Enemies among meat companies

Boar's Head Provisions, the nationwide deli meat company with a corporate headquarters in Sarasota, has found itself in a food fight with a competitor.

That foe, Philadelphia-based Dietz & Watson, claims that individual distributors of Boar's Head meats and products wrecked a series of customer events the company was putting on in the parking lots of five grocery stores in Charlotte and Lee counties the weekend of Dec. 4.

Dietz & Watson executives say Boar's Head people drove a convoy of at least 40 large red and black corporate trucks to the events. Once there, the Boar's Head crews honked loud horns and tried to verbally intimidate customers from trying Dietz & Watson products, Dietz & Watson executives claim.

The alleged incident was written about in the Fort Myers News-Press Dec. 9. A slew of more than 125 negative comments on the newspaper's Web site directed at Boar's Head followed that story.

A Boar's Head spokeswoman, however, says the incidents were taken out of context. “Our individual distributors were trying to create a brand presence at the events,” says Boar's Head Communications Director RuthAnn LaMore. “There was no intimidation or disruption.”

But to Louis Eni, president and chief executive of family-run Dietz & Watson, the incidents are another battle in the all out war he says Boar's Head has declared on his company. “If corporate had no knowledge of this, than it's at least responsible by promoting this type of behavior,”
Eni tells Coffee Talk. “This was reprehensible.”

If true, it's also a little bit like a lion stomping on a cub. Boar's Head, with about $800 million in 2008 revenues, is nearly double in size and scope of Dietz & Watson, says Eni. Eni though, talks as if he's not going to cower. “We are mortal enemies,” he says. “But we will compete with them head to head, anytime, anywhere.”

Boar's Head officials say threats of war and enemies is on Dietz & Watson, not Boar's Head. “We're not at war,” says LaMore. “We're healthy competitors.”