Beef over family fortune is nothing new for a Sarasota meat company

The heirs of a Sarasota-based company with a widely known brand are in a big-time beef over the family fortune.

The company is Boar’s Head, the meat and deli provisions company that’s been based in Sarasota,  with an office on Main Street, for some 20 years. Adding more intrigue to the latest dispute, recently written about in law blogs and New York City tabloid newspapers, is the company is normally secretive about its business and operations. 

“The lawsuit, parts of which are redacted, gives a rare look inside the meats company with a reputation for secrecy and sharp-elbowed competition in the grocery aisles,” writes  the New York Daily News. The story quotes Sam Gazdziak, editor of the National Provisioner magazine, who says the company doesn’t “have people visit facilities, they don’t talk to the media, they’re really quiet. When they come into a chain or grocery store they pretty much push everybody else out.”

The current dispute stems from  the November death of Barbara Brunckhorst, daughter of Boar's Head co-founder Frank Brunckhorst. It was Brunckhorst, along with his brother-in-law Bruno Bischoff, who launched the lunch meats company in 1905, when they began selling hams and other meats from a horse-drawn wagon in Brooklyn, N.Y. The Brunckhorst and Bischoff families have since shared ownership of the brand.

Frank Brunckhorst III, the Boar's Head founder's grandson and Barbara Brunckhorst's nephew, said in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court in May that his aunt's dying wish was a "substantial portion" of her share of the company go to environmental charities and neuroscience research, the Daily News reports. 

But Eric Bischoff, grandson of Bruno Bischoff, who was Frank Brunckhorst's brother-in-law, claims Barbara Brunckhorst's portion of the company belongs to him, according to the Daily News. This isn’t the first dispute over wills and estates between the families; at least one other was litigated in 2006.