshire Farm in New London, Wisconsin. Bernegger completed a three-year butcher apprenticeship in Austria at age sixteen before emigrating to America in 1926. He worked at Cudahy Packing Company in St. Paul, Minnesota, then at Layton Sausage Company in Milwaukee, and at Hopfenspergers in Appleton, Wisconsin.

In 1928, Bernegger moved to New London, Wisconsin, hired by Frank Jennings to make sausage. In 1929, Bernegger and William Schmidt, a meat cutter, bought the business and named it Quality Market. A second Quality Market opened in 1934. The same year, Bernegger built a slaughterhouse on a one-acre site south of New London. In 1938, he constructed a full-service packing house called Quality Packing House.

The partnership with Schmidt dissolved in 1953. Schmidt took the retail stores. Bernegger kept the plant. In 1954, the business was incorporated as Quality Packing House, Inc. The federal brand name "Hillshire" was acquired around this time, and the operation was renamed Hillshire Meat Products.

The plant came under federal inspection in 1969. By then, Bernegger recognized the business had outgrown its family-run origins. On December 13, 1971, Hillshire merged into Consolidated Foods, Inc. through a stock exchange. Consolidated Foods later changed its name to Sara Lee Corporation in 1985. By 1977, Hillshire Farm employed 900 people and manufactured over three million pounds of meat per week.

Under Sara Lee ownership, Hillshire Farm's smoked sausage became the number one seller in the United States. The brand introduced smoked sausages to the general American public as a nationally advertised supermarket food. In 1989, Sara Lee merged Hillshire Farm with Kahn's as an operating unit.

In 2012, Sara Lee spun off its North American packaged meats business as Hillshire Brands Company, naming the new entity after its flagship brand. Hillshire Brands began trading independently on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker HSH. The spinoff included Hillshire Farm, Jimmy Dean, Ball Park, State Fair, and Kahn's.

Two years later, Tyson Foods launched an unsolicited bid for Hillshire Brands in May 2014, offering $6.8 billion. A bidding war with Pilgrim's Pride pushed the final price to $8.55 billion, or approximately $63 per share. Tyson won the auction. The acquisition closed in August 2014, giving Tyson a dominant position in prepared meats and refrigerated packaged foods.

Under Tyson ownership, Hillshire Farm has expanded beyond its core smoked sausage and deli meat lines. Tyson launched Hillshire Snacking, a premium on-the-go snacking line, and Hillshire Reserve, a higher-tier deli line. In Tyson's Q2 FY2026 earnings call, management reported that Hillshire lunchmeat grew 7.6% and Hillshire snack combos achieved double-digit growth. The brand gained market share in volume, dollars, and units across lunch meat, bacon, snacking, and smoked sausage categories.