Turkey trot: the Hoke County seat loses its best-known employer as House of Raeford pulls out.

• Author: Granados, Alex
• Position: OUR TOWNS

When House of Raeford Farms Inc.'s turkey plant closed its doors in December, Raeford joined Kannapolis and Thomasville among North Carolina cities that have lost their signature businesses. Cannon Mills Inc. closed in 2003, while Heritage Home Group LLC, which recently moved its headquarters to High Point, closed Thomasville Furniture Industries Inc.'s operations in 2013. The Raeford plant's demise eliminated 400 jobs after the company in August 2013 shut down its turkey-slaughter plant, where 950 had worked. "I think closing either one of the plants over there has been difficult for some of the family members that were in charge. Because as far as processing goes, that's where it started," says Dave Witter, House of Raeford's corporate communications manager.

The company, originally called Johnson Brothers, started in the late 1940s. Marvin and Bizzell Johnson sold turkeys grown by their parents to residents of Rose Hill, a Duplin County town 90 miles east of Raeford. Bob Johnson, 56, Marvin's son, is the president and CEO, and several other family members work at the company, which always has been based in Rose Hill. The company moved into chicken processing in 1959 and launched House of Raeford in 1975 after Marvin Johnson bought out his four partners in a turkey-slaughter cooperative in Raeford. While turkeys once dominated the company's business, rivals--including Garner-based Butterball LLC, which has a hatchery in Raeford--have gobbled up market share. By 2013, about 90% of House of Raeford's sales were chickens, with the company ranking ninth among U.S. producers, according to Rockford, Ill.-based Watt Global Media, an industry research firm. Without its own slaughter plant, the company relied on other vendors for raw turkey, an expensive proposition that didn't work financially.

It's a heavy hit for Raeford, where the cook plant alone accounted for 7.6% of the $445.6 million property base, City Manager Dennis Baxley says. The two...