Holly Poultry has opened an 80,000-square-foot dedicated retail production facility in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, the company announced Sept. 14, citing sustained velocity growth across its Easy Street and One Fine Chicken brands alongside an expanding private-label book of business. The plant is expected to create 140 net new jobs.
The Capacity Play
The investment gives Holly Poultry — a Maryland-based processor with more than 30 years of foodservice history — a production platform built specifically for retail channel requirements. Prior to the expansion, the company was scaling its branded and private-label output alongside its legacy foodservice operation. The new facility separates those workflows, letting the company respond faster to retail replenishment cycles and accelerate new-item development.
Velocity data backs the timing. Easy Street, which features No Antibiotics Ever fresh chicken thighs sold pre-diced and dry-seasoned in flavors including Korean BBQ, Street Taco, Peruvian, Shawarma, and Chili Crisp, is averaging more than 30 units per store per week at top-performing accounts with a three- to four-flavor set. The line is currently carried at Giant Food, The Giant Company, Harris Teeter, ShopRite, Shaw's, and Hannaford — a Mid-Atlantic and Northeast footprint that positions the brand for further regional expansion now that production capacity is in place.
Brand and Private-Label Growth
The facility supports three distinct retail lanes. Easy Street targets the convenience-in-the-fresh-case shopper with a fully prepped, heat-and-eat proposition. The line's roughly seven-minute fridge-to-plate cook time places it squarely in the prepared-foods adjacency that grocery and convenience foodservice operators have chased as dinner-occasion capture intensifies across channels.
One Fine Chicken addresses a different shelf slot — the everyday commodity poultry aisle — with No Antibiotics Ever product priced below traditional national brands. That value-tier positioning is particularly relevant as food-at-home inflation continues to pressure household budgets and consumers trade between retail and foodservice occasions.
The third lane, private label, extends Holly Poultry's retail capabilities to partners who want fresh poultry produced under their own brand. Private-label fresh meat and poultry has been a growth vector for regional processors looking to deepen retailer relationships and fill production lines without building new consumer brand equity from scratch.
"This facility is a major investment in that opportunity," said Zach Fine, CEO of Holly Poultry. "It gives us the capacity to serve the customers choosing our products today while creating room to expand into new retailers, build new private-label partnerships and keep pushing what fresh poultry can be."
What It Means for the Channel
For convenience and adjacent foodservice operators tracking the fresh-protein category, the Holly Poultry expansion is a supply-side signal worth noting. Pre-seasoned, portion-controlled fresh chicken — the format Easy Street has commercialized — maps directly onto the kind of back-of-house simplicity that c-store foodservice programs increasingly require. Limited labor, consistent output, and a compelling on-pack flavor story are table stakes for any supplier pitching into the prepared-foods corridor.
The Anne Arundel County plant also reinforces Maryland's standing as a food-manufacturing hub. Amy Gowan, president and CEO of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation, called the investment a reinforcement of "the region's role in the continued growth of Maryland's food industry."
With 140 jobs projected and distribution already established across major grocery and foodservice-adjacent retail banners in the Northeast, Holly Poultry has built a platform capable of moving well beyond its current regional footprint.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
