Goodmark Foods, Inc. is an American food manufacturing company, based in Raleigh, North Carolina.[1] [2] It produces "meat snacks, packaged meats, and extruded grain snacks," especially Slim Jim jerky meat snacks.[3] It is owned by ConAgra.
Slim Jim snacks originated in Philadelphia.[4] Its manufacturer Cherry-Levis Food Company was sold to General Mills in 1967 for about $20 million[4] and renamed Slim Jim, Inc.[5] In 1970, General Mills purchased Jesse Jones Sausage Co. in Garner, North Carolina, and formed GoodMark Foods, Inc. to make Slim Jims there. Ron Doggett, a General Mills finance executive involved in the purchase of Cherry-Levis, had moved to North Carolina to participate in managing the operations. "In June 1982, he directed a unique leveraged buyout with three other executives of GoodMark from General Mills, who had put the subsidiary up for sale." They took the company public in 1985.[6] The company's stock was traded on NASDAQ as GDMK.
It was acquired by ConAgra, Inc. in 1998 for $225 million. GoodMark's annual sales were about $170 million at that time. Doggett retired as chairman, president and CEO in 1999, a year later.