Americans love chicken wings. Last year they ate three billion pounds of the sauce-covered poultry products. Buffalo Wild Wings, a Minneapolis-based restaurant chain that specializes in wings, has a market cap in excess of $1 billion. Great Sea, my favorite wing place in Chicago, makes Korean-style wings that are so addictive they have wall of fame for most wings consumed by one person in a sitting. (The record is 90.)
Americans also love pork. More than 80% of households eat "the other white meat." Bacon is so beloved it is being added to everything from vodka to ice cream. I've encountered many super consumers in my career, but few are as passionate as the phylum called "Pork Dorks."
So why not combine those two loves and create an innovative new type of food: Pig wings?
Anatomical problems aside, this question was posed to my colleagues and me by Mike Brown, President of Farmland Foods, a division of Smithfield Foods. He and his team are in the midst of transforming Farmland Foods from a supply/commodity company into a demand-driven innovator.
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